U.S. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC 

INFORMATION DISSEMINATION 

FINAL REPORT, VOLUME 1 

DECEMBER 15, 2000 

FIRST DRAFT 

NOVEMBER 27, 2000 

This draft is for discussion and public review only, 

and is not necessarily the final position of the Commission. 

NCLIS 

U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

1110 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005-3552
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

1110 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005-3552 

Telephone: 202-606-9200; Fax: 202-606-9203; Web: www.nclis.gov 

The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science is a permanent, independent agency 

of the federal government, established in 1970 with the enactment of Public Law 91-345. The 

Commission is charged with: 

• advising the President and the Congress on the implementation of policy; 

• conducting studies, surveys, and analyses of the library and informational needs of the nation; 

• appraising the adequacies and deficiencies of current library and information resources and 

services; and 

• developing overall plans for meeting national library and informational needs. 

The Commission also advises federal, state, and local governments, and other public and private 

organizations, regarding library and information sciences, including consultations on relevant treaties, 

international agreements and implementing legislation, and it promotes research and development 

activities which will extend and improve the nation's library and information handling capability as 

essential links in the national and international networks. 

Commissioners and Staff include: 

Martha B. Gould, Chair

Joan R. Challinor, Vice Chair 

C.E. "Abe" Abramson LeVar Burton Paulette E. Holahan (nominee) 

Walter Anderson JosÈ-Marie Griffiths Marilyn G. Mason (nominee) 

Rebecca T. Bingham 

Philip N. Bredesen (nominee) 

Jack E. Hightower Bobby L. Roberts 

Donald L. Robinson (nominee)

 

James H. Billington, Beverly Sheppard, 

Librarian of Congress 

Robert S. Willard

Acting Director, Institute of 

Museum & Library Services 

 Executive Director 

Judith C. Russell 

 Deputy Director 
U.S. NATIONAL COMMISSION ON LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC 

INFORMATION DISSEMINATION 

FINAL REPORT, VOLUME 1 

DECEMBER 15, 2000 

FIRST DRAFT 

NOVEMBER 27, 2000 

This draft is for discussion and public review only, 

and is not necessarily the final position of the Commission. 

NCLIS 

U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

1110 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 820, Washington, DC 20005-3552

The Commission recommends that the United States 

Government formally recognize and affirm the concept 

that public information is a strategic national resource 
Suggested Citation: 

U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. 

A comprehensive assessment of public information dissemination, final report. Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 2000. 
United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

December 15, 2000 

[Transmittal Letter] 

A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents......................................................................................................................................i

Foreword ..................................................................................................................................................v

Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................... vii

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ix

A. The Role of NCLIS ........................................................................................................................ix

B. Findings ..........................................................................................................................................ix

C. Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................ix

D. Recommendations ..........................................................................................................................ix

A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination .....................................................1

A. The Role of NCLIS .........................................................................................................................1

B. Background......................................................................................................................................2

The Issue ..........................................................................................................................................2

A Working Definition of Public Information...................................................................................6

The Information Management Process.............................................................................................8

The Federal Government's Leadership...........................................................................................11

The Hidden Cost of "Electronwork" ..............................................................................................15

Information Collection Budget, But No Information Dissemination Budget ................................15

Government-Wide Public Information Services and Information Management 

Agency(ies) More Important Than Ever..............................................................................15

What This Report Is About, and What It Is Not About..................................................................20

C. Methodology..................................................................................................................................21

Fourteen Major Components of the Study .....................................................................................21

Assessment Milestones and Schedule ............................................................................................23

Study Panel Deliberations ..............................................................................................................24

Stakeholder Group Participation ....................................................................................................26

The Group of Experts.....................................................................................................................26

Other Research Elements of the Study...........................................................................................27

Final Report to the Congress and the President .............................................................................29

Using the NCLIS website and Study Web Pages as an Interactive Tool .......................................30

D. Findings.........................................................................................................................................30

Organization of the Findings..........................................................................................................30

1. Findings Relating to Individual Citizens (The General Public) .................................................31

2. Findings Relating to Disadvantaged and Special Populations ...................................................42

3. Findings Relating to Academic, Research, and Related Institutions..........................................46

4. Findings Relating to the Federal GovernmentóGovernment-wide Policy Leadership 

and Oversight.......................................................................................................................47

5. Findings Relating to the Federal GovernmentóIndividual Federal Agencies With 

Operating Missions..............................................................................................................58

6. Findings Relating to the Federal GovernmentóCentral Agencies With Governmentwide Information Services and Information Management Missions (Except NTIS) ..........70

7. Findings Relating to the Federal GovernmentóThe National Technical Information 

Service .................................................................................................................................78
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8. Findings Relating to Interagency Groups (e.g. CIO Council, Federal Webmasters 

Forum, CENDI, etc.)........................................................................................................... 82

9. Findings Relating to State, Local, and Tribal Levels of Government....................................... 84

10. Findings Relating to the Commercial (For Profit) Sector ....................................................... 84

11. Findings Relating to the Not-For-Profit Sector, Including Professional Associations............ 86

12. Findings Relating to Other Areas, Including International Information Policy ...................... 87

E. Conclusions................................................................................................................................... 88

1. Conclusions Relating to Individual Citizens (the General Public)............................................ 88

2. Conclusions Relating to Disadvantaged and Special Populations............................................. 88

3. Conclusions Relating to Academic, Research, and Related Institutions................................... 89

4. Conclusions Relating to the Federal GovernmentóGovernment-wide Policy 

Leadership and Oversight ................................................................................................... 89

5. Conclusions Relating to the Federal GovernmentóIndividual Agencies With 

Operating Missions ............................................................................................................. 90

6. Conclusions Relating to the Federal GovernmentóCentral Agencies With 

Government-wide Information Services and Information Management Missions 

(Except NTIS)..................................................................................................................... 92

7. Conclusions Relating to the Federal GovernmentóThe National Technical 

Information Service (NTIS) ................................................................................................ 95

8. Conclusions Relating to Federal Government Interagency Groups (e.g. the CIO 

Council, Federal Webmasters Forum, CENDI, etc.) .......................................................... 98

9. Conclusions Relating to State, Local, and Tribal Levels of government .................................. 99

10. Conclusions Relating to the Commercial (For Profit) Sector.................................................. 99

11. Conclusions Relating to the Not-For-Profit Sector, Including Professional 

Associations ........................................................................................................................ 99

12. Conclusions Relating to Other Areas, Including International Information Policy .............. 100

F. Recommendations....................................................................................................................... 100

Strategic Recommendations ........................................................................................................ 100

Other Recommendations ............................................................................................................. 109

Appendices.......................................................................................................................................... 117

Appendix 1. Letter to NCLIS Chairperson Martha B. Gould from Senator John McCain, 

June 12, 2000 ........................................................................................................................ 117

Appendix 2. Reply to Senator John McCain from Chairperson Martha B. Gould, June 27, 

2000 ...................................................................................................................................... 117

Appendix 3. Letter to NCLIS Chairperson Martha B. Gould from Senator Joseph I. 

Lieberman, July 17, 2000...................................................................................................... 117

Appendix 4. Reply to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman from Chairperson Martha B. Gould, 

August 7, 2000...................................................................................................................... 117

Appendix 5. Letter to Secretary of Commerce Norman Mineta from NCLIS Chairperson 

Martha B. Gould, August 1, 2000......................................................................................... 117

Appendix 6. Reply to Chairperson Martha B. Gould from Secretary Mineta, September 1, 

2000 ...................................................................................................................................... 117

Appendix 7. Second Letter to Secretary of Commerce Normal Mineta from NCLIS 

Chairperson Martha B. Gould, October 10, 2000 ................................................................. 117

Appendix 8. NCLIS Press Release, June 26, 2000.......................................................................... 117

Appendix 9. NCLIS Study Plan Outline, July 25, 2000.................................................................. 117

Appendix 10. Some Issues/Concerns to Address, July 25, 2000 .................................................... 117

Appendix 11. Some Paradigms, Myths, and Realities .................................................................... 118

Appendix 12. Information Life Cycle Management ....................................................................... 118
ó iii ó 

Appendix 13. Categories of Public Information Laws and Illustrative Examples of Public 

Information Resources Provisions.........................................................................................118

Appendix 14. NCLIS Comprehensive Assessment Web Page Table of Contents...........................118

Appendix 15. NCLIS Principles of Public Information, June 29, 1990...........................................118

Appendix 16. Study Panels & Group of Experts Memberships.......................................................118

Appendix 17. Final Report of Panel One, A Reformed NTIS Business Model for the 

Internet Age ...........................................................................................................................118

Appendix 18. Final Report of Panel Two, Reformed Federal Agency Needs for Central 

Information Services and Information Management .............................................................118

Appendix 19. Final Report of Panel Three, Reformed Citizen, Business, Lower Levels of 

Government, Library, and Other Needs for Public Information Products and Services........118

Appendix 20. Final Report of Panel Four ñ Renewed and Strengthened Partnerships 

Between the Public and Private Sectors for Public Information Dissemination....................118

Appendix 21. The Public Information Resources Reform Act of 2001 (Recommended 

Legislation)............................................................................................................................118

Appendix 22. The Paperwork Reduction Act Reauthorization (2001) and OMB Circular A130 (Suggested Revisions) ....................................................................................................119

Appendix 23. An Invited Retrospective Appraisal of the 1982 NCLIS Public Sector/Private 

Sector Task Force Report ......................................................................................................119

Appendix 24. The World Wide Library by Christopher Burns, Member, NCLIS Group of 

Experts...................................................................................................................................119

Appendix 25. FirstGov: A Preliminary Assessment by William H. Price, Member, NCLIS 

Group of Experts....................................................................................................................119

Appendix 26. Survey of Selected Federal Agency Policies, Programs and Practices Relating 

to Public Information Dissemination (Summary and Individual Agency Responses) ..........119

Appendix 27. Survey of the Public Information Needs of Disadvantaged and Special 

Populations (Summary and Individual Association Responses) ...........................................119

Appendix 28. Public Information Resources Maps..........................................................................119

Appendix 29. Draft Proposed Executive Order ...............................................................................119

Appendix 30. A Bibliography of Government Information Dissemination Resources, 

compiled by NCLIS consultants............................................................................................120

Appendix 31. A Bibliography of National Information Policies .....................................................120

Appendix 32. A Compilation and Analysis of Federal Statutes Pertaining to Public 

Information Dissemination ....................................................................................................120

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FOREWORD
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A. THE ROLE OF NCLIS 

B. FINDINGS 

C. CONCLUSIONS 

D. RECOMMENDATIONS 

Strategic Recommendations

Other Recommendations
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

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A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION 

DISSEMINATION

A. THE ROLE OF NCLIS 

The United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) is an 

independent agency charged by its enabling legislation (Public Law 91-345) to take a leadership 

position on matters pertaining to the library and information needs of the nation. Specifically, 20 

U.S.C. 1504(a)(1) says that the Commission shall "advise the President and the Congress on the 

implementation of national policy by such statements, presentations, and reports as it deems 

appropriate." 

In fulfillment of that statutory mandate, the Commission throughout its 30-year history has had an 

abiding interest and concern for studying ways the government can improve its public information 

dissemination practices. However, in the last three years, largely because of the intensified interest in 

the federal government's use of the World Wide Web and the Internet as the preferred medium for 

distributing government information to citizens and other elements of society, the Commission has 

focused squarely in three closely related studies, conducted sequentially, on policy, management, 

standards, accessibility, and other major issues and concerns that have arisen as a result of this shift in 

access and delivery channels from pre-Internet modes such as ink-on-paper, microfiche, and CDROM, to Web and Internet modes. 

Four years ago, in 1996, the Government Printing Office was asked by the Congress to investigate the 

increasing proliferation of formats, mediums, platforms, and protocols being utilized by federal 

agencies to disseminate government information products. The GPO turned to NCLIS to assist in 

undertaking the task. NCLIS engaged Westat, Inc., a survey research firm, to survey a sample of over 

300 products in a cross section of 24 different agencies in all three branches. A final report was 

published on this first of the three studies on March 30, 1999.1

Then in August 1999, after consulting with Department of Commerce officials and members of both 

the Senate and House Committees holding jurisdiction over science and technology issues (very soon 

after the announcement by Commerce to close the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and 

shift its paper, microfiche, digital archives, and bibliographic database to the Library of Congress), the 

Commission launched a second major study, this time focused primarily on NTIS. A final report on 

this second of the three studies was published in March 2000.2

In both the 1996 GPO-requested study, and the follow-on 1999 NTIS study, the Commission observed 

that both the issues and concerns surrounding the proliferation of electronic formats for disseminating 

 

1 Report on the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products, prepared by Westat, Inc. under a contract issued 

by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and commissioned by the Government Printing Office, 

March 1999; http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/nclisassessment/report.html. 2 Preliminary Assessment of the Proposed Closure of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS): A Report to the 

President and the Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 16, 2000; 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/ntis/presiden.pdf. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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government information to the public, and the issues and concerns surrounding the proposed transfer 

of the functions, programs, and resources of NTIS to the Library of Congress, should not be viewed as 

isolated events. Rather, the Commission concluded that those issues were both a part of the broader 

fabric of an even larger questionóhow the government should reform its laws, policies, programs, and 

practices for disseminating information to the public in the Internet Age. 

The Commission therefore warmly welcomed the requests by both Senator John McCain and Senator 

Joseph Lieberman to undertake this broader study, and we urge readers to keep this larger context in 

mind in reviewing the findings and recommendations contained herein. 

In its 1975 publication entitled Toward a National Program for Library and Information Services: 

Goals for Action, the Commission offered a long-range program for the development of an integrated 

nationwide network of library and information services. The following statement appears in that 

landmark document: 

The Commission's current goal is to develop a plan for a flexible network of 

information services to meet the immediate and foreseeable information requirements 

of the greatest possible number of people. The Commission will therefore continue to 

concentrate its efforts in the years ahead on this ideal: 

To eventually provide every individual in the United States with equal opportunity of 

access to that part of the total information resource which will satisfy the individual's 

educational, working, cultural and leisure-time needs and interests, regardless of the 

individual's location, social or physical condition or level of intellectual 

achievement.

3

 [emphasis added] 

In working toward the attainment of this goal, the Commission recommends in this report programs 

and enabling federal legislation that are based on existing programs for the dissemination of public 

information resources, as well as new programs as appropriate and necessary. One such 

recommendation is that the United States Government formally recognize and affirm the concept that 

public information is a strategic national resource. The success of such a goal, and of these 

recommendations, is dependent on the acceptance and full support of the library profession, the 

information communityóboth public and privateóthe Congress, the Administration, and, most 

importantly, the people of the United States. 

The Commission recommends that the United States Government formally recognize 

and affirm the concept that public information is a strategic national resource. 

B. BACKGROUND 

THE ISSUE 

Public sector information, or simply government information, has very rapidly become in the span of 

just the last few years one of the most critical strategic assets possessed by every nation state, on a par 

with national wealth, land, and capital. The Internet and the World Wide Web are the reason. Public 

Sector information has always played a very important role in the political, economic, and social 

affairs of every country, but the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has dramatically 

 

3

 U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Toward a National Program for Library and Information 

Services: Goals for Action, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, page xi. 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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escalated the importance of government information because of the power of the Internet to 

tremendously increase its availability and accessibility in a great variety of different electronic formats 

and mediums. 

The central challenge this report takes up is to recommend to the President and the 

Congress a series of steps to maximize the diffusion of the government's data, 

information, and knowledge resources to all sectors of society, down to the level of 

the individual citizen, and to help all of those sectors utilize that knowledge 

effectively and efficiently in the pursuit of their respective personal, family, career, 

institutional, or other goals and objectives. 

In short, a very high percentage of this Nation's knowledge resources are invested in its government 

data, document, and literature assets, but those assets are a very long ways, as yet, from being 

conveniently, cost-effectively, and equitably available and accessible to all sectors of American 

Society despite impressive initiatives that have been taken in recent years. Those assets are currently 

strewn across broad physical and electronic landscapes of tens of thousands of websites and millions 

of web pages, hundreds of thousands of electronic databases, untold numbers of paper document 

collections, and in countless files, records depositories, clearinghouses, and archives across the 

country and even abroad. 

The central challenge this report takes up is to recommend to the President and the Congress a series 

of steps to maximize the diffusion of the government's data, information, and knowledge resources to 

all sectors of society, down to the level of the individual citizen, and to help all of those sectors utilize 

that knowledge effectively and efficiently in the pursuit of their respective personal, family, career, 

institutional, or other goals and objectives. This is a far more daunting challenge than just 

"strengthening the dissemination of government information." 

Virtually all of the nation's hundreds of laws that have some provision or another for disseminating 

government information to the public, either: 

• publicize a citizen entitlement and spelling out the procedures that need to be following to apply 

for a tangible government public benefit or service; 

• publicize opportunities for the private sector to do business with, or for the federal government, 

either domestically in the U.S. or abroad, or both; 

• publicize and disseminate the results of government's performance and operations through audits, 

inspections, studies, opinions, decisions taken, and so forth; 

• provide for intergovernmental or interagency information interchange; or 

• provide a broad legal basis for public access to government information, identifying specific 

exceptions and exemptions, such as the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, and so forth, 

or specifically exempting from disclosure large bodies of government information holdings such 

as those classified for reasons of national security. 

However, none of these existing laws provides a rationale and statutory basis for the broad diffusion 

and utilization of government's knowledge assets to individual Americans, both advantaged and 

disadvantaged, to help them cope with their daily problems, to enlighten and educate them so that they 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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are better informed citizens, and to point the way to how the government's vast knowledge treasures 

can enhance the quality of their lives and the wisdom of their decisions.4

In 1998 the European Commission issued its report entitled Public Sector Information: A Key 

Resource For Europe; Green Paper on Public Sector Information in the Information Society.

5

 In its 

report the European Union said: 

Public sector information plays a fundamental role in the proper functioning of the 

internal market and the free circulation of goods, services and people. Without userfriendly and readily available administrative, legislative, financial or other public 

information, economic actors cannot make fully informed decisions. 

Public information in Europe is often fragmented and dispersed and so in many 

instances it is less clear and intended. This situation is mainly due to differing national 

legislation on the ways information can be accessed and exploited, and to various 

practices which hamper the availability of the data. The issue at stake is not that 

Member States should produce more information, but that the information which is 

already available to the public should be clearer and more accessible to potential 

users.6

In the United States, we have a somewhat parallel situation with federal government information. That 

is, it is fragmented, dispersed and compartmentalized among hundreds of federal agencies. It has been 

created, and it is being handled and stored in hundreds of different formats and mediums, including 

ink-on-paper, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online electronic modes. It is organized, classified, and 

cataloged in many different forms, including statistical or numeric data, textual data, graphical data, 

geospatial data, audio and visual data, and so on. Many different bibliographic and metadata systems, 

sometimes inconsistent and incompatible, are being used to identify data elements such as author, 

subject, title, location, and so on. In addition, dozens of different hardware, software, systems, and 

network platforms and protocols are being utilized to handle and communicate the information 

between networks and systems, sometimes subject to proprietary restrictions, but without the 

discipline of utilizing standards and guidelines. 

Moreover, in the United States, unlike much of the rest of the world, there is a strong dichotomy 

between the public information resources objectives and perspectives of the federal mission agencies, 

on the one hand, and the federal agencies with government-wide information services and information 

management roles on the other. In Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa there is a much greater 

cohesion between elements of the government, especially in the economic sphere, but in the United 

States, the mission agencies are primarily enjoined by statute to respond to their respective sector or 

mission interests (e.g. environment, energy, space, defense, etc.). As a result, they are beholden 

primarily to the constituencies comprising those sectors. The President and the Congress have made it 

crystal clear that if federal agencies stray very far from their mandated mission domains, they do so at 

their own peril. Only the central service agencies serve the interests of the public at large, as well as 

the interests of individual mission agencies. 

 

4

 The one possible exception is 44 U.S.C. Chapter 19, the statute authorizing the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP; 

however the lack of agency compliance and the absence of substantial consequences for failure to comply have limited the 

effectiveness of this statute. 

5

 European Commission, Public Sector Information: A Key Resource For Europe; Green Paper on Public Sector Information 

in the Information Society (COM(98)585final, adopted on 20 January 1999); available at 

 http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/docs/policy/docs/COM(98)585/gp-intro.html. 

6

 Ibid, page 1. 
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There is also the dimension of institutional obsolescence. In the words of one of the Commission's 

advisory experts, Chancellor Donald Langenberg of the University of Maryland: 

The designs, configurations, and functions of the Library of Congress, the 

Government Printing office, and the Superintendent of Documents, were based on the 

dominant information technology of the second half of the previous millennium, not 

that of the current millennium. Therein lies a huge challenge for our federal 

government (not to mention our state and local governments). One of the fundamental 

differences between the old and the new information technologies is that the former 

lends itself to centralization of information-related functions, while the latter is 

intrinsically decentralized. Compare big central libraries, printing plants, and 

bookstores and warehouses with ubiquitous desktop and laptop computers linked to 

servers in closets all over the globe. In the old technology, it's the nodes that matter 

most; in the new, it's the network linking the nodes. One should expect to see this 

fundamental difference reflected in the organizational and functional structure of an 

evolving federal public information dissemination system. [emphasis added] 

This study contends that a number of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial actions must be taken to 

enable what Chancellor Langenberg called the "federal public information system," or more 

technically the "Federal Information Infrastructure" concept to take its place in a meaningful way as a 

cornerstone in the emerging National Information Infrastructure, including: 

1. statutory reforms to strengthen the several existing laws that govern the way the federal 

government is organized for public information resources management, and a major new 

legislative initiative, the Public Information Resources Reform Act of 2001, providing for the 

creation of a Public Information Resources Administration with overall focal policy leadership 

and oversight responsibility for the availability of and accessibility to public sector information, 

electronic publishing, and public information resources management; public information resources 

planning, management, and dissemination is elevated to the status of a major new governmentwide mission; 

2. important reforms in the way key federal laws are written, especially the Paperwork Reduction Act 

of 1995, and corresponding Executive Branch guidance, notably OMB Circular A-130, to take into 

account the shift from ink-on-paper and other pre-electronic formats and mediums such as 

microforms and CD-ROM, to Internet formats and mediums, and to give "co-equal" priority to 

both controlling the paperwork burden on the American public through the Information Collection 

Budget mechanism, but also recommending an Information Dissemination Budget concept as a 

way to emphasize the need for agencies to budget for pro-actively disseminating their information 

resources to the public, not just passively providing access to those resources; 

3. major realignments in the roles and organizational location, and the consolidation and 

harmonization of the dispersed, fragmented, and compartmentalized missions and functions of key 

agencies with government-wide public information services and information management 

missions and functions, including the Government Printing Office (GPO), the National Technical 

Information Service (NTIS), the Government Information Locator Service (GILS), and other 

components; 

4. providing a statutory basis for, and institutionalizing three key public information management 

concepts: Permanent Public Availability, Preservation of Government Information, and 

Authentication of Government Information; and harmonizing the former two concepts with a 

fourth concept already statutorily definedóPermanent Records Retention; and 

5. "fine tuning" adjustments in the rules, regulations, standards, guidelines, procedures, and systems 

relating to individual agency, interagency, and intergovernmental information interchange, 
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sharing, and standards development, including technical standards such as the use of XML and 

PURLS. 

A WORKING DEFINITION OF PUBLIC INFORMATION 

We define public information as information created, compiled and/or maintained by 

the federal government. We assert that public information is information owned by the 

people, held in trust by their government, and should be available to the people except 

where restricted by law. 

Principles of Public Information 

U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

We begin with a definition of "Public Sector Information." Because there is no agreed-upon uniform 

statutory definition of the term "public sector information" or simply "public information," for the 

purposes of this study the Commission chooses to utilize the definition set forth in the preamble to the 

NCLIS Principles of Public Information7

 and in the provisions of Title 44 of the U.S. Code as a 

working definition. The preamble reads:

We define public information as information created, compiled and/or maintained by 

the federal government. We assert that public information is information owned by the 

people, held in trust by their government, and should be available to the people except 

where restricted by law. 

In short, the Commission strongly believes the public has a fundamental right to the information 

produced by the government, conditioned only by the legal exemptions stipulated in various statutes 

such as the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, national security legislation, and a few other 

laws. 

Nevertheless, several other existing, and important, statutory definitions of public information need to 

be recognized because the absence of a standard definition in the United States Code has caused 

considerable consternation among stakeholders who have tried to reform the government's public 

information dissemination machinery in the past. 

For example, Chapter 19 of Title 44 U.S.C., dealing with the Federal Depository Library Program, 

states that "[g]overnment publication as used in this chapter, means informational matter which is 

published as an individual document at government expense, or as required by law," and that 

"[g]overnment publications, except those determined by their issuing components to be required for 

official use only or for strictly administrative or operational purposes which have no public interest or 

educational value and publications classified for reasons of national security shall be made available 

Ö for public information." 

Chapter 34 of Title 44 U.S.C.óthe Paperwork Reduction Actóalso supplies a very broad definition, 

stating that "the term 'public information' means any information, regardless of form or format, that an 

agency discloses, disseminates, or makes available to the public." 

 

7

 The complete statement of the NCLIS Principles of Public Information is available in Appendix 15 and at 

http://www.nclis.gov/info/pripubin.html. 
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In terms of existing federal government regulations, OMB Circular A-130, which governs Executive 

Branch information resources management practices in general, and public information dissemination 

practices in particular, provides the following definition of government information: 

a. The term "government information" means information created, collected, processed, 

disseminated, or disposed of by or for the federal government. 

b. The term "government publication" means information which is published as an individual 

document at government expense, or as required by law (44 U.S.C. 1901). 

c. The term "information" means any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts, 

data, or opinions in any medium or form, including textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, 

narrative, or audiovisual forms. 

d. The term "information dissemination product" means any book, paper, map, machine-readable 

material, audiovisual production, or other documentary material, regardless of physical form or 

characteristic, disseminated by an agency to the public.8

It becomes apparent from the above A-130 definition that there is substantial difference between 

"information dissemination product" as defined therein, and the concept that all government 

information not otherwise exempted by statute, be available to and accessible by the public, as 

enunciated in this Commission's Principles of Public Information and other section of Title 44 of the 

U.S. Code as they pertain to public information. 

Finally, records of government accessible under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") also can 

affect further dissemination and access, since once made available, this information can be 

redisseminated without restriction. Federal government executive branch information subject to 

disclosure under FOIA is defined as follows: 

Each agency, in accordance with published rules, shall make available for public 

inspection and copying: 

(A) final opinions, including concurring and dissenting opinions, as well as orders, 

made in the adjudication of cases; 

(B) those statements of policy and interpretations which have been adopted 

by the agency and are not published in the Federal Register; 

(C) administrative staff manuals and instructions to staff that affect a member of the 

public; 

(D) copies of all records, regardless of form or format, which have been released to 

any person under paragraph (3) and which, because of the nature of their subject 

matter, the agency determines have become or are likely to become the subject of 

subsequent requests for substantially the same records; and 

(E) a general index of the records referred to under subparagraph (D). 

Nevertheless, FOIA recognizes that agencies can withhold certain types of information in their 

possession. As explained in the House Report accompanying the Electronic Freedom of Information 

Amendments of 1996: 

The nine exemption categories are: 

• Information that is classified for national defense or foreign policy purposes; 

 

8 U.S. Office of Management and Budget, "Management of Federal Information Resources," OMB Circular A-130 revised, 

Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget, 1996; http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/circulars/a130/a130.html. 
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• Information that relates solely to an agency's internal personnel rules and 

practices; 

• Information that has been clearly exempted under other laws; 

• Confidential business information, such as trade secrets; 

• Internal government deliberative communications about a decision before an 

announcement; 

• Information about an individual that, if disclosed, would cause a clearly 

unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; 

• Law enforcement records, particularly of ongoing investigations; 

• Information concerning bank supervision; and 

• Geological and geophysical information, such as maps.9

In short, there are inconsistencies in these various definitions of public information that need 

to be corrected, and this study makes specific recommendations as to how those 

inconsistencies may be eliminated. 

THE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROCESS

The functions of identifying, acquiring, organizing, announcing, accessing, disseminating, and 

preserving information are basic information content management functions. Concomitant with the 

issue of access to information are the issues of optimizing its usefulness, ensuring its authenticity and 

integrity, and guaranteeing its retention and archiving.10 At present there are no automated tools that 

perform these functions in a uniform, reliable, consistent manner. While the Internet, and its tools like 

the World Wide Web, search engines and categorization aides like those found in Yahoo, have brought 

new opportunitiesóand challengesóthe basic information management functions still require human 

physical and intellectual efforts. 

Identifying. In the context of information management process, everything begins with identification, 

that is, knowing that some specific information exists that needs to be subjected to the information 

management process. This step is often taken for granted, and therefore overlooked, but it is essential 

to the entire information management process. 

Acquiring. Once information is identified, that is, it is known to exist, it must be acquired in order for 

the other steps to take place. This acquisition may take the form of reading it on a website and noting 

its location, or it may mean actually obtaining a copy in some tangible form, such as paper or 

microfiche, or downloading an electronic file. Without acquiring the information, there is no 

information to organize, announce, access, disseminate or preserve. Like identification, this step is 

often taken for granted, and therefore overlooked, but it is essential to the entire information 

management process. In order to assign a classification number, prepare a cataloging record or a 

bibliographic citation, assign indexing terms or write an abstract, the information that is to be 

described must first be acquired. 

 

9

 U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Electronic Freedom of Information 

Amendments of 1996, House Report 104-795, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 17, 

1996, page 6. 

10 The term archiving as it is used here refers to preserving the information for reference use, not preservation of official 

records as it is defined the Federal Records Act. 
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Organizing. Information has only potential power. Quantity is not quality, stuff is not information, and 

information is not power, it's only potential power. The power of information exists only when it can 

be put into the mind of a person (or a machine) so that it can be used. It is more of an Information 

Management Issue than an Information Technology Issue. Given the rapidly expanding amount of 

information that is on the Internet, finding information online is as difficult as finding a book in the 

Library of Congress without a catalog. 

Organizing information so those requiring it can find it and utilize it has been a work in progress for 

centuries. With the beginning of the University movement in the 13th century librarians began to 

organize information in ways meaningful to a diverse group of individuals, but most of their work was 

directed to their local community and also suffered in the conflicts between religion, monarchies, and 

science. In the 18th century the value of knowledge diffusion again became important to those in 

power. Since then effective standards for bibliographic information have progressively been adopted 

and improved. Cataloging standards, abstracting and indexing elements, terminology and thesauri, 

records management, and archiving have been adopted. There is a difference between categorization 

of information and indexing of information. Information is often categorized into general groups such 

as travel, medical, or chemistry. These may then be broken down into subcategories (e.g. travel in the 

U.S., in Europe, in Africa). An example of categorization is a table of contents. It leads a reader to a 

chapter or chapters that may contain the desired information. Indexing is more specific. Indexing 

permits specific bits of information to be found. The index of a book indexes specific words or phases 

to the pages where they may be located. Indexing may also used controlled vocabularies to aid in the 

finding of information. Helicopters and rotary winged vehicles are the same thing. Controlled 

vocabularies allow information searching to be performed using a specific word controlled word that 

brings together several words with the same or similar meaning. 

Work to develop similar methods and techniques for digital information are in their seminal stages. 

Communities that have "grown up" with digital data rather than textual information are more 

advanced. The international community versed in Geographic Information Systems has developed 

only in the past few decades. This community gained an early and abiding interest in metadata, so that 

the sharing of metadata among geospatial projects and software vendors is now well standardized. 

The digital data communities, while more advanced in managing digital content than the digital text 

and multi-media communities, still share a major challengeóinformation overload. Information 

overload is counter-productive and may lead to less effectiveness and efficiency. 

Announcing. Regardless of how well organized content is, if those who may need it don't know of its 

existence it isn't information, it's just a potential resource. The need to provide tools for finding 

organized relevant information from multiple sources led to a significant sector of the information 

industry called secondary publishing. Organizations, both public and private, in this sector create 

reference tools such as bibliographic publications with citations from journals, books, monographs, 

conference proceedings, databases or other sources containing full text or numeric data. These 

organizations normally support specific communities of interest by supplying a comprehensive 

collection of references of interest to the target community. Similar roles are played by government 

agencies, such as the National Library of Medicine with its Index Medicus and MEDLINE database. 

Accessing. While it is important to know about the existence of needed content, it is normally more 

important to obtain the content itself. This, perhaps, is one of the biggest problems facing users and 

information managers alike. For example, the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) has 

online citations to the nearly two million technical reports in its collection. However, only full text 
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documents brought into the collection since 1994 and those converted based on demand are in digital 

form. The cost to digitize the full collection is prohibitive. Thus, DTIC still annually supplies tens of 

thousands of printed documents to its customers. It is interesting to note that, even where documents 

are in electronic form, a significant demand still exists for them to be supplied as printed documents. 

The average size of a document in DTIC's collection is 110 pages. It takes no research to know that 

most people prefer NOT to read a large document online, nor do many people have the capability to 

download and print large documents locally. 

Another consideration in discussing access is how digital documents are stored and delivered. The 

way that users download and import documents from the web varies depending on the browser being 

used and the applications on the user(s) system. For example, the Adobe Acrobat Portable Document 

Format (PDF) is a file type created to allow formatted documents to be widely distributed regardless 

of whether specific fonts or postscript files are available to the viewer's system. PDF files can embed 

specialized fonts and images within the document as they are distributed. This ensures the document 

remains exactly as formatted by its authors. 

Adobe Systems created the PDF format. This company freely distributes its Adobe Acrobat Reader 

software to anyone who wishes to view PDF files. These files are essentially images of the documents 

and thus, external full text searching cannot be used, although PDF files of documents created from 

word processing or typesetting programs can be searched internally. There are, of course, other 

approaches that will allow full-text searching of a document. These, however, may be considerably 

more expensive to produce, can more easily be altered, and do not ensure the document remains 

exactly as formatted (which may or may not be important, depending on the document itself and the 

intent of the user). 

Disseminating. OMB Circular A- 130 states that the term "dissemination" means the government 

initiated distribution of information to the public. Not considered dissemination within the meaning of 

this Circular is distribution limited to government employees or agency contractors or grantees, intraor interagency use or sharing of government information, and responses to requests for agency records 

under the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C. 552) or Privacy Act. As currently defined in the 

circular access is an "on-demand" or "pull" function while disseminating is a "push" function; 

normally a subscription type of service based on individual customer needs. Both, however, involve 

sending information to others. The circular points out that access is a passive function for federal 

agencies and differs from dissemination. Access is the government's responsibility, " ... when the 

public comes to the government and asks for information the government has and the public is entitled 

to..." Dissemination, however, is when, "... the government provides the public with information 

without the public having to come and ask for it." These definitions can apply just as well to 

government organizations. 

The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is one example. NTIS provides its customers 

documents based on individual user profiles. These documents can be in paper, microfiche or 

electronic form, but the most popular form is through the SRIM product, Selected Research In 

Microfiche. What NTIS does is not unique. Most information management organizations provide 

similar services. The profile-driven dissemination approach addresses the challenge of "information 

overload" to specific users or organizing by allowing users to tailor information services to meet their 

specific needs. 

The ability of individuals to address some of their "information overload" through portal technology is 

just beginning. Based on personal preferences, portals allow individuals to tailor their own web page 

to establish such things as calendars, automatic access to favorite sites, and notification of updates to 

information sources that meet their specific needs. Portals can also be established for the organization 
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or enterprise as a whole. These allow organizations to combine internal business process information 

and appropriate content found on the Internet as a whole. They can also be used to help those both 

internal and external users find information located throughout the enterprise. The recently announced 

FirstGov portal is an example. This web site is intended, when mature, to provide a single online 

information portal that connects people with U.S. government information. FirstGov allows users to 

search all 27 million federal agency web pages at one time. The website provides access to the home 

pages of major agencies and entities in all three branches of government, a section that provides topics 

of current interest to web users (e.g., a direct link to the weather service during hurricane season, to 

NASA during a shuttle launch, or to IRS during tax season), and key sites that access state and local 

government web pages. 

Preserving. We advance knowledge by building upon what has gone before. Sir Isaac Newton 

attributed his discoveries to the work done by his predecessors, stating "If I have seen farther than 

others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." Indeed, on a grander scale, we call the 

period before recorded (and somewhat preserved) information artifacts Prehistoric. Information is 

critical to scientists and engineers, to historians, to decision makers, to students, in fact nearly to 

everyone. Accordingly, it must be preserved. 

The advent of the digital world, however, is bringing new challenges. In the past much of the 

challenge of preservation was left to specialists such as records managers and archivists to address 

long-term needs and clerical personnel to handle the short-term needs of the organization and 

implement the records management policies of the specialists. In the digital world quite often an 

original document may never get into a preservation system. It may be created to serve the purpose of 

the author(s), stored and transmitted by a system managed by an information technologist and 

completely bypass the critical content preservation function. Information that may be of critical 

importance to others may be irretrievably lost as well as the record of its existence. 

It is important to recognize, however, that preservation does not ensure access while access, on the 

other hand, does encompass preservation. So when we talk about archival policies and practices we 

should in this electronic era couch things in terms of permanent access to information. Furthermore, 

preservation of digital information involves unknown, and as yet unknowable, costs to migrate the 

information to different formats and media to prevent technological obsolescence. There is real 

concern that information will be lost as the equipment and software used to create and use digital 

information becomes obsolete. Depository librarians and others feel that in a rapidly changing 

electronic environment, they cannot be sure that the currently available electronic files will be able to 

be opened and used in the future or that there will be an easy, cost-effective means to migrate this 

generation of electronic products to future formats and media. 

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S LEADERSHIP 

The federal government's leadership in the area of public information availability and accessibility has 

been mixed. Let us first look at the positive side of the ledger. 

The President, the Congress, individual federal agencies, and the Judiciary are all to be commended 

for the extraordinary leadership which they have demonstrated, especially in the last four or five years, 

to exploit the full advantages of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the incredible power and 

capabilities underlying information and telecommunications technologies, to maximize government 

information availability and government services to the American people. 

Virtually every week in the popular media the citizen is alerted to: 
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• a new electronic service to simplify and speed up doing business with the government, such as 

seeking grants, loans, permits, licenses, and many other benefits and entitlements, and to 

consolidate and integrate related services into "just-in-time," and "just-in case," systems; 

• a new website, database, online clearinghouse, or other electronic government information product 

or service to alert citizens as to what new and existing benefits and entitlements they are eligible 

for, or help them seek employment, protect their family's health and welfare, ensure safety and 

security measures at home, in schools, and in the workplace, view weather forecast so as to know 

when to plant crops, and so on; and 

• a new law or amendment to an existing statute that strengthens the public's ability to identify, 

search for, locate, retrieve, and utilize the government's vast information holdings. 

But there is a considerable ways yet to go. Executive, Legislative and Judicial leadership continues to 

be needed in harnessing modern information and telecommunications technologies to help job seekers, 

senior citizens, minorities, small and medium-sized businesses, lower levels of governments, and 

public and private institutions such as schools and hospitals, to cope with their many challenges, 

including: 

• helping the private citizen to meet his or her myriad personal, family, and community challenges 

by learning about hundreds of government assistance programs, and how to find and apply for the 

benefits and services they provide, but ideally by first improving their government information 

literacy skills using libraries and information professionals; 

• assisting small and medium-sized enterprises by providing massive amounts of periodically 

updated scientific, statistical, technical, and other data and information to find or expand existing 

domestic and global markets, to diversify their product lines and increase sales volume, to apply 

for patents and copyrights and trademarks, and to help government itself perform its functions 

more efficiently through privatization where appropriate, through value-added service 

contributions, and through Information Age partnership arrangements; 

• helping lower levels of government, especially individual communities and Native American 

tribes, carry out their programs and services more efficiently and effectively, and to minimize 

unnecessary overlap and duplication between the hundreds of programs and services administered 

by all levels of governmentófederal, state, local, and tribal; 

• assisting students to finance their education, and helping schools, colleges and universities to 

modernize their curricula, and assist their faculties and staff by employing distant learning (remote 

education) and other online educational technologies in consort with traditional modes of teaching 

and learning; 

• assisting senior citizens, the disabled, the disadvantaged, and minorities, as well as hospitals, 

nursing homes, community centers, and other healthcare and community social and economic 

institutions, to meet the medical, economic, legal, and social needs of these and other special 

populations; 

• helping historians, archivists, librarians, journalists, researchers, genealogist, as well as the general 

population, find and retrieve official government records and government publications and 

documents, preserve them once created, index and organize them, correlate them across federal 

agency and discipline lines, and make them more accessible; and 

• assisting legislators, governors, mayors, judges, school district officials, and other public servants 

to fulfill their governance duties and responsibilities more efficiently, to raise their consciousness 

level more effectively as to issues and concerns of which they must be aware, and to allow them to 

interact with their constituents more efficiently through such measures as websites, listservs, 

electronic bulletin boards, and e-mail messaging. 
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The Commission "mapped" a small sample of some key public information products by correlating 

nine key attributes in a single matrix-like framework so that policymakers can more readily 

understand, at a glance, the inter-relationships between: the statutory authority for the resource; who 

the beneficiary-users are; what the sources of the data or information are; the authors and the nature of 

value-added contributions; how the resource is distributed or made available; how the resource is 

financed; and whether a charge is levied for obtaining it or not. The Federal Library and Information 

Center Committee (FLICC), and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the 

American Library Association (ALA) each prepared several "Public Information Resources Maps".11

The following selected list of landmark government legislative initiatives illustrates how all three 

branches of government have moved to put in place strengthened electronic government information 

and information services machinery, especially in areas where the government interacts with the 

public: 

• A Citizens Guide on Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request 

Government Records: First Report, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government 

Reform and Oversight, House Report 105-37, March 20, 1997; 

• The Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), Public Law 104-231, 1996, 

which makes clear that government electronic material (e.g. e-mail messages) must also be 

considered an official agency record within the meaning of the Federal Records Act, and directing 

agencies to establish online reading rooms, and make agency information available in the medium 

of their choice; 

• The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998, which requires federal agencies 

to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children; 

• The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA), Public Law 105-277, 1998, which sets 

deadlines for agencies to transfer their paper-based transaction systems to electronic-based, 

including most transactions that take place between the government and the public, including 

filing tax returns, applying for benefits and other entitlements, and so on; sets 2003 as target date 

for completion of medium migrations; 

• The Information Technology Management Reform Act (Clinger-Cohen Act), Public Law 104-106, 

February 10, 1996, which expands and clarifies the CIO role in planning, managing and utilizing 

agency information technology resources; 

• Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), Public Law 103-62, 1993, which holds 

agencies more directly accountable for achieving positive results by using observable and 

measurable performance indicators, and other means to verify and validate agency performance by 

comparing actual results achieved with expected and projected results; 

• The Paperwork Reduction Act Amendments of 1995 and Revised OMB Circular A-130, 

Management of Federal Information Resources, which ties agency information technology and 

information resources more directly to agency missions; specifically addresses agency public 

information access and dissemination requirements in that context; strengthens the role of the 

Government Information Locator Service (GILS); 

• The Rehabilitation Act, 29 USC S 794d, Section 508,1998, which requires that federal agency 

electronic and information technology be accessible to persons with disabilities, including 

members of the public and federal employees; 

 

11 The Public Information Resources Maps prepared by FLICC and GODORT are available in Appendix 28 and at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. 
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• Technological, Scientific, and Engineering Information Act/National Technical Information 

Act/American Technology Preeminence Act, Public Law 81-776 and Public Law 100-519, 1991, 

which directs the Secretary of Commerce to establish and maintain a clearinghouse for the 

collection and dissemination of scientific, technical, and engineering information; 

• NARA Bulletin 2000-02 (replaces Bulletin 99-04), Dec. 27, 1999, which has ultimately led to 

NARA surveying agency records programs more systematically so that they are in a better 

position to promulgate electronic records management policies and procedures; 

• GPO Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act, Public Law 103-40, 1993, which requires 

the Superintendent of Documents, through the government Printing Office, to provide online 

electronic access to the federal Register, the Congressional Record, and other appropriate 

publications. The GPO Access portal launched in June 1994 is established pursuant to this statute; 

• Federal Depository Library Program Amendments, 1994, which links the role of the GPO Access 

portal with the FDLP and the responsibilities of the Superintendent of Documents with respect to 

electronic government information organization, cataloging, indexing, access, and dissemination; 

• Executive Order 12958, Classified National Security Information, 1995, which directs the 

declassification of all classified information 25 years and older within five years of the Order's 

promulgation, except where otherwise explicitly exempted by statute; 

• Memorandum for Chief Information Officers and Federal Webmasters: Top Privacy Principles for 

Federal Websites, issued by GSA, Federal Webmasters Forum, 1998, and which directs agencies 

to place high priority on protecting the public's privacy, including notifying the public whenever 

data is collected on the Internet; 

• President's Memorandum on Privacy and Personal Information in Personal Records, May 14, 

1998, and M-99-05, instructions on complying with the Memorandum, January 7, 1999, which 

directs agencies to review current information practices and ensure they are being conducted in 

accordance with privacy law and policy; 

• Executive Order 13011, Federal Information Technology, 1996, which ties together the respective 

policies of the Information Technology Management Reform Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, 

and the Government Performance and Results Act, and formalizes OMB oversight authority of 

information technology; 

• Memorandum on Use of Information Technology to Improve Our Society, and Memorandum on 

Electronic Government, Presidential Memoranda for the Heads of Executive Departments and 

Agencies, Dec. 17, 1999, designed to strengthen public access to federal government information 

and services by directing agencies to put more information online that is identified and organized 

in a way that makes it easier for the public to find the information it seeks; 

• OMB Memorandum 98-05, Guidance on the Government Information Locator Service, 1998, 

which continues agency responsibilities with respect to the creation and use of GILS records 

notwithstanding the expiration of OMB Bulletin 95-01, Establishment of Government Information 

Locator Service, which directed the original establishment of GILS pursuant to the Paperwork 

Reduction Act and OMB Circular A-130; and 

• OMB survey of agency plans for e-Gov; on September 19, 2000, Sally Katzen, Deputy Director 

for Management of OMB sent a letter to Senators Thompson and Lieberman recapping steps 

Executive Branch agencies have taken to move smoothly toward the e-Gov environment 

contemplated by the Congress, and the Senate's Committee on Governmental Reform specifically. 
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There are also many websites that maintain information on public access laws, and many of these are 

listed in Appendix 14, which is a copy of the Commission's study web page at the time of publication 

of this report. 

There is, however, another side of this equation. There are many areas where the absence of dynamic 

federal leadership in public information is causing great difficulties. They are dealt with in the 

following sections. 

THE HIDDEN COST OF "ELECTRONWORK" 

We are confronted by technocrats on all sides who point to the many benefits of the Internet and the 

World Wide Web, but what about the resulting burdens and the costs? Some are saying that one of the 

biggest burdens is "electronwork." This term is used to characterize the side effect of utilizing 

electronic information as the medium to interact with the government instead of utilizing ink-on-paper 

and other pre-electronic technologies, which were called "paperwork." 

Because libraries, professional information intermediary handlers and end-users of government 

information are so fearful that the formats and mediums they're currently receiving (such as PDF files) 

are going to inevitably disappear, they are engaged in substantial printing of electronic documents to 

produce a backup hard copy, which makes this an even greater transference of costs from the 

government to the end usersóthe publicóand much, much more expensive unit cost per copy 

aggregate costs than even commercial printing! As the current argot goes "Hello? Is anybody out 

there?" The agencies are not too worried because they don't have to payóbut the end user does pay 

and this is a substantial cost to the U.S. economy. 

For example, consider the costs to download and print 500 or 600 page report. The user incurs 

telecommunications costs; an amortized utilization of his or her computer equipment, including 

storage capacity for the electronic file; software costs for the programs to download and to process the 

electronic file; printer supplies, including a ream of paper and toner or ink; and then there is the time 

necessary to locate the file, download it and wait for it to print. In short, contrary to the broad, and 

commonly asserted, myth that information on the World Wide Web is a free good, when all of the 

"hidden" costs are added up, it certainly is anything but free to the user. 

INFORMATION COLLECTION BUDGET, BUT NO INFORMATION DISSEMINATION 

BUDGET 

The federal government has an information collection budget to keep the government's programs for 

collecting information from the public from getting out of hand, but the federal government does not 

have an information dissemination budget to enhance the value of the government's programs for 

sharing its knowledge treasures more effectively with the public. Disseminating information to the 

public is too often considered an afterthought, a by-product of an agency's operations, not an integral 

line item in project plans, information resource budgets, and procurement guidelines.

12

GOVERNMENT-WIDE PUBLIC INFORMATION SERVICES AND INFORMATION 

MANAGEMENT AGENCY(IES) MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER 

 

12 The need for an information dissemination budget is discussed in more detail in Recommendation 4. 
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The role of the central public information services agencies is to ensure easy access to 

all segments of the public, including the disadvantaged and other special sectors of the 

general population, to a wide-range of public information from many agencies on a 

permanent basis. However, the mission-oriented agencies are more likely to provide 

ready access to only those documents that further the agency's mission, and only for 

as long as they further the agency's mission, and only to those well-defined 

constituency users in whom the agency's management is most interested, and to whom 

the agency is most accountable. 

Admittedly, now with electronic documents and the Web, agencies can perform many of the same 

functions themselves without significant cost and efforts, so their support for the government-wide 

information services provided by NTIS, the Superintendent of Documents, and others, has begun to 

diminish. The individual agencies believe, incorrectly, that it is less important to provide the 

documents to the central information service organization since the public can get it from the agency 

(or bureau or division) website, notwithstanding the statutory mandates to do so. This is a dangerous 

fallacy.13

When agencies, bureaus or divisions that do not have the primary mission of information 

dissemination go into the information dissemination business, they do so with a different orientation 

and different motives than those of the central information services organizations. The role of the 

central public information services agencies is to ensure easy access to all segments of the public, 

including the disadvantaged and other special sectors of the general population, to a wide-range of 

public information from many agencies on a permanent basis. However, the mission-oriented agencies 

are more likely to provide ready access to only those documents that further the agency's mission,14

and only for as long as they further the agency's mission, and only to those well-defined constituency 

users in whom the agency's management is most interested, and to whom the agency is most 

accountable. 

Thus, the principles of public access are not achieved uniformly through all of the agency information 

systems, and no one knows which of the thousands of systems is missing what specific information 

products. There is no assurance that the government is providing full public access to what should be 

public information. There is also no assurance on what that information is, or where it is. Instead, 

proper public information dissemination depends on the judgment of thousands of unmonitored 

officials at all levels in thousands of lower level units of government. 

Some people seem to be saying that we can get rid of central organizations entirely 

and move to a fully decentralized and dispersed infrastructure of information and 

communications, where nobody and no institution is in control of any of it! The 

Commission strongly disputes this extremist view as misguided, simplistic and naive. 

There is also considerable confusion regarding a certain superficial parallelism between strong central 

policy leadership and oversight on the one hand, the dispersed and decentralized information holdings 

and flows in the Internet Age on the other hand. The pressure to get rid of "big, centralized, 

organizational structures" on the grounds that they are inappropriate to the "highly dispersed and 

 

13 This issue discussed in more detail under Finding 6.A. 

14 The major research and development agencies, such as the Departments of Defense and Energy and the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), do consider access to relevant research and development part of their 

mission, but have traditionally focused most of the efforts on service to the agency personnel, contractors and grant 

recipients. Recently the Department of Energy and the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) have begun to offer 

access to the general public through their websites. 
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decentralized storage and handling of information in the Internet Age" must be carefully considered 

and applied. Some people seem to be saying that we can get rid of central organizations entirely and 

move to a fully decentralized and dispersed infrastructure of information and communications, where 

nobody and no institution is in control of any of it! The Commission strongly disputes this extremist 

view as misguided, simplistic and naive. 

The Commission argues that, on the one side, as the pressures to disperse, fragment, and decentralize 

information flows and holdings increase, there is a corresponding need on the other side to ensure that 

such dispersion, fragmentation, and decentralization is planned and managed under careful, overall 

policy leadership and guidance. Otherwise, the entire infrastructure will devolve into nothing more 

than a vast network of disconnected and dis-connectable, non-interoperable databases and collections, 

systems, and networks that may be some Internet telecommunication engineer's fantasy, but will be a 

nightmare of no practical value. The lack of uniform government-wide web electronic publishing 

guidelines is a golden example of how the federal government currently risks losing control of public 

information dissemination unless the reforms contemplated in this report are put into place. 

Fortunately, the new Guide to Federal Publishing just published by the Interagency Council on 

Printing and Publications, and the Federal Publishers Committee, has arrived just in time to help the 

situation. 

Recent NCLIS Public Information Initiatives

As mentioned above, in 1996 the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science began a 

series of closely related studies aimed at assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the federal 

government's public information dissemination machinery. These studies were preceded by a proposed 

Statement of Work, prepared by the National Academy of Science's Computer Science and 

Telecommunications Board (CSTB), in which three main stages were recommended:15

• research and data collection; 

• analysis of results, including the documentation of findings and conclusions; and 

• formulating recommendations to the President and the Congress. 

Then in 1996, the first research and data collection initiative was taken in the form of a request from 

the Government Printing Office (GPO) to NCLIS to undertake an assessment of the proliferation of 

electronic government information products formats, mediums, platforms, and protocols. As 

mentioned, NCLIS awarded a contract to Westat, Inc. The details of the study are contained in the full 

report, which is available from the GPO website.16

Eight policy and planning issue findings of that study are directly relevant to this study: 

1. There is an overall lack of government information policy guiding electronic publishing, 

dissemination, permanent public access, and information life cycle management, especially as 

information policy relates to agency missions. Also, there is a lack of overall coordination of these 

initiatives at the governmental, branch, or even agency level. 

 

15 The details of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board proposal to the Commission are contained in 

documents at www.nclis.gov/info/gpo1.html. 16 Report on the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products, prepared by Westat, Inc. under a contract 

issued by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and commissioned by the Government Printing 

Office, March 1999; http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/nclisassessment/report.html. 
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2. Responsibility for electronic publishing within agencies is decentralized, diffuse, and unclear. 

Some agencies either could not identify or had difficulty identifying the proper respondent with 

their own agency, or even the person who was responsible for the product. 

3. Some government agencies are monitoring the information needs of their users to enhance current 

access to electronic government information products. 

4. There is a lack of specific planning for product development and technological migration, 

including dealing with the problem of safeguarding the preservation of government information in 

the face of hardware and software obsolescence. 

5. There is a lack of planning for or consideration of web design approaches that comply with the 

American with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

6. The concept of "Permanent Public Access"17 is not well understood, in no small measure because 

it is not statutorily based. Respondents also had difficulty distinguishing between this concept as it 

applies to electronic products on the one hand, and archiving electronic federal records pursuant to 

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regulations on the other hand. 

7. Metadata and their importance to public access are not well understood, particularly as they may 

affect PPA. Only 27% of respondents reported having a metadata record (such as the Government 

Information Locator Service or GILS record) for the products surveyed. 

8. There is a lack of understanding of what ensuring authenticity entails, and a lack of planning for or 

consideration of ensuring authenticity of electronic government information products. 

Then August 1999, in reaction to the proposed closure of the National Technical Information Service 

(NTIS) and the transfer of its functions, information holdings, and other resources to the Library of 

Congress, the Commission launched yet another study to recommend, at least in a preliminary fashion 

because of the time urgency involved, alternatives open to the President and the Congress to deal with 

"the NTIS matter." 

In her March 16, 2000 letter to the President and the Congress, NCLIS Chairperson Martha Gould 

offered four key recommendations:18

1. NTIS be retained in the Department of Commerce, at least temporarily for the balance of FY 2000 

and extending into FY 2001, in order to give the Commission, assisted by a broad group of both 

public and private sector stakeholders, enough time to study thoroughly the pros and cons, and 

costs and benefits, of a small number of feasible alternatives, including (but not limited to) the one 

formally announced by Secretary Daley last August (i.e. transfer NTIS collections to the Library 

of Congress); 

2. The Department of Commerce be allowed to utilize the $4.5 million included in its Supplemental 

FY 2000 budget request (the NTIS Revolving Fund account) to keep NTIS operational for the 

remainder of FY 2000 at a satisfactory level of staffing and service, instead of using those funds to 

further downsize and close the agency; 

 

17 The Commission has begun to use the phrase "Permanent Public Availability" in lieu of "Permanent Public Access" 

because it more accurately reflects the fact that information may become available to the public through proactive 

dissemination or passive access. This issue is discussed more fully in the section entitled What This Report Is About and 

What It Is Not About. It is also addressed in Findings 1.A and 5.K. 

18 This is in the transmittal letter included in U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Preliminary 

Assessment of the Proposed Closure of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS): A Report to the President and the 

Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 16, 2000; 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/ntis/presiden.pdf. 
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3. The Congress should authorize an appropriation of $5 million19 (the estimated funding level 

required for a full fiscal year) for FY 2001 to sustain NTIS operations at a necessary satisfactory 

level of service, and allow the Commission to complete its in-depth analysis; and 

4. Ensure that the final decision on how to best deal with the NTIS situation is not made exclusively 

on the narrower, fiscally-driven ground of preventing NTIS from falling into a deficit because of 

the 1992 Public Law 102-245 Section 3704(b)-1 requirement that operating costs should be 

recovered primarily through the collection of fees. As important as that consideration is, the 

government must also take into account the larger question of how, in the Internet Age, we can 

strengthen government information dissemination machinery to the public, to private industry to 

enhance U.S. competitiveness, and to the U.S. scientific research communities. Inter-related 

concerns of permanent public availability of, and accessibility to, permanent records retention, 

preservation of materials, and authentication of official government holdings, must also be 

addressed. The government must also consider the magnitude and consequences of shifting costs 

from end-users to federal agencies and therefore the taxpayer) as public access to federal websites 

accelerates. 

Within weeks of the Commission's publishing its report on NTIS in March 2000, Commission 

Chairperson Gould received a letter from Chairman John McCain of the Senate Committee on 

Commerce, Science, and Transportation, asking NCLIS "to undertake a review of the reforms 

necessary for the federal government's information dissemination practices." The letter goes on to say: 

At a minimum, this review should include assessments of the need for: 

1. proposing new or revised laws, rules, regulations, missions, and policies; 

2. modernizing organizational structures and functions so as to reflect greater 

emphasis on electronic information planning, management, and control 

capabilities, and the need to consolidate, streamline, and simplify missions and 

functions to avoid or minimize unnecessary overlap and duplication; 

3. revoking (the) NTIS self-sufficiency requirement; and 

4. strengthening other key components of overall federal information dissemination 

infrastructure. 

You are also requested to provide specific recommendations on the future of NTIS. It 

is hopeful that these recommendations would be consistent with any overall federal 

information dissemination recommendations that you would also provide.20

On July 17, 200, Chairperson Gould received a letter from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of the Senate 

Committee on Governmental Affairs, 21 indicating that he was "writing to join in Senator McCain's 

June 12 request for a review of reforms to improve the federal government's information dissemination 

practices." He stated: 

 The results of that study will prove invaluable to my work as Ranking Democrat of 

the Governmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over most of our federal 

government's information dissemination practices. The study will also help inform my 

 

19 This estimate for the required annual appropriation was provided by NTIS as part of the Commission's earlier study. The 

specific purposes for which it is to be utilized, along with the exact amount required, must be verified before final numbers 

are presented to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. 

20 Senator McCain's letter is available in Appendix 1 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/mccain.html. 21 Senator Lieberman's letter is available in Appendix 3 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/liebermn.html. 
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efforts to promote e-government, which includes making federal information more 

available over the Internet. 

Senator Lieberman then suggested: 

I would suggest two additions to the Commission's study. Senator McCain's letter of 

June 12 asked that the Commission include assessments of the need for proposing new 

or revised laws or regulations. I would ask the Commission to include in that review 

any relevant sections of the Paperwork Reduction Act that may need revision, because 

the Committee will be considering the law's reauthorization next Congress. Second, 

when the Commission considers the future of the National Technical Information 

Service, I would ask that it consider the viability of maintaining NTIS as a centralized 

fully electronic repository of federal scientific and technical information, accessible 

via the Internet and equipped with search and retrieval capabilities. 

 

From March through June 2000, when the Commission was planning and organizing for this study 

effort, contact was also made with key House committee staff liaison officials with whom the 

Commission had already dealt extensively in the context of its two earlier studies, to ensure that the 

House was not in disagreement with the Senate's request. The Commission was advised that there 

were no objections to proceeding along the lines suggested by the two senators. 

WHAT THIS REPORT IS ABOUT, AND WHAT IT IS NOT ABOUT 

It is always important to carefully delineate the boundaries of complex deliberations of this kind. The 

requirement to specify one's scope with as much precision as possible is especially important when it 

comes to the area of disseminating government information to the public, because the area is so very 

broad and complex. There are hundreds of laws involved, thousands of federal programs with some 

requirement for disseminating or providing access to the public for government information, and tens 

of thousands of policy statements at all levels of government. 

This report is about recommending reforms to the basic machinery government employs to ensure the 

public has efficient access to, and is regularly advised of its workings. In short, it is about the general 

and fundamental laws, policies, programs, and practices by which government information is made 

available and accessible to the public, including both "passive" access mechanisms, and "proactive" 

dissemination mechanisms.22 The Commission defines these terms are as follows: 

• Proactive dissemination occurs when an agency decides that making information available to the 

public is an essential part of its mission, and moves to create policies and programs that carry out 

this aspect of their mission. The information (except that with any legal restrictions) is made 

available in whatever form and medium the agency wishes to use, through channels that the 

agency believes will deliver it most efficiently and effectively to the end users most in need of it, 

or those who simply wish to have it. In many instances, the agency will announce the availability 

of the information through press releases or in other ways advertise the existence of such 

information. Those agencies who proactively make their information available are probably also 

the most likely to ensure that it is permanently available. 

• Passive availability occurs when an agency, in compliance with laws, regulations, or directives, 

places its information with an intermediary disseminator or directly makes the information 

available to those who request it. No effort is made to aggressively reach end users and make them 

 

22 This issue is also discussed in Findings 1.A and 5.K. 
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aware of the existence and availability of the information. However, no attempt is made to restrict 

the information, and when a user finds out about the information and requests it, the agency or its 

intermediary will make it available to the requester. These agencies are not as likely to be 

concerned with making this information permanently available. 

While the Commission's investigations inevitably touched upon various "specialized areas," still, the 

Commission tried to keep its eye on the main target and not wander too far a field into those 

specialized areas, except in the few instances where addressing one of them was completely 

unavoidable, such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act pertaining to access to government 

information by disadvantaged individuals, and in the study of scientific and technical information 

(STI) because of the direct focus of the NTIS study (including an economic analysis). 

By "specialized areas" we mean, for example: 

1. computer and telecommunications security matters; 

2. intellectual copyright issues, including patents, trademarks, and trade secrets; 

3. privacy concerns; 

4. information interchange with foreign governments, including technology transfer; 

5. confidentiality issues related to the government's custodial role of third party information 

holdings; 

6. technical standards questions such as encryption and electronic signatures; 

7. observing and measuring information productivity, and the treatment of information as an 

economic good or commodity; 

8. technical questions relating to the interoperability and interconnectivity of systems and networks; 

9. replacing actual data with simulated data in federal statistical data files; 

10. linguistic, socio-cultural, and related barriers; 

11. information ethics questions; 

12. electronic financial and business information interchange such as electronic funds transfer (EFT); 

13. an historical review of prior public information dissemination reform initiatives; and 

14. detailed economic analyses of benefits and costs related to government information. 

Of course, all of these areas are undeniably important, and it could be argued that they are, in a larger 

sense, inseparable from and linked to each other, as well as to the "general" issues of reforming public 

information dissemination. However, the Commission resisted being drawn into addressing them in 

depth, and in so doing risk losing sight of the broader aims of the study.

C. METHODOLOGY 

NCLIS determined that the best approach to satisfying the requests from Senator McCain and Senator 

Lieberman would be to maximize the utilization of both public sector and private sector knowledge by 

asking for volunteer assistance. 

FOURTEEN MAJOR COMPONENTS OF THE STUDY 

The approach agreed upon would have fourteen major components: 
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1. Establish four study panels and ask each to address one of four overarching aspects of the overall 

study;23

2. Create a Group of Experts composed of distinguished public figures with special expertise and 

experience in an area of strategic importance to the study, such as information law, information 

economics, information science and technology, librarianship, public policy, and private sector 

contributions to value-added dissemination of government information;24

3. Survey a cross-section of federal agencies to establish a "baseline" of agency policies and 

programs relating to the dissemination of government information;25

4. Informally survey a cross-section of disadvantaged and special population associations which 

depend heavily on government information to service the needs of their constituents (e.g. to meet 

the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act);26

5. Update a compilation of all federal laws containing requirements directing agencies to establish 

some kind of information resource to respond to public information needs, first undertaken in 

1996 by the Congressional Research Service;27

6. "Map" selected federal laws and policies containing public information resources requirements so 

as to illuminate the richness and diversity of those resources and help pinpoint where they might 

be strengthened;28

7. Ask the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh to update its National 

Information Policies Bibliography database;29

8. Revisit the NCLIS 1982 Public-Private Sector Task Force Report, update it, and republish it for 

study participants as well as for broader government and public use;30

9. Communicate and meet with representatives of key federal major public information resources 

entities, including key Congressional Committee representatives in both the Senate and the House, 

representatives from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and other elements of the 

Judiciary, and, in the Executive Branch, Access America and National Partnership for Reinventing 

Government (NPRG), FirstGov developers, the CIO Council, the Library of Congress, the 

National Technical Information Service, the Government Printing Office including the Federal 

Depository Library Program, the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, and 

various interagency committees (ICs) such as the IC for Statistical Policy, the IC for Printing and 

Publishing, the Federal Webmasters' Forum, and so on; 

10. Communicate and meet with public interest groups, especially those that deal heavily with 

government information, such as the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) and Americans 

Communicating Electronically (ACE); 

11. Communicate and meet with library and information professional associations, including the 

American Library Association (ALA), the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the Association of 

Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL), the Chief 

 

23 The panel participants are identified in Appendix 16 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panelmem.html. 

24 The experts are identified in Appendix 16 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panelmem.html. 

25 The survey results are summarized in Appendix 26 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/nclismsg.html. 

26 The survey results are summarized in Appendix 27 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/special.html. 

27 Appendix 13 discusses categories of public information laws and representative provisions of such laws; it is also available 

at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/statcat.html. Appendix 32 is a compilation of Federal statutes pertaining to public 

information dissemination passed during the 105, 106th and 107th Congresses. 28 The resulting Public Information Resources Maps are available in Appendix 28 and on the Commission website at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. 

29 The bibliography is available in Appendix 31 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/biblio.html. 

30 Appendix 23 is a retrospective appraisal of the 1982 report by the chairman of the NCLIS Public Sector/Private Sector 

Task Force; the complete 2000 edition is available at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/publpriv.html. 
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Operating Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), the 

American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the Government Documents Roundtable 

(GODORT) of the ALA, the Public Library Association (PLA), and others; 

12. Research past and current studies touching about reforms of the government's public information 

dissemination laws, policies, programs, and practices, and determine where their findings, 

conclusions, and recommendations intersected with the current study's goals and objectives, 

paying special attention to the Congressionally-mandated studies running more or less 

concurrently with the extant NCLIS study, (1) of the merits of transferring the Superintendent of 

Documents programs in GPO to the Library of Congress, and (2) an intensive study of the NTIS 

missions, functions, and financing by the General Accounting Office; 

13. The solicitation of "white papers" (issue papers) on selected major issues and concerns relevant to 

the study, including the myths that surround the Internet and the World Wide Web, the 

reinvigoration of the Information Life Cycle Management concept, and the feasibility of 

establishing a new Public Information Resources Administration;31 and 

14. Updating and broadening the bibliography prepared by the second stage study the Commission 

completed in March 2000, addressing alternatives for dealing with the proposed closure of NTIS.32

ASSESSMENT MILESTONES AND SCHEDULE 

Here is a chronology of study milestones: 

Period Milestone 

March 2000 Report Preliminary Assessment of the Proposed Closure of 

NTIS issued to the President and the Congress by NCLIS 

June/July 2000 Congressional request for assessment; communications with 

Congress, the Executive Branch, the Judiciary, and 

stakeholder groups participating about the assessment 

Early August 2000 Establishment of four panels and identification of group of 

experts, solicitation of citations to key background research 

Late August through October 2000 Panels deliberate; NCLIS concurrent research activities 

undertaken 

October 15, 2000 Panel Final Reports received and disseminated for Group of 

Experts and public review and comment 

November 1, 2000 NCLIS begins drafting final "integrated" (consolidated) report 

November 15, 2000 Full Commission meets to hear panel reports; review Experts' 

comments; review public comments; and consider 

Commission's first draft of Executive Summary & proposed 

legislation 

November 16, 2000 Draft Executive Summary, draft excerpted sections from 

proposed legislation, fact sheet on Federal Depository Library 

Program, and fact sheet on parallel branch of government 

recommendations, all posted to NCLIS website 

November 27, 2000 First draft of full, complete NCLIS final report, including 

proposed new legislation, posted on the NCLIS website for 

public review and comment 

 

31 Several White Papers were submitted and are available in Appendices 23, 24, and 25 and at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/hayes.html, http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/worldlib.html, and 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/price.html. 

32 The bibliography is available in Appendix 31 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/biblio.html. 
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December 4, 2000 NCLIS Public Meeting, Dirksen Senate Office Building, 

hosted by Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs 

December 11, 2000 Second draft of final report posted for public review and 

comment 

December 15, 2000 Preprints of Final Report transmitted to the President and the 

Congress; electronic file posted on Commission website

January 2001 Printed copies available for distribution to Congress, the 

Administration and key stakeholders

STUDY PANEL DELIBERATIONS 

To help the Commission in its investigations, four advisory study panels and one group of experts 

were established.33 The four panels were: 

1. Panel 1 (NTIS Business Model)óReforming the NTIS business model for the Internet Age; 

2. Panel 2 (Internal Government Reforms)óThe extent to which internal (i.e. individual 

government agency needs) for NTIS, GPO, NARA, national library, & other central service 

bureau types of information products and services are not being adequately satisfied because of 

deficient, outmoded, obsolete or unresponsive laws, programs, policies, or practices; 

3. Panel 3 (External User Needs)óThe extent to which external (i.e. non-governmental) user needs 

for NTIS, GPO, NARA, national library, & other central government information products and 

services, as well as individual federal agency public information products and services are not 

being adequately satisfied because of deficient, outmoded, obsolete, or unresponsive laws, 

programs, policies, or practices; user needs include: private corporations; institutions such as 

universities, research organizations and hospitals; library and other intermediary distributors of 

government information (including public, state, academic, research, depository and special 

libraries); public interest groups; and individual citizen needs; and 

4. Panel 4 (Public Sector-Private Sector Partnerships)óRedefining and strengthening publicprivate sector roles, partnerships, and initiatives vis-‡-vis public access to, and dissemination of 

government information, given the advent of the World Wide Web, the Internet, and associated 

technological changes that are driving the Information Age. 

Four distinguished professional information experts with extensive public and private sector expertise 

and experience were asked to serve as chairs of the panels, and accepted the invitations. The panel 

chairs are: 

• Peter Urbach who chaired the Panel One effort dealing with recommending reforms of the NTIS 

business model; now retired, his many-faceted contributions to the library and information 

profession in both the public and private sectors included a term as director of the National 

Technical Information Service and a senior executive with Reed-Elsevier, a major commercial 

scientific and legal publisher; 

• Kurt Molholm, who chaired Panel Two addressing steps to strengthen federal agency sharing of 

information to both help achieve their own missions more effectively as well as, in turn, help their 

agencies serve their own constituencies and clienteles more effectively; he currently serves as 

director of the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) and chairman of CENDI, a 

consortium of scientific and technical information intensive agencies; 

• Miriam Drake, who chaired Panel Three reviewing actions to improve how the government 

disseminates its information to external groups, including private citizens, corporations, 

 

33 Panel members are identified in Appendix 16 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panelmem.html. 
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depository libraries, lower levels of government, academia, research institutions, and other 

sectors; she has provided a lifetime of leadership in the library and information communities 

including the presidency of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), as well as many key private 

sector assignments, and is currently dean of libraries for the Georgia Institute of Technology; and 

• Wayne Kelley, who chaired Panel Four, reviewing how the public and private sectors could 

continue their traditional role of helping the Nation disseminate government information 

efficiently, and in diverse formats and mediums, and to very diverse audiences with special needs 

by working together; now retired, he has held key positions in both the public and private sectors, 

including a tour as the Superintendent of Documents in the Government Printing Office and as the 

publisher of Congressional Quarterly. 

Specifically, the study panels were asked to analyze the key issues and concerns falling within the 

scope of their respective panels (i.e., perhaps an outdated law, a poorly written or interpreted rule, an 

obsolete regulation, the need for a new policy, a poorly operating program, deficient agency practice, 

or some combination thereof) in terms of: 

• What is "wrong," deficient, not working as expected, or is out-of-date; and, if so, exactly how 

and why; conversely, are there "success stories," wherein something innovative is working 

especially well, and might be more widely followed; 

• What needs to be done to remedy the deficiency (i.e. the reform(s) needed); did the panel 

make certain assumptions in order to arrive at a recommended (preferred) course of action, 

and, if so, what are those assumptions; 

• What barriers and constraints exist, if any, to fully and effectively implementing the 

recommended reforms; and, conversely, what enabling actions (e.g. new legislation, parlaying 

the "success stories" of agency initiatives that are especially creative, innovative and effective) 

can be taken to create more positive conditions for strengthening the dissemination of 

government information to the public; and 

• Should the reforms be subdivided, timeframe-wise, into short, medium, and long-term 

reforms, and, if so, how and what are those timeframes? 

Appendix 10 identifies some of the important issues and concerns the four panels were asked to 

address, including: 

• Try to assess the likely technological state-of-the-art capabilities in the short (current to two 

years), mid (2-5 years) and long term (beyond five years) timeframes that will impact the 

ability of the government to improve its public information dissemination programs and 

practices, including hardware, software, networks, and information interchange protocols; in 

this regard the Group of Experts should be able to provide useful advice; and 

• Prepare and submit a draft final panel report to NCLIS with findings, conclusions, and 

recommendations; ideally (but not mandatory) include the text, or at least an abstract, or "key 

points" for any proposed new or amended legislation, executive orders, rules or regulations, 

other kinds of policy statements (e.g. OMB circulars or bulletins, executive orders), or other 

requirements.34

As mentioned above, the panels were asked not just to look at the "negative side of the equation," that 

is, the deficiencies in current laws, policies, programs, and practices dealing with public information 

 

34 The four panel reports are available in Appendices 17, 18, 19, and 20 and available at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel1.html, http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel2.html, 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel3.html, and http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel4.html, respectively. 
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dissemination. They were also asked to look at the "positive side of the equation." That is, try to 

identify "success stories" where a law, program, policy, or practice is working particularly well, is 

innovative, perhaps is because it is interactive, perhaps because it is multimedia, or has a "multiplier 

impact," and therefore, for these and/or other reasons, could be more broadly emulated. Reviewing 

what is working well applies to both the public and private sectors, and especially where private sector 

practices might be adopted and adapted to the government's programs. 

Moreover, the findings and results of the deliberations of each of the four panels were then "crossfertilized, laterally and horizontally" and shared with each other as well as made available for public 

review and comment so that as wide a set of viewpoints as is feasible was solicited. In short, NCLIS 

did not want the four panels to operate purely in a "stovepipe, vacuum fashion." NCLIS found in its 

earlier study dealing with the NTIS closure that broad public participation, and the resultant wide 

stakeholder "back and forth" interaction, fostered a valuable climate for ferreting out both hidden facts 

and enlightened opinions. 

STAKEHOLDER GROUP PARTICIPATION 

All stakeholder groups were encouraged to seek participation in the work of all four of the panels, 

whether they represented public or private sector organizations or institutions. For example, there was 

no intention that the participation of library professionals be limited just to panel three dealing with 

external group needs for government information, or the participation of government agency 

representatives be limited just to panel two dealing with interagency sharing of government 

information, or the participation of private sector individuals be limited just to panels one or four. The 

Commissioned tried to foster a climate to maximize the opportunities for stakeholder representation 

and participation in both its panel work as well as in its various research activities. 

THE GROUP OF EXPERTS 

The group of experts was composed of recognized, knowledgeable individuals in the fields of 

information and communications technologies, economics, legal matters, and perhaps other 

specialized technical fields, including especially the World Wide Web and the Internet, state-of-the-art 

online approaches, alternative ways of measuring and valuing both the benefits and costs of creating, 

adding value to, packaging, and making available and distributing government information resources 

to the public, and so forth. The group also assisted NCLIS in identifying myths and predicting major 

future changes and paradigm shifts they perceive on the horizon. 

 

NCLIS forwarded a copy each of the four study panel reports to the group of experts for their review 

and comment and made available the White Papers and other material received during the course of 

the assessment. They were also asked to review the draft final report. 

The group of experts includes: 

• Christopher Burns, President, Christopher Burns Inc.; 

• Edward A. Fox, Director, Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) and 

Professor, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Institute of Technology; 

• Robert S. Hayes, Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 

UCLA; 

• Don Langenberg, Chancellor, University System of Maryland; 
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• M. Stuart Lynn, Retired, and formerly Associate Vice President, Information Resources & 

Communications, Office of the President, University of California; 

• Deanna Marcum, President, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR); 

• Raymond T. Nimmer, Leonard Childs Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center; 

• Henry H. Perritt, Jr., Dean, Vice President and Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, 

Chicago; 

• Ron Plesser, Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe LLP; 

• William H. Price, Retired, and Former Director, Foreign Affairs Information Center, Department 

of State; 

• Carol A. Risher, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Savantech, Inc.; 

• Thomas Susman, Ropes & Gray, and Consultant, American Library Association; 

• Paul Uhlir, National Academy of Sciences; and 

• Paul Zurkowski, Newspaper Editor, and former President, Information Industry Association. 

OTHER RESEARCH ELEMENTS OF THE STUDY 

There were several other key elements of the NCLIS study undertaken that were "over and above" the 

work of the four study panels and the Group of Experts. For example, the NCLIS Public-Private 

Sector Task Force report published in 1982 was republished with a new preface explaining why the 

findings, conclusions, and recommendations in the original report are still quite relevant nearly twenty 

years later, despite very significant interim technological developments. Also, some material from key 

landmark studies of public information reforms, such as the "Informing the Nation" report prepared by 

the Congressional Research Service in 1994, were included in the republished report. Former NCLIS 

Chairperson Charles Benton, former NCLIS Executive Director Dean Toni Carbo, and former NCLIS 

Task Force Chairperson Robert Hayes all were consulted in the republication.35

Additionally, the following research activities were undertaken: 

• An update of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) review "Compilation of Statutes 

Authorizing Dissemination of Government Information to the Public" dated March 29, 1996, coauthored by Jane Bortnick Griffith, Harold C. Relyea and Frances A. Bufalo;36

• An update of the "National Information Policies Bibliography" published in 1996 by Dean Toni 

Carbo of the School of Information Sciences of the University of Pittsburgh, including the newlyacquired document collection from former Congressional Research Service (CRS) senior 

information policy specialist Robert Chartrand;37

• An informal survey of a small number of selected federal agency public information 

dissemination programs and practices, including agency websites, classified by agency type such 

as cabinet department, regulatory, etc., by subject matter coverage, by special interests targeted, 

and so forth;38

 

35 The White Paper by Robert Hayes is available in Appendix 23 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/hayes.html. 

36 Appendix 32 is a compilation of Federal statutes pertaining to public information dissemination passed during the 105, 

106th and 107th Congresses. 37 The revised bibliography is available in Appendix 31 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/biblio.html. 

38 The survey results are available in Appendix 26 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/nclismsg.html. 
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• An informal survey of selected associations with memberships composed of disadvantaged and 

special populations with heavy needs for government information, including a review of the 

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation requirements;39

• A review of the earlier Westat study, commissioned by the Government Printing Office, 

completed in 1999, which addressed the rapid proliferation of electronic formats and mediums to 

which ink-on-paper and other pre-electronic government information products were being 

migrated to electronic modes, to ensure NCLIS would be fully aware of the state-of-the-art federal 

IT situation;40

• A reassessment of the Phase I study undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences, Computer 

Sciences and Technology Board for NCLIS, to ensure the original work plan suggestions made by 

that body were still appropriate, timely, and valid;41

• Acceptance of opportunities to solicit materials from, brief, and meet with representatives of 

various key federal players with major public information dissemination authorities and 

responsibilities, including the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, Access 

America and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPRG), the FirstGov.gov 

portal initiatives including the Council for Excellence in Government, the Government Printing 

Office (GPO) including the Federal Depository Library Program and Superintendent of 

Documents Sales Program and GPO Access portal, Library of Congress and the Thomas portal as 

well as other Library of Congress programs such as the National Library for the Blind and 

Physically Handicapped, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and the FedWorld 

portal, various interagency groups such as the Interagency Committee on Statistical Policy (ICSP) 

and the Interagency Committee on Printing and Publishing (ICPPS); 

• Acceptance of opportunities to solicit materials from, brief, and meet with representatives from 

public information user groups such as Americans Communicating Electronically (ACE) and the 

Association of Public Data Users (APDU); 

• Acceptance of opportunities to solicit materials from, brief, and meet with professional library 

associations including the American Library Association (ALA), Special Libraries Association 

(SLA), Association for Research Libraries (ARL), Association for College Research Libraries 

(ACRL), Public Library Association (PLA), American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), 

Medical Library Association (MLA), Urban Libraries Council (ULC) and the Chief Operating 

Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), and others; 

• Meetings with representatives of the CIO Council and some of its committees, especially those 

with responsibilities touching upon public information creation, handling, storage, retrieval, 

dissemination, archiving, and so forth, including "overseeing" the FirstGov.gov and e-Gov 

initiatives; 

• Preparation of a comprehensive study bibliography which would incorporate base materials 

already inventoried in connection with the Commission's earlier materials;42

• Preparation of a "Public Information Resources Map" which could serve as template and a tool to 

dramatize and illustrate the richness and diversity of the federal government's public information 

 

39 The survey results are available in Appendix 27 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/special.html. 

40 Westat, Inc., Report on the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products, Prepared for the U.S. National 

Commission on Libraries and Information Science; commissioned by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government 

Printing Office, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999; http://www.nclis.gov/govt/gpo1.html. 41 Blumenthal, Marjory S., and Alan S. Inouye. Assessment of Formats and Standards For The Creation, Dissemination, and 

Permanent Accessibility of Electronic Government Information Products: Phase I, Report to the U.S. National Commission 

on Libraries and Information Science from the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research 

Council, National Academy of Science, Washington, DC: 16 July 1997; http://www.nclis.gov/govt/gpo1.html. 42 The bibliography is available in Appendix 30 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/biblio.html. 
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resources in terms of attributes such as entitlement, regulatory or other topical area, the targeted 

entitlement or regulated groups and beneficiaries, how the resource is financed (e.g. 

appropriations, revolving funds, user fees), whether fees are charged for a government information 

product or service, or whether it is free to the public, and so forth;43 and 

• Preparation of various White Papers (issue papers) on selected topics, including a paper on "Major 

Paradigms: Myths, Realities, and Debunking the Myths," another on "The World Wide Library," 

another on "Information Life Cycle Management," and others.44

 FINAL REPORT TO THE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT 

NCLIS received inputs for its final report throughout the course of the study from: 

1. The four study panels; 

2. The group of experts; 

3. Review of the various research activities, including literature reviews, the database of current 

information laws, and so on; 

4. A survey of federal agency public information dissemination policies, programs and practices; 

5. A survey of the government information needs of special and disadvantaged populations; 

6. Meetings with representatives from the CIO Council and its sub-committees, and other key 

interagency groups including the Federal Publishers Committee, the Interagency Committee on 

Publishing and Printing, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee, the Federal 

Webmasters Forum, the Interagency Committee on Statistical Policy, CENDI, the Federal 

Depository Library Council, and others; 

7. Meetings with library and information professional associations, including American Library 

Association (ALA), American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), Special Libraries 

Association (SAL), Chief Operating Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), American 

Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), Association of Research Libraries 

(ARL), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Urban Libraries Council (ULC), 

Public Library Association (PLA), and others, and with other societies concerned with utilizing 

government information, including scientific and technical societies; 

8. State, local, and tribal government officials, including library and information professional 

associations with memberships at those levels of government; 

9. Private sector groups including trade and industry associations, labor unions, and others, including 

the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the Software and Information Industry 

Association (SIIA), the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), and the 

American Association of Publishers (AAP); 

10. Public information user groups, including Americans Communicating Electronically (ACE) and 

the Association of Public Data Users (APDU); 

11. Public responses to NCLIS website postings, and other relevant websites including, notably, the 

new e-Gov website launched by the Senate Governmental Affairs committee; 

12. Scanning various listservs and checking bulletin boards that were tracking the issues and concerns 

addressed by the study; and 

 

43 The Public Information Resources Maps are available in Appendix 28 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. 

44 NCLIS staff/consultant White Papers are available in Appendices 11 and 12; White Papers submitted by members of the 

NCLIS group of experts are available in Appendices 23, 24, and 25. All of these White Papers are available from 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. 
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13. Other sources, such as unsolicited communications. 

The Congressional committees requesting the study admonished the Commission that the final report 

should represent an NCLIS position, developed as a result of its statutory mandates, findings from 

earlier studies, and independently gathered facts and opinions. NCLIS was specifically directed in its 

discussions with Congressional staff neither to attempt to necessarily seek a consensus on every 

recommendation, nor to "pull punches" simply because a recommendation might appear to be 

politically difficult.

Because several of the recommendations, and the subject matter itself, affect the Judicial Branch, the 

report is also being transmitted to senior officers in that Branch, including the Clerk of the Supreme 

Court, the Judicial Conference, and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. 

USING THE NCLIS WEBSITE AND STUDY WEB PAGES AS AN INTERACTIVE TOOL 

The vehicle of the NCLIS website was once again used as a primary communications and coordination 

vehicle for securing involvement and participation, and obtaining public review and comment at key 

stages as the study proceeds and dissemination deliverables as they were produced in draft. This same 

approach was followed in the two earlier Commission studies.45 

The Commission endeavored to follow a 'government-in-the-sunshine' policy by maximizing the 

opportunities to solicit broad public review and comment at each step in the study. 

D. FINDINGS 

ORGANIZATION OF THE FINDINGS 

We have subdivided study findings into eight categories, based on the sector or group to which a 

finding is primarily targeted; of course to a certain extent overlap between categories is inevitable. 

1. Individual Citizens (the General Public) 

2. Disadvantaged and Special Populations 

3. Academic, Research, and Related Institutions 

4. The Federal GovernmentóGovernment-Wide Policy Leadership and Oversight 

5. The Federal GovernmentóIndividual Agencies With Operating Missions 

6. The Federal GovernmentóAgencies With Government-wide Information Services and 

Information Management Missions (Except NTIS) 

7. The Federal GovernmentóThe National Technical Information Service 

8. The Federal GovernmentóInteragency Groups (e.g. CIO Council, Federal Webmasters Forum, 

CENDI) 

9. State, Local, and Tribal Levels of Government 

10. Commercial (For-Profit) Enterprises 

11. Not-For-Profit Sector, Including Professional Associations 

12. All Other Groups 

 

45 A copy of the Commissionís study web page at the time of publication of this report is included as Appendix 14. 
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Public Information Dissemination MachineryóFunctional Categories

Within each of the above twelve major categories, individual findings may require new or amended 

laws, rules, regulations, and so forth. We call these functional categories, of which there are nine 

principal ones: 

• Laws 

• Rules 

• Regulations 

• Policies 

• Presidential Directives (e.g. Executive Orders, Presidential Memoranda) 

• Standards and Guidelines 

• Programs 

• Projects 

• Practices 

Timeframes For Addressing Recommendations

The reforms addressed in this report are far-reaching. Their implementation timeframe, much less the 

timeframe in which the ultimate outcomes would be realized, extend from the immediate, in some 

cases, to ten or more years on the horizon in other cases. The distinction between whether the 

recommendation should be implemented immediately, or should be deferred until some time in the 

future, is very important. Where appropriate, the Commission has therefore tried to indicate which of 

the three timeframe periods is most appropriate: 

1. The Short-Term Horizon, from the present up to two years hence; 

2. The Medium-Term Horizon, from 2-5 years; and 

3. The Long-Term Horizon, from five years and longer. 

Conclusions and Recommendations

The Conclusions and Recommendations sections, which follow the Findings section, are structured 

somewhat differently than are the Findings section. For example, the Conclusions section is structured 

into twelve major categories like the Findings section, but individual findings are consolidated so that 

only one summary conclusion statement appears under each of the twelve major categories. Then, in 

the Recommendations section, two classes of recommendations are recognized: Strategic 

Recommendations, and Other Recommendations. However, the Recommendations are numbered 

consecutively in a single sequence across both categories. 

For convenience, all findings, conclusions, and recommendations relating to the need for new or 

amended laws (such as the Paperwork Reduction Act 2001 reauthorization) are brought together in 

one place in Appendix 22. 

1. FINDINGS RELATING TO INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS (THE GENERAL PUBLIC) 
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After considering all of the facts and opinions offered and collected, the Commission finds that: 

1.A. Individual citizens are faced with considerable practical difficulties in knowing what 

government information exists that might help them, searching for it easily and cost effectively, 

and utilizing it once located. 

Agencies have assumed that by merely making the information electronically 

accessible, they thereby, somehow, relieve themselves of the obligation of 

disseminating the information proactively to the public. They incorrectly equate 

passive information access with proactive information dissemination. 

Individual citizens are faced with very substantial barriers to even knowing whether or not government 

information that might help them even exists or not, and if it does exist, what kind of information is it, 

where it is located in the labyrinth of government agencies, whether it is available to them or there are 

restrictions on its availability, how can they search for and retrieve it, and, finally, even if they succeed 

in surmounting all of those obstacles, will they know how to utilize it once it is found? Of course this 

problem has always existed to some degree, even in the pre-electronic era., but the advent of the 

Internet, bringing with it the enormous proliferation of web-availability of agency electronic 

information, has greatly exacerbated the problem. FirstGov is a step in the right direction, but this 

assessment will have much more to say about the need for very substantial further development of that 

portal before it becomes a practical tool. 

Moreover, in rushing to publish their public information products on the web, agencies have shifted 

and tilted the burdens and costs largely (but not exclusively) to the public for (1) even knowing what 

government information resources exist that could help them, and then (2) searching for and 

(hopefully) finding that information. In short, agencies have assumed that by merely making the 

information electronically accessible, they thereby, somehow, relieve themselves of the obligation of 

disseminating the information proactively to the public. They incorrectly equate passive information 

access with proactive information dissemination.46

The government must come to understand that merely making information 

electronically accessible on agency web pages does not relieve them on the 

responsibility of ensuring that their information is disseminating equitably and costeffectively to the same publics they always dealt with, even in the pre-Internet era. 

Access to government information is essential to: 

• the mobility of workers from low job opportunity areas to high opportunity areas; 

• the ability to work at home and use distant learning (remote education) approaches; 

• the ability to get advice on how to cope with health, safety, security, or related concerns affecting 

themselves and their families; 

• identify and fully understand applicable government rules and regulations affecting their planned 

purchase of commercial products and services insofar as those informed decisions depend on 

health, safety, security, and similar considerations; 

 

46 A more complete discussion of proactive dissemination and passive access is provided in the section entitled "What This 

Report Is About and What It Is Not About. The issue is also discussed in Finding 5.K. 
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• identify and fully understand applicable government rules and regulations relating to their planned 

application for federal benefits and entitlements, including Social Security, Medicare, educational 

assistance, and so on; 

• undertaking personal research for information, such as statistical comparisons, in order to enable 

more active community level involvement; 

• identify and fully understand applicable government rules and regulations affecting their 

responsibilities to the government with regard to the filing of income and other taxes, compliance 

with government reporting and recordkeeping laws, and so forth; 

• the ability of sole proprietorships and small businesses to identify and apply for assistance and 

benefits enabling them to secure new capital, identify markets, understand consumer behavior, and 

so forth; and 

• the ability of lower levels of government to interchange information with the federal level to avoid 

unnecessary overlap and duplication, and to strengthen state, local, and tribal government 

information outreach programs for their resident citizens. 

The government must come to understand that merely making information electronically accessible on 

agency web pages does not relieve them on the responsibility of ensuring that their information is 

disseminating equitably and cost-effectively to the same publics they always dealt with, even in the 

pre-Internet era. 

In its response to the Commission's survey, the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons 

(AARP), stressed that moving from "offering simple, passive access to government information to 

actively getting it into the hands of individuals who need it" is extremely important. Some have 

expressed the fear that a proactive agency program for public information dissemination, along with an 

explicit agency information dissemination budget, could result in a misuse of agency resources to 

promote the agency and generate propaganda, rather than to reach out and inform the public. The 

Commission does not believe that constructive public policy should be thwarted by such unreasonable 

fears. Furthermore, such a result can certainly be precluded by legislative oversight and carefully 

framed authorizations and policy guidance, including the use of the Government Performance Results 

Act (GPRA).47

1.B. Individual users of government information are extremely diverse in terms of computer and 

information literacy skill levels, specific kinds of information needs, economic status, geography, 

and other demographic variables. 

Non-governmental users of information (the general public) are extremely diverse in many respects, 

and include: 

• the citizenry at large; 

• business and industry; 

• state, local, and tribal levels of government; 

• scientists and engineers; 

• practicing professionals such as health care practitioners, teachers, librarians and online 

information specialists, consultants, legal professionals; 

 

47 EPA offers one good example of the use of agency policy to manage agency information resources; the EPA policy is 

described under Finding 5G. 
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• rural populations; 

• individual inventors, authors, composers, and artists; 

• academic and research institutions; 

• public interest groups; 

• special interest groups dealing with safety in the workplace, environmental protection, ozone, and 

many other issues; 

• disadvantaged groups that are financially, geographically, medically, or otherwise unable to find 

and utilize general public information resources (the needs of this group are dealt with in Section 2 

below); and 

• not-for-profit groups, including foundations. 

Consequently, the machinery government has established (the Federal Information Infrastructure) to 

respond to the needs of these quite heterogeneous populations is very diverse and is customized to the 

unique needs of each of the population groups. In short, there is no "plain vanilla" or "one size fits all" 

approach to meeting overall public information wants and needs for government information. 

Moreover, both the public and the private sectors, including the not-for-profit sector, all have 

important roles in finding, obtaining, and utilizing government information. 

For example, each citizen has a variety of professional, work related, and personal and family 

information needs. The availability of accurate and timely information often can often mean the 

difference between success and failure, health and illness, learning or ignorance, and economic growth 

or stagnation. Information has no real value until it is used for some end purpose, even if that purpose 

is purely self-enlightenment or recreation. 

Information has little or no value when it is: 

• not even known to exist; 

• unavailable to the public, when it should be available; 

• inaccessible to the public, when it should be accessible; 

• cannot be efficiently searched for and retrieved by the public; or 

• cannot be used by the public because it is irrelevant, inaccurate, untimely, incomplete, formatted 

inappropriately or is not authentic. 

1.C. Dramatic expansion of numbers of internet surfers of government websites attests to the 

importance of federal, state, local, and tribal government electronic information resources as 

very important national assets. 

The availability of government information on the Internet has increased the number of users and uses 

of government information (at all levels of government) dramatically. The number of users directly 

accessing information on the Internet has increased many fold. At the same time, the need for 

librarians and other information professionals has also increased because citizens are confronted with 

such a massive volume of disorganized materials that they simply cannot easily find what they are 

looking for, even if they are highly computer and information literate. 

The Ohio Cooperative for Library Cataloging (OCLC) in their most recent annual review of the World 

Wide Web estimated that the Web now contains about 7 million unique sites, which is almost a 50% 
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increase over last year's estimate of 4.7 million sites; that the "Public Web," that is, sites that offer 

content that is freely accessible by the general public, constitutes about 40% of the total Web; and that 

the Web continues to expand at a rapid pace even though its rate of growth is diminishing over time. 

People need access to government information to learn about what their government is doing. They 

need access to a vast range of information to make their lives better. They need to know of potentially 

harmful situations and events such as air pollution conditions, dangerous storms, or faulty tires. 

Researchers, scholars, and product developers need ready and timely access to a wide variety of 

scientific, technical, and business-related information and data. The cost to citizens of not having 

information readily available cannot be calculated. 

Moreover, taxpayers have paid for the creation of this information and should be able to retrieve and 

use it. federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies want to disseminate information easily and 

cheaply to their constituency publics, and share their information with other agencies easily at the 

same or different levels of government. The private sector, including libraries and educational 

institutions, as well as not-for-profit and for-profit organizations, needs to acquire government 

information and data in raw form so that they can add value and provide additional services to the 

public. Citizens require information from all levels of government, federal, state, local, and tribal. 

State, local, and tribal levels of government themselves, are both major government information 

providers for their respective constituencies, and at the same time users who need to efficiently 

interchange information with the federal level to minimize and avoid unnecessary overlap and 

duplication in the creation and use of government information resources. 

1.D. FirstGov is a step in the right direction but has a long way to go before becoming fully 

effective. 

The announcement of the FirstGov.gov initiative may be the first concrete step in the right direction to 

make government information available in a truly comprehensive, "yellow pages" approach. 

Announced September 22nd, FirstGov provides the public with easy, one-stop access to federal 

government online information and services. The websiteólocated at http://www.firstgov.govó

provides a single online information portal that connects Americans with federal information. 

FirstGov allows users to search all 27 million federal agency web pages at one time. It can search half 

a billion documents in less than one-quarter of a second and handle millions of searches a day. 

The website also provides access to the home pages of major agencies and entities in all three branches 

of government, a section that provides topics of current interest to web users (e.g., a direct link to the 

Weather Service during hurricane season, to NASA during a shuttle launch, or to IRS during tax 

season), and key sites that access state and local government web pages. To increase efficiency, allows 

citizens to find information intuitivelyóby subject or by keyword. 

The search engine used by FirstGov is a significant technological contribution and a very important 

and versatile user tool. It is undeniably very fast and quite impressive. However, the search engine 

needs major improvements in ensuring that information retrieved is relevant to the user request. One 

key element is to develop an underlying thesaurus and taxonomy to insure that the user is getting 

closer to the information he or she wishes. Such tools should be linked to applications that help make 

searches context sensitive, such as through natural language or other applications. 

Although FirstGov states that it provides access to all government online information, in fact it does 

not. It covers only publicly available government information. FirstGov cannot address documents that 

either never were on government servers, but may have been in agency files as paper documents, or 
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have been removed from government servers, but may still exist in a pre-electronic form, format, or 

medium somewhere else in the agency. 

FirstGov also does not include enough granularity in its groupings to permit the sophisticated 

information retrieval capability need by many government users. As pointed out above, information 

users come from many and diverse communities. There is a difference between the general 

categorization of information and the detailed indexing of information. Information is often 

categorized into general groups such as travel, medical, or chemistry. These may then be broken down 

in turn into subcategories (e.g. travel in the U.S., in Europe, in Africa). An example of general 

categorization is a table of contents. It leads a reader to a chapter or chapters that may contain the 

desired information. 

Indexing, on the other hand, is much more specific. Indexing permits specific bits of information to be 

found. The index of a book indexes specific words or phases, person names, places, dates, and so on, 

to the exact pages where they are located. Indexing may also use controlled vocabularies to aid in the 

finding of information. Helicopters and rotary winged vehicles are the same thing, but two different 

names. Controlled vocabularies allow information searching to be performed using a specific 

"controlled word" that brings together several words with the exact same or at least similar meaning. 

Using these two concepts together, general categorization and indexing, can permit a governmentwide categorization of information while still permitting the more specific identification needed by the 

organization originally creating the information. Thus there is a need for taxonomies at some--or 

several-- level(s). 

Categorization, classification, indexing, abstracting, cataloging, thesaurus development, and related 

tools, techniques, and methods are the business of the librarian and information manager. They are 

technically sometimes referred to as "bibliographic methods." 

1.E. The Internet is a long way from being a library. 

The government has an obligation not just to make its information resources available 

to the publicóit has an obligation to help citizens improve their information literacy 

in finding information, to utilize government information continuously in a lifelong 

learning context and to help citizens use information more effectively once it has been 

found it and accessed. 

The Internet is not yet a library. Instead, to the ordinary citizen, it is at a stage in its evolution where it 

is a veritable jumble of information services and information resources that cannot be easily found, 

searched, retrieved, or utilized. Therefore, librarians and other information specialists are in great 

demand to organize government information for both public and private sector information providers, 

to help people find what they need, and to help people evaluate and apply the information they find to 

their practical everyday challenges, including finding a government entitlement, applying for a student 

loan, finding a job, researching a particular health care problem, and so forth. Indeed, there is an elite 

class of information specialists, government document librarians, whose unique and specialized skills 

are directed to helping citizens find the right government information, at the right time, and from the 

right place. In addition, there is a unique group of about 1,400 libraries across the country that 

specializes in housing, managing, and preserving government information for continuous public 

availability and access, namely federal depository libraries. 
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In short, government information that is already available to the public can, and should be more easily 

and cost-effectively accessible, and should have greater practical utility to citizens. The government 

has an obligation not just to make its information resources available to the publicóit has an 

obligation to help citizens improve their information literacy in finding information, to utilize 

government information continuously in a lifelong learning context, and to help citizens use 

information more effectively once it has been found it and accessed. 

Agency information resources that are not already available to the public, and which are not subject to 

statutory prohibitions against disclosure and sharing pursuant to the FOIA exceptions, Privacy Act 

exceptions, national security legislation, and similar laws, should be reviewed for the purpose of 

making it available to the public. In short, the "default" for government information should be to make 

all of its information resources available to the public, to other agencies, and to other levels of 

government. 

One of the Commission's Experts, Christopher Burns, suggests that a promising alternative may be to 

link (agency) collections and their catalogs in a reciprocal access network with a shared search engine 

and standard metadata. Such a design would allow users of one online library collection to access 

more precisely the collections of other libraries affiliated in a group that resembles the regional 

networks and shared catalogs of the traditional library community. Burns points out that when the 

interests and activities of a user group begin to diversify and the collection of documents of that group 

comes to include many different formats, the right architecture is not necessarily the traditional 

approach, which has been to put all materials into a single database. Burns' complete paper is 

appended included as Appendix 24. 

1.F. Helping the public find government information is more critical than it ever was because of 

the vastness of newly available electronic government information resources (user assistance). 

The question of whether electronic information can be located without cataloging, indexing, or 

offering access at the document level is a critical consideration, since it directly relates to the full costs 

that must be associated with, and budgeted for, to provide public access to government information. 

By comparison, finding information at the broad, generic level is far easier. 

Federal agencies should not be expected to provide an equal level of access to all kinds of 

informationóespecially if providing this information without adequate summarizing, abstracting and 

indexing/metadata, created at considerable cost, means that it is only added to a "mountain of digital 

objects" that users will have to wade through. Hundreds of thousands of "hits" are almost worse than 

no hits at all. 

The private sector and libraries have traditionally filled an important role in adding value to 

government information by cataloging, abstracting and indexing, and there is little evidence to suggest 

that their ability to serve the public through such services has become obsolete. Government should be 

aware of these efforts, and the full associated costs required to effectively abstract and index 

information. In some cases, government may find it more beneficial to the public to partner with the 

private sector and libraries to accomplish the task. Alternatively, government can determine when it is 

more appropriate to allow the private sector and libraries to assume responsibility for meeting public 

demands for increased search and retrieval functionality, so long as it does not lose sight of the fact the 

primary responsibility for the entire life cycle of electronic government information, including the 

dissemination and permanent public access to government information, without restrictions, to the 

American public. 
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If the federal government continues to adopt a "distributed" (dispersed and decentralized) approach to 

government information availabilityói.e., each agency develops a website for the distribution of its 

own information products and servicesóthen the public, especially those with scant knowledge of the 

structure of the federal government, will face difficulties in finding government information at the 

source. The first challenge for government, then, is to assure that the public does not have to know in 

advance which agency might hold the information desired. 

The second challenge becomes navigating the agency's website, which can vary widely in complexity 

and user friendliness. To navigate websites often requires an intimate knowledge of not only the 

agency's structure but it's internal terminology. It can be very difficult to find a specific item (e.g. a 

specific document), even if the user knows its name or identifying number. It should be noted, 

however, that GPO Access's cataloging and locator services and FirstGov, under the authority of the 

General Services Administration ("GSA") do provide access to centralized search capabilities that 

allow users to retrieve information from a broad array of agencies and branches of government. 

User assistance is of critical importance in facilitating use of electronic information.48 Technology 

continues to enhance the means of providing huge amounts of information in electronic formatsó

whether on disk, CD-ROM or directly through the WWW and the Internet. As the number of resources 

grows, users are in greater need of tools to help identify both sources of information and data setsó

critical components of those information sourcesóin order to meet their specific needs. 

There are several means by which users can gain assistance: 

a. personal interface, e.g. in non-profit and corporate libraries or through federal agency user 

support hotlines;49

b. summary source information, provided most commonly in any number of formats as of indices 

and abstracts of information sources, summarizing both general information sources, as well as 

specific data sets within general sources; 

c. search engines/locator services, used primarily to locate general information resources online 

effectively and quickly; and 

d. search and retrieval technologies, normally specialized software delivered as part of the 

information product or service and used primarily to locate specific data or data sets once access 

to a digital information source is achieved. 

Several other issues affect the provision of assistance to users. Among the most critical of theseó

regardless of whether assistance is provided by government, the private sector or libraries are: 

1. cost to both the provider and members of the public; 

2. quality, often tied directly to the cost of providing the assistance; and 

3. innovation, i.e. developing, testing and providing new means of obtaining and using information 

sources or data sets to meet the public demand 

 

48 It is also costly, since it requires manpower. A major benefit of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is that it 

provides, at no additional cost to the federal government, trained, professional documents librarians as intermediaries to assist 

users to identify the right information to meet their needs, as well as instruct users on the interpretation and appropriate use of 

the information. This is an invaluable asset and any restructuring of the FDLP must find way to maintain and enhance this 

resource. The need for additional training for library and information professionals is discussed in Recommendation 13. 

49 In fact, the government should be more proactive in promoting its information services to the public and offering user 

support for those services. It also should do more to promote libraries, particularly the federal depository libraries, as 

additional sources of user support. Conclusion 6 and Recommendation 13 relate specifically to the Federal Depository 

Library Program (FDLP). 
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Regardless of whether user assistance is provided by the public or the private sector, however, the 

public often experiences mixed results. In terms of private sector WWW and Internet locator and 

search engine services, many such providers rank websites based on special or exclusiveóand 

sometimes economicóagreements with website purveyors or on how frequently websites are 

requested and successfully found by users. Government agencies are unlikely to enteróand under 44 

U.S.C. 3506(d), executive branch agencies are statutorily prohibited from entering ñinto special 

agreements with the private sector. More importantly, if the public is not aware that an agency has 

placed a site on the web or added new information sources to the site, it is unlikely that it will be 

ranked highly on a private sector service due to a large number of hits. 

 

The federal government has also been somewhat successful in the provision of search and retrieval 

capabilities to assist users once they have gained access to a website. However, depending on how the 

agency has organized the information provided through the website, the public can sometimes 

encounter difficulties in locating specific dataóunless they are already well-versed in the technologies 

of the web or unless they have been able to identify specific parameters to help narrow their search 

(e.g., the date of a notice; the precise name or public law number of a statute or court decision; or the 

date or number of a regulation implementing a statute). 

The inevitable limitations on availability of government resources, however, demand that the 

government should undertake only the most necessary user assistance activities and need not duplicate 

or adopt all types of services that private sector and library providers offer to their customers and 

patrons. Cost and unmet public needs will always be major factors in the evaluation by government 

agencies of what user assistance services to provide. In addition, although the government has a 

general mandate primary responsibility to make widely available the information it creates and 

maintains, it also has a responsibility to encourage the development of alternative sources for 

government information, including online sourcesówhether private or non-profit in origin. Therefore, 

regardless of what services it develops, government must make them available to the public at largeó

including private and non-profit sector providersóat little or no cost. 

1.G. Transition from the print era to the electronic era has been at lightning speed; 

ramifications have barely had time to be even partially assessed, both positive and negative 

consequences. 

The printed word is not dead yet. Is there anyone left by now who does not appreciate 

the irony of seeing the volume of paper printing at the individual desk level reach a 

proportion that is hundreds if not thousands of times greater than centralized printing 

ever was? 

In the past public acquisition of government information depended entirely upon physical mechanisms

ó upon government depository and other libraries, upon government and privately-owned bookstores, 

directly from publishers, mail order from GPO or private redistributors such as order fulfillment 

houses or other outlets, and agency distribution lists. If a person did not live near a library, they simply 

could not get the information easily or quickly. While this system worked well in the ink-on-paper era, 

it now has evolved rapidly into an electronic, networked-based government information environment. 

Younger people, especially, do not want to access information in paper. They are accustomed to using 

the Internet for quick and easy access to information wherever and whenever they need it. 

The electronic mode makes it possible to deliver information wherever the reader may be (for 

instance, to his or her computer in the home or workplace, or by wireless technology to anyplace), to 

present information that cannot be captured in print (such as video appendices, tables that can be 
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manipulated and so on), and to facilitate use of information through quality interfaces and search 

capabilities. 

The Internet is the medium of choice for many in business, education, and general information 

seekers. The Internet does not represent merely an incremental improvement, but a fundamental and 

far-reaching change in the distribution and dissemination of information in all forms, including 

government information. 

Before the World Wide Web, publishers viewed the Internet as an add-on to print, CD-ROMs, and 

microfilm. Paper was the primary medium for distribution of information. It is still preferred by many 

people, but is not the medium of choice for the future. Now many publishers and most young people 

view the Internet as the primary source for information. Print has become the add-on. 

But much agency information is not available on the web, or else it has been taken down even though 

it was once available. For example, in one recent study by the University of California at Berkeley, a 

list of approximately 70 electronic government publications which previously were available via the 

Internet (as text, html or pdf files) now, for a variety of reasons, are no longer available. These files 

may have been removed because the publications were updated or revised, the issuing agency believed 

there is no longer a need to provide access to them, the issuing office no longer maintains their 

website, or for other reasons (Judy). 

The printed word is not dead yet. Is there anyone left by now who does not appreciate the irony of 

seeing the volume of paper printing at the individual desk level reach a proportion that is hundreds if 

not thousands of times greater than centralized printing ever was? 

Librarians and others have expressed concern about the assumption than all information can be 

delivered and used as well or better electronically than in other forms. Commenting on the draft report, 

Jill Pigeon of Hollins College said, "Tangible documents are better in certain cases for a variety of 

reasons, ranging from guaranteed historic value and availability to ease of use, [as well as] ensuring 

access to the technologically or financially disadvantaged." 

1.H. Return on investment to the taxpayer of government information as a public good is still 

significantly undervalued by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. 

Dissemination of government information and its use create significant public benefits for all users. 

Information enables all Americans to learn about their government, issues affecting their quality of 

life, regulations related to the work place, how to grow healthy children and healthy plants, research 

on health and medicine, the exploration of space, etc. More timely release of regulatory information 

fosters compliance with various laws and rules affecting the environment, health, and the work place. 

Elected officials, economists, and policy analysts repeatedly remind us that we live in a knowledge 

society where information is the key resource and asset. In this environment, information and learning 

become the key drivers to maintaining national superiority in science, technology, innovation, and 

economic growth. The Internet has transformed education and health care. More and more colleges, 

universities, and private companies offer courses and degrees to users remote from college campuses. 

Corporations use the Internet to disseminate training and education to employees around the globe. 

The wide availability of health information is producing consumers with more knowledge of diseases, 

options for healing, health, and wellness. It is essential that citizens have government-produced 

information on which they can rely. 
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As the world's largest producer of information the federal government has a unique and critical role in 

the information society and the nation's future scientific and economic development. The investment 

made by the taxpayers in research, data gathering, and the dissemination of information has been and 

will continue to be a key resource that returns enormous benefit to the economy and society. The 

maximum return on this investment and the maximum public good can be achieved only if 

government produced information and research results are disseminated in an effective manner on the 

Internet. 

1.I. Cost-sharing of public data among user groups is no longer the big issue that it once was. 

At a recent meeting of the Association of Public Data Users (APDU) it was reported that only seven 

years ago, in 1993, an APDU consortium of 18 members spent $5,000 to purchase a set of Public 

Microdata User Samples (PUMS) tapes from the Census Bureau, so that individual APDU members 

would only have to pay about $1,700 each for the set. 

The inference is that cost sharing of public data is no longer the big issue it once was in most (but not 

all) areas. Of course the biggest reason for this is because data is now available free on agency 

websites. 

This example also makes clear that agency efforts to charge more than the cost of dissemination can 

and will be thwarted by cooperative purchasing or other redissemination. 

1.J. Direct web surfing is fine, but bypassing the utilization of traditional intermediaries in 

searching for government information is creating both obvious and not so obvious dysfunctional 

consequences. 

As more and more public users develop their computer and information literacy skills to the point 

where they are searching for government information directly, by-passing the use of traditional 

intermediaries such as librarians and information brokers, many apparent as well as many not-soapparent consequences are cropping up. Some of these consequences might have been anticipated, but 

others are not so obvious. For example, in the words of a participant at a recent APDU meeting, "the 

policy behind the (government information) product is being lost as people access data directly 

without going through intermediaries such as librarians, statisticians, data analysts, records specialists, 

archivists, museum specialists, and so on." In the NCLIS staff authored White Paper on "Some 

Paradigms: Myths and Realities" it was also pointed out that, in the broadest sense, the separation of 

content from its parent context was another dysfunctional consequence with disquieting ramifications. 

For one, the separation of content from parent context (or what in records management parlance is 

"provenance") is frustrating attempts to evaluate the credibility of the information because its source 

and origin is "hidden".50 In another example, a government documents specialist, searching GPO 

Access under Browse Electronic Titles, working down a list to find that the first and second 

documents were found, but the third took the specialist to a website instead of to the document itself. 

1.K. Electronic government documents often, quite literally, appear one day and disappear 

without a trace the next. 

One government documents specialist estimates that at least 10% of the documents linked to by the 

GPO Access portal for the use of federal depository libraries and others have been taken down from 

the servers that originally housed them. Many documents specialists fear, with documented evidence, 

 

50 The White Paper is available in Appendix 11 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/paradigm.html. 
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that if a document was "born digital" and never initially came to a depository library in paper form, no 

depository library will ever have it. While in some cases agencies formally announce plans to 

discontinue a public information product, as required the Paperwork Reduction Act,51 in many cases 

they do not. In some cases involving multi-format publications, users cannot distinguish between a 

multi-format publication losing one of its formats and a web-only publication completely 

disappearing. 

2. FINDINGS RELATING TO DISADVANTAGED AND SPECIAL POPULATIONS 

2.A. The hard core computer "disaffected" are a special population. 

According to a recent report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, half the adults 

over 18 years of age in American, approximately 100 million people do not have Internet access. The 

survey, conducted in the April 2000 to August 2000 timeframe, found that: 

• A third of the Internet non-users, about 31 million people, say they are likely to stay away from 

the Internet, mainly to surf the Internet; 

• Another 25% of the non-Internet users say they probably will not venture online not just for the 

purpose of surfing the Internet, but sending and receiving e-mail, using any kind of word 

processing or spreadsheet or other kinds of software for personal or business purposes, searching 

online databases, and so forth; 

• On the other hand, 12% of those without Internet access say that they definitely will go online, and 

29% of non-Internet users say they probably will get Internet; 

• 54% of those not online believe the Internet is a dangerous thing; 

• 51% of those not online say they do not think they are missing anything by staying away from the 

Internet; 

• 39% of those not online say the Internet is too expensive; 

• 36% of those not online express concern that the online world is a confusing and hard place to 

negotiate; 

• 13% of those who are not online (about 12 million people) have used the Internet at sometime in 

the past, but have since dropped off; and 

• Of those who have dropped out, 21% say they no longer have a computer, 14% say they have 

changed jobs, 11% say paying for Internet access was too expensive, 9% say they didn't find the 

Internet very interesting or useful, and 8% say they were worried about their privacy.52

Of course it is easy to say that the Internet is a brand new communications medium, which is just at 

the beginning of its product life cycle. Inevitably these numbers will change, but the Commission's 

purpose in citing the survey findings here is primarily to underscore three points: 

First, the government has an obligation to respond to the government information needs of all of its 

citizens, not just those who are highly computer literate and information literate. To the extent that a 

significant proportion of the population may never acquire Internet literacy, their needs must be 

provided for by other means and communication mediums. 

 

51 Section 3506(d)(3) of the Paperwork Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1995 states that agencies shall "provide adequate 

notice when initiating, substantially modifying, or terminating significant information dissemination products." 

52 [Insert citation; not yet in bibliography] 
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Second, the government must provide for the transition of society from its current, still largely paperbased mode, to the Internet-of-the-Future promise, by carefully subdividing its planned policies related 

to e-Gov and the policy implementation into short, medium, and long-term timeframes programs and 

projects.

Third, the government has an obligation to educate and train information professionals who, in turn, 

can train the general population in how to find and use government information. It is not enough 

merely to disseminate information on the Web, and then "walk away from the postings" so to speak. 

2.B. People with disabilities stand to gain the most from the new technologies, which give them 

tools to gain greater independence and social integration. 

The Commission strongly believes that any effort to improve government information dissemination 

to the public must include those with disabilities. They are strengthened in this belief by a study by the 

Disability Statistics Center at the University of California.53 This study states that people with 

disabilities stand to gain greater independence and social integration. However, they have among the 

lowest rates of use, and many are poor and cannot afford computers capable of navigating the Internet. 

Lower-cost computing and access, simpler user interfaces, and training and support in the use of 

hardware and software are essential, if this segment of our population is to effectively move into the 

new age. 

The Commission identified nine organizations that it believed represented a cross section of the 

disadvantaged groups, and surveyed these groups for the purpose of ascertaining where they believed 

existing public information dissemination policies and programs impacting disabled and 

disadvantaged, and other special populations could be strengthened.54 Of these, seven responded. 

Of the seven responses received, only one organization, the National Library Service (NLS) for the 

Blind and Physically Handicapped within the Library of Congress, reported having a policy on 

dissemination of government information, and this only insofar as it meets the needs of this particular 

special clientele. This policy is folded into the NLS Collection Building policy, which includes NLS's 

responsibility for making library materials available for the blind and physically handicapped. 

Alternatively, four of those surveyed reported having, or planning, programs to reach their clientele: 

• American Association on Mental Retardation. RADAR (Focused Research and Reporting on 

Critical Developmental Disability Issues) is an online data warehouse to be used for data mapping 

and trend analysis. 

• Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP). Ageline database of articles and 

book summaries, licenses to several search services. Plans are for it to be added to the AARP 

website later this year. 

• Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind. Strategic partnership with a Colorado-based audio bookstore 

(ReelBooks Internet, Inc.) to develop an e-commerce business operated by employees who are 

blind and visually impaired. 

• National Organization on Disabilities. Plans for a program to reach business and volunteer groups 

on how to effectively serve those with disabilities. 

 

53 [Insert citation] 

54 The survey results are available in Appendix 27 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/special.html. 
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Five of the organizations surveyed identified information they do not receive from government, but 

which would be useful to their memberships/clienteles. These include: 

• Information on key issues on development disabilities (abuse, housing, aging, employment and 

transportation); 

• Information on e-commerce and acquiring career skills to increase job marketability; 

• Popular consumer information from various federal agencies and time-sensitive information; 

• Information on the "how-to" part of disability work; and 

• Items that have sound, text or captions, including streaming videos and websites that talk. 

Alternatively, five of the organizations identified government information that they now receive and 

that their memberships/clienteles need or want, including: 

• Vital policy, financial, research and service information on issues and trends in mental health and 

substance abuse services; 

• Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid information, obtained through website links; 

• Consumer documents and research and statistical information; and 

• Information on Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, and guidance on accessible websites. 

Additional details relating to the findings of this special survey are available in Appendix 27. 

2.C. Schools and school age children are a disadvantaged special population. 

More than 95% of all U.S. public schools have access to the Internet. A number of public and private 

activities have made this connectivity possible. The "digital divide" is a reality, but it is gradually 

improving although it will probably never disappear entirely. Just as reductions in price resulted in 

VCRs becoming ubiquitous in U.S. households, reductions in the price of computers and commercial 

offerings of free Internet access are bringing the Internet into more and more schools. The use of 

computers and the Internet by more school children also is stimulating sales and access. According to 

Nielsen/Net Ratings, Internet users with annual incomes between $21,000 and $33,000 spent more 

time on the Internet than the average Internet user, and this is reflected in the computer and 

information literacy of school age children. 

Every parent knows how his K-12 children are attracted to the excitement of using computers at home 

and at school to do research, to play games, to do homework, and for other purposes. It has become a 

clichÈ that the parents must sometimes learn how to do something on their PC's by asking their 

children. The federal government has done some innovative things in making its information more 

easily understandably by, and usable by K-12 school age populations. The Commission believes 

federal agencies, for the most part, are already well sensitized to the opportunities in this area, but it 

should be carefully monitored by the Department of Education and other agencies. 

2.D. Older populations are a disadvantaged population. 

The Pew Internet & American Life Project55 mentioned earlier found that "Most of the strongest 

Internet holdouts are older Americans, who are fretful about the online world and often don't believe it 

 

55 [Insert citation here and where mentioned earlier; add to bibliography.] 
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can bring them any benefits." More specifically, 43% of all adults not online are seniors who are 60 or 

over.

56

At the same time, articles in newspapers and magazines record tales of older citizens using the Internet 

to exchange email with grandchildren, learn more about health care and other issues of interest, and 

chat with peers. So it would appear that despite initial suspicions, in fact, senior citizens represent a 

fast-growing segment of Internet users. Bottom line, online access extends across the whole 

population spectrum and continues to expand its reach exponentially. 

2.E. The visually impaired are a disadvantaged population. 

Some information specialists are working together to make Adobe PDF files more easily accessible to 

the blind and low vision computer users, and it is hoped that the next release of the Adobe Acrobat 

Reader will contain this feature. 

2.F. The hearing impaired are a disadvantaged population. 

Several of the associations serving the hearing impaired (as well as other disadvantaged populations) 

strongly recommend that these populations go to the Access Board's website to read about the rules for 

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Electronic and Information Technology provisions.57 The Access 

Board is an independent Federal agency devoted to accessibility for people with disabilities. It 

operates with about 30 staff and a governing board of representatives from Federal departments and 

public members appointed by the President. Key responsibilities of the Board include: 

• developing and maintaining accessibility requirements for the built environment, transit vehicles, 

telecommunications equipment, and for electronic and information technology; 

• providing technical assistance and training on these guidelines and standards; and 

• enforcing accessibility standards for federally funded facilities.58

2.G. Small businesses and sole proprietorships are a disadvantaged population. 

While there is some disagreement among federal agencies as to how far the government could and 

should go in providing special assistance tools to help sole proprietorships and small businesses not 

only find and utilize needed government information, but comply with regulatory paperwork 

requirements as a way to reduce their burden, the Commission believes in a very real sense that sole 

proprietorships and small businesses are a disadvantaged population that should be afforded special 

priority just as special assistance is given to the above disadvantaged groups. Government information 

is a key to helping them compete and continue to grow, prosper, and provide increased job 

opportunities. 

2.H. There are other disadvantaged and special populations. 

Other disadvantaged populations include a wide variety of impairments not otherwise covered in the 

preceding sections. In every case there is an "information literacy gap" experienced by these special 

and disadvantaged groups, meaning the gap between knowing and not knowing what government 

 

56 [Insert citation] 

57 The Rehabilitation Act material is available at http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/status.htm. 58 This description of the Access Board is from http://www.access-board.gov/indexes/aboutindex.htm. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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information exists, what information is available to them, how to search for that information, how to 

access that information in formats and mediums most useful to them (oftentimes special formats and 

mediums expressly designed to compensate for their disadvantage), and how to utilize that information 

once retrieved. 

Empowering the disadvantaged by increasing their opportunities for improving their information 

literacy skills should be a constant beacon guiding government's efforts to enhance the value of its 

public information resources. Strategies for accomplishing that not only include developing and 

providing specialized hardware and software such as Braille equipment for the blind, nor only 

enacting legislation such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, but the day to day vigilance of 

agency officials to the consequences of their actions, both positive and negative, for the disadvantaged. 

In some cases language problems, both with immigrants as well as with some Native American 

populations, are the most serious barriers, and underscore the interrelationship between the "four 

R's"óreading, writing, and arithmetic, and computer and information literacy. 

Finally, it must be remembered that in some disadvantaged populations, such as those on Indian 

reservations, many individuals are without even basic human infrastructure service needs, such as 

toilets, telephones and clean water, much less computers. 

2.I. Agency guidelines for disadvantaged individuals are not yet implemented. 

In its e-Gov agency survey OMB found that agencies uniformly supported web access guidelines for 

the disabled. However, most agencies requested that deadlines for meeting accessibility standards 

coincide with the adoption of standards, availability of commercial off-the-shelf products, and agency 

appropriations. 

3. FINDINGS RELATING TO ACADEMIC, RESEARCH, AND RELATED INSTITUTIONS 

3.A. Return on investment in government information as a public good is highly valued by 

academic and research institutions. 

The federal government funds a substantial portion of all scientific and technical research. This 

research helps the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in medicine, science, and technology. Failure to 

widely disseminate research results means that this valuable asset remains unused and unproductive. 

Inaccessible research results cannot be transformed into products and processes that contribute to 

economic growth and productivity. In spite of the efforts of the federal STI organizations, NTIS 

estimates that approximately 25% of reports that should be submitted to them under the American 

Technology Preeminence Act are not submitted, and are therefore not available for current and future 

use. While no precise numbers are available, the Government Printing Office also estimates that there 

are a significant number of "fugitive documents" that come under the statutory mandate for inclusion 

in its Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), 

but are never provided to GPO for dissemination.59

 

Scientific and technological development does not just happen. Scientists and engineers rely on a wide 

body of previous and current work to provide the foundation for their work. In addition, they learn 

about new methodologies, successful and unsuccessful experiments and processes. Scientific and 

 

59 The need for a safety net is discussed in Finding 5.L. 
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technological advances often take years. Chemists, physicists, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, 

and others depend on work done in the past. This work must be archived, made available for access, 

and be preserved, so that we can continue to learn from the past. J. Robert Oppenheimer in his book, 

Uncommon Sense, stated, "The History of Science is rich in examples of the fruitfulness of bringing 

two sets of techniques, two sets of ideas developed in separate contexts for the pursuit of new truth, 

into touch with one another." 

Today, some areas of science are becoming highly interdisciplinary. For example, the development of 

new building materials involves chemists, mechanical engineers, structural engineers, and materials 

scientists. Development of artificial limbs may involve mechanical engineers working with orthopedic 

surgeons and materials scientists.

4. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóGOVERNMENT-WIDE 

POLICY LEADERSHIP AND OVERSIGHT 

4.A. The Federal Government's Role Is Critical In Formulating and Overseeing Public 

Information Dissemination Policy 

Federal agencies are now caught between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea. 

On the one hand, they are being correctly congratulated for the superb initiative they 

have shown in mounting more and more of their information resources on their 

websites, and making their information products available and accessible in creative 

and innovative ways. On the other hand, they are also being correctly criticized for the 

absence of effective internal and external coordination of their policy development 

and implementation as those policies pertain to the electronic publishing, permanent 

availability of holdings, effective search and retrieval of their information, 

authentication of their document images, and related matters. 

As the Commission stated in the above prefatory materials, the government's movement toward e-Gov 

is a highly commendable initiative. However, for the benefits and values of the World Wide Web and 

the Internet to be fully realized and exploited, the federal government cannot abdicate its governmentwide policy leadership and oversight role in developing and enforcing policies, standards, and 

guidelines for: 

• Electronic publishing; 

• Permanent public information availability and accessibility; 

• Permanent records retention; 

• Integrated information life cycle management; 

• Preservation of government Information to guard against the obsolescence of storage and handling 

mediums and formats; 

• Authentication of official agency electronic information; and 

• Other purposes. 

The federal government plays a strategic role in creating, collecting, organizing, and providing 

government information for the public. For example, the government has taken the lead to establish 

some landmark, highly effective public information resources in past years. They will always stand as 

beacons to guide the development of similar resources in the future, not only at the federal level, but 
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also at lower levels of government, and even in foreign countries. These include, for example, the 

databases, clearinghouses, specialized information services for the disadvantaged, electronic 

information services, and other public information resources of the: 

• Department of Agriculture (USDA); 

• Department of Defense, primarily through the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC); 

• Department of Energy (DOE); 

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); 

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); 

• National Library of Medicine (NLM); 

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); 

• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); 

• National Technical Information Service (NTIS); 

• Government Printing Office, including the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and the 

Superintendent of Documents' Sales Program; and 

• Major portals for government information including FedWorld, GPO Access, Library of Congress 

Thomas, StatUSA, and now FirstGov. 

All of these resources have made it easier for researchers, students, job seekers, individuals with health 

problems, and innumerable others, to find and use needed government information. However, much 

work remains to be done. 

Federal agencies are now caught between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, 

they are being correctly congratulated for the superb initiative they have shown in mounting more and 

more of their information resources on their websites, and making their information products available 

and accessible in creative and innovative ways. On the other hand, they are also being correctly 

criticized for the absence of effective internal and external coordination of their policy development 

and implementation as those policies pertain to the electronic publishing, permanent availability of 

holdings, effective search and retrieval of their information, authentication of their document images, 

and related matters. 

The agencies obviously don't like this dilemma. Existing government-wide policy leadership and 

oversight machinery is simply inadequate to cope with the policy and guidance challenges confronting 

the entire government. There needs to be a single, government-wide focal point for policy 

development, coordination, and oversight, for the government as a whole, and within each branch. We 

will have much more to say about this finding in the following Conclusions and Recommendation 

sections. 

4.B. The time is ripe for the Congress to direct a review of the hundreds of laws that have been 

enacted since the birth of the republic, for the purpose of assessing the cumulative, overall 

impacts and effectiveness of the statutory foundations for public information resources 

availability; the current overall statutory foundation for public access to government's 

information is too heavily tilted toward providing a legal framework for adversarial 

proceedings, and too lightly oriented to regarding government information as a national asset 

needed by all Americans. 
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The Commission finds that when one looks at the two major cornerstones of the 

public access laws, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act, they are 

essentially legal frameworks for adversarial proceedings. That is to say, the rights of 

government are pitted against the rights of citizens. What is completely overlooked in 

this construct is the idea that government's data, information, and knowledge 

resources are themselves a strategic national asset. This is a missing "building block" 

in the public information dissemination statutory foundation. 

Since the birth of the Nation, Congress has enacted hundreds of laws with provisions of one kind or 

another requiring federal agencies to establish some kind of public information resource.60 These laws 

fall into several different major categories, and the Commission has identified some illustrative 

examples in each category.61 For the most part, during the early stages of bill drafting, the rather wellestablished processes of legislative history review, combined with the subject matter expertise of 

knowledgeable experts in the subject matters in question (e.g. environmental law, energy law) succeed 

in identifying most unnecessary overlap and duplication, and both substantive and legal 

inconsistencies with preceding legislation. Nevertheless, the Congress has not utilized the cumulative 

public information laws database for the purpose of eliminating contradictory policies in operating 

information dissemination programs or for assessing how the government's overall public information 

dissemination program could be strengthened, especially in the light of the Internet. The Commission 

could be directed by Congress to undertake this analysis, but would prefer to do so with the assistance 

of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the National 

Research Council.62

 

Meanwhile, the Commission finds that when one looks at the two major cornerstones of the public 

access laws, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act, they are essentially legal 

frameworks for adversarial proceedings. That is to say, the rights of government are pitted against the 

rights of citizens. What is completely overlooked in this construct is the idea that government's data, 

information, and knowledge resources are themselves a strategic national asset. This is a missing 

"building block" in the public information dissemination statutory foundation. 

4.C. The Federal government's public information resources management obligations are not 

fulfilled merely by website postings. 

Despite statements and inferences to the contrary, just because federal agencies are, very 

commendably, making such massive quantities of government information electronically available to 

the public, much more easily accessible, and for free in most cases, on their websites, does not in any 

way mitigate or alter, much less eliminate, their legal and ethical responsibilities to ensure the: 

• Permanent public availability of government information for the public; 

• Preservation of government information, notwithstanding the continuing obsolescence of formats 

and mediums in which it was originally created and is stored and handled; 

• Permanent records retention of government information notwithstanding the ephemeral nature of 

e-mail messages, website postings, and other electronic information; 

• An efficient, effective, and easy-to-understand means for the public to ascertain the authenticity of 

official government information; 

 

60 Appendix 32 is a compilation of Federal statutes pertaining to public information dissemination passed during the 105, 

106th and 107th Congresses. 61 The categories are available in Appendix 13 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/statcat.html. 

62 The need for such an analysis is discussed in Conclusion 4 and Recommendation 15. 
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• The continuous integrated life cycle management of government information from creation to 

disposition; 

• Adequate safeguards be developed and put in place to guard against the inadvertent or fraudulent 

disclosure of public information held in trust by the government for private individuals, 

businesses, and others; and 

• Protection of sensitive national security and foreign information. 

What is "missing" is an overall, information life cycle framework for meeting these requirements in an 

integrated, "single, one stop" fashion. When agency officials create new information (e.g. whether a 

publication, an e-mail message, a report, or some other document), or receive information from 

another office inside or outside the agency, certain statutory and agency-mandated requirements must 

be fulfilled. By using a systems approach to dealing with this problem, the Commission believes the 

enormous frustrations faced by individual agency officials, agency management officials, and the 

government-wide information services and information management mission agencies such as GPO, 

NTIS, and NARA, can be substantially alleviated. A key idea the Commission recommends is the 

development of a fully integrated, Information Life Cycle Management software module.63

Admittedly, OMB Circular A-130 does call for the integrated life cycle planning for information, and 

outlines objectives for that planning process. However, the requirement fails to stress the linking of 

that concept to the broader goals of information resources management. Instead, the Circular seems to 

exacerbate the problem of dealing with an intangible resource such as "information" because 

management's focus for at least four decades has thought of "information resources" as primarily 

hardware and software. Yet, the Circular's policy framework emphasizes both content and technology 

under the information management heading. However, in the planning context, the bias is toward 

information systems, rather than use of the information content. 

4.D. The federal government should make government information openly available in readily 

reproducible form without any constraints on subsequent uses. 

This general principles that the 1982 NCLIS Public Sector/Private Sector Task Force first articulated, 

have stood the test of time, and the current study reaffirms the soundness of these principles 

notwithstanding the dramatic changes that have occurred in the interim because of the tremendous use 

of electronic information handling technologies. Several of these key general principles are ones on 

which the Commission relies in making the case for continuing the mission of NTIS regardless of its 

federal organizational locus. Specific reasons for NTIS, and the other central information services and 

information management entities with government-wide missions to continue in this critical role, even 

in the face of the dramatic increases in agency website utilization for public information, are covered 

in greater detail below in Section 7 dealing specifically with NTIS. 

The core idea here is that the public interest is best served by a diversity of sources and channels for 

access to government information. This is reaffirmed by the requirement of Section 3506(d)(1)(A) of 

the of the Paperwork Reduction Act that agencies shall "(1) ensure that the public has timely and 

equitable access to the agency's public information, including ensuring such access through (A) 

encouraging a diversity of public and private sources for information based on government public 

information." Agencies should not refrain from valueñadded information dissemination services when 

that is consistent with their missions. However, agencies may not frustrate private sector 

 

63 This concept is explained in more detail in the White Paper available in Appendix 12 and at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/infolife.html. 
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redissemination activities by imposing restrictions or by limiting private sector access to electronic 

formats. Commenting on the report of Panel 4, Henry H. Perritt, Jr., of the Chicago-Kent College of 

Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, said "The most important things to avoid are governmentsponsored monopolies, in which agencies enter into arrangements with private entities to lock up 

government information through copyright or copyright-like arrangements. Title 17's prohibition on 

copyright of federal information should be honored broadly." The Commission strongly concurs. 

4.E. Certain key necessary information preparation tasks required before posting electronic 

documents to agency websites are inherently governmental functions (public goods) and should 

be budgeted for, and financed using congressionally appropriated funds, not financed by 

indirect cost recovery tools such as user fees. 

In its earlier report this year to the Congress dealing specifically with the planned NTIS closure, the 

Commission said that: 

The Congress (should) annually appropriate sufficient funds beginning in FY 2000 to 

finance that portion of legislatively mandated NTIS activities and services which are 

inherently governmental in natureÖ These activities and services include the orderly 

collection, organization, preservation of, and permanent public access to scientific and 

technical information of potential use to future generations of researchers." 

The current study has not caused the Commission to modify its stance in this regard. On the contrary, 

the current study's findings buttress the above position in even stronger terms. 

Certain costs incurred by any central information service and information management agency with a 

government-wide mission (not just NTIS) that are inherently governmental in nature include: 

collection or acquisition, processing using scanning and microfiching and archiving, indexing and 

abstracting and cataloging, creating and maintaining the database itself for Internet access, mounting 

the full text of reports online, and maintaining the historical collection of files. In some instances these 

services are provided by department central information service organizations, such as the Office of 

Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in the Department of Energy or the Defense Technical 

Information Service (DTIC) in the Department of Defense, which feed their non-classified information 

into NTIS already acquired, indexed, and stored. The expenses that must be incurred to defray the 

costs of these activities are absolutely necessary to ensuring the accessibility of the information; they 

cannot be avoided, nor can they be "automated" as if by magic. They are human-intensive and require 

the expertise of experienced STI information professionals. 

An information facility such as NTIS cannot "acquire" (the technically precise term) an official agency 

R&D report information product if it is not in appropriate form. Moreover, the product must be 

adequately described, such descriptions must be in a proper database, that database must be online, 

and the full text must be online, and it must be archived. If these conditions are not met, the 

information is not identifiable and therefore not useable. 

Additionally, these costs are each completely independent of the specific user. They are necessary for 

the access in general, not for the individual. They represent capital investments in the means for 

providing access, not the costs in serving any specific individual. 

There are some exceptions to these inherently governmental expenses that are discussed below in 

Section 7. 
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Finally, there is room for consolidation, simplification and avoiding unnecessary overlap and 

duplication among agencies with central information services and information management functions, 

as will be pointed out below. 

4.F. The cost of disseminating information to the public is neither free to the taxpayer nor can it 

be buried as an overhead cost, but, rather, should be considered openly as an essential and 

integral cost of an agency's doing business. 

The cost of disseminating information to the public is usually overlooked by agencies 

... Indeed, many Internet gurus say, "the cost of dissemination is an outmoded 

concept." The Commission completely disagrees with this view. 

The cost of disseminating information to the public is usually overlooked by agencies when they 

prepare detailed project and program plans, enter into contracts, and prepare their annual budget plans 

for the President to review and consolidate, and eventually the Congress to appropriated funds for. 

Indeed, many Internet gurus say, "the cost of dissemination is an outmoded concept." The Commission 

completely disagrees with this view. 

The penalty of that viewpoint is that too often the public is short-changed by either not receiving the 

information at all, or receiving only some of the information generated. This is particularly critical in 

the instance of information generated as a result of the government's awarding contracts to private 

contractors for undertaking R&D work, but it is equally true of contracts with the private sector in 

other sectors, including education, the environment, energy, national defense, and so on. 

Disseminating information to the public should be elevated to the status of a line item 

in both individual agency budgets, and the overall President's budget. There must be 

an information dissemination budget, just as there is an information collection budget. 

While this action alone cannot ensure adequate funding, burying public information 

dissemination expenses in overhead accounts is completely inappropriate and counterproductive in the Information Age. 

In some cases the dissemination of government information to the public is an absolutely critical 

requirement (as in the case of R&D contracts). There are other instances, however, where this 

requirement is less critical. However, the example of the Department of the Navy's Diving Manual is 

instructive in this regard. The Navy initially intended that that product would be used exclusively by 

Seabees and other Navy personnel in official government diving and salvage operations, but citizendivers, diving instructors, and others soon saw the efficacies of using the excellent information 

contained in the Manual for general purposes, especially in training and certifying young people in 

Scuba diving and related recreational activities. 

Disseminating information to the public should be elevated to the status of a line item in both 

individual agency budgets, and the overall President's budget. There must be an information 

dissemination budget, just as there is an information collection budget. While this action alone cannot 

ensure adequate funding, burying public information dissemination expenses in overhead accounts is 

completely inappropriate and counter-productive in the Information Age. 
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In fact, the Commission believes that the Congress should reserve at least three one--

hundredths of one percent (.03%) of all funds appropriated for research, development, 

demonstration and comparable government and government-funded activities to fund 

the dissemination of the results of such activities through the proposed Public 

Information Resources Administration (PIRA). This would ensure that $300,000 

was available for identification, acquisition, cataloging and indexing, and 

dissemination for every $1 billion spent on research. 

Many statutes reviewed by the Commission as part of this study authorize, and even mandate, the 

dissemination of research results, best practices and model programs as an integral part of the 

program. Yet, the funding for this dissemination is rarely identified as a specific cost in either the 

authorizing or the appropriations language. The Congress must recognize through authorizing statutes 

and appropriations that government-funded research and development are incomplete without 

dissemination of the results. In fact, the Commission believes that the Congress should reserve at least 

three one-hundredths of one percent (.03%) of all funds appropriated for research, development, 

demonstration and comparable government and government-funded activities to fund the 

dissemination of the results of such activities through the proposed Public Information Resources 

Administration (PIRA) and other STI dissemination programs. This would ensure that $300,000 was 

available for identification, acquisition, cataloging and indexing, and dissemination for every $1 

billion spent on research. This is a modest investment to ensure the proactive dissemination of the 

research results. 64

4.G. A comprehensive, authoritative online inventory of publicly available government 

information holdings is essential, and complements individual agency inventories. 

An online inventory of publicly available government information holdings is essential, and 

complements individual agency inventories. A recent agency survey by OMB supports this idea, 

"provided that first, the information was restricted to public information, and second, any effort had 

adequate funding." The OMB report went on to say that some of the agencies surveyed suggested that 

new standards for information posting might be necessary, and others recommended that nay new 

effort take into consideration past attempts at government information inventories. The Commission's 

research into these past attempts convinces it that they should not be embarked upon unless and until 

they have top Legislative and Executive endorsement. To promulgate the requirement with lukewarm 

endorsement is a recipe for failure. 

4.H. Absence of government-wide detailed guidance is hampering interagency information 

sharing. 

The main body of the OMB Circular A-130 is concerned primarily with information management and 

"(t)he free flow of information between the government" and not information technology (IT). The 

Circular correctly recognizes that exploitation of the value of information is not an information 

technology issueóit's an information resources management issue. The circular points out that IT is 

not an end in itself, but rather is only one set of resources that can improve the effectiveness and 

efficiency of federal program delivery. Human resources, financial resources, and property and 

equipment resources are also all important and needed. 

 

64 In FY 2001, $85 billion is proposed for federal R&D funding. Reserving three one-hundredths of one percent of that R&D 

budget would provide approximately $25.5 million for public good functions necessary to ensure the dissemination of the 

research results. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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Unfortunately, none of the Circular's "Basic Considerations and Assumptions," however, addresses 

interagency sharing of information. In fact intra-agency and interagency sharing of government 

information is specifically excluded from the definition of the term dissemination in the Circular. 

Sharing of information systems, not information content is the focus of the policy requirement. 

Notwithstanding, paragraph 7k of the Circular, "Considerations and Assumptions," does state, "The 

open and efficient exchange of scientific and technical government information, subject to applicable 

national security controls and the proprietary rights of others, fosters excellence in scientific research 

and effective use of federal research and development funds." 

Ironically, in another section of the Circular, (8(a)(d)), agencies are directed to "Seek to satisfy new 

information needs through interagency or intergovernmental sharing of information, or through 

commercial sources, where appropriate, before creating or collecting new information." However, this 

is a somewhat negative construct, not a truly positive construct. A more positive construct would 

encourage interagency sharing of information even if no new information needs were identifiable, on 

the grounds that most of the time one agency simply does not even know what another agency has, so 

how can it ask for it or benefit from it? The concept of "knowledge diffusion" is a much more positive 

concept that should be incorporated into the Circular's revisions, so that interagency sharing of 

information resources is seen as a part of an overall government knowledge diffusion goal. 

It has long been recognized that information needs and uses can never be predicted in advance with 

accuracy. Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey once remarked that he often feared that the 

answers needed to solve the challenge of dealing with cancer lie hidden, long forgotten, in some data 

vault somewhere, uncataloged, unindexed, and unabstracted. Certainly immediate needs that led to the 

information's creation or collection in the first place can be predicted or the agency and the Congress 

would not have funded its creation, but the potential uses of information very often materialize and 

manifest themselves only long after the information was produced. Like any resource, by amplifying 

and magnifying information uses beyond initial expectations, the government can multiply the 

information's value many-fold. 

In short, most of the interagency efforts to share government information among federal agencies have 

been the result of informal and collegial efforts within communities of mutual interest, not because 

they have been directed as part of a federal information policy. Obviously, government interfaces with 

the general public, e.g. NTIS, GPO's Superintendent of Documents, are also available to federal 

agencies. These services, however, may not fulfill the information needs of specific communities. In 

many cases federal agencies have no central information content management organization and thus 

no mechanism to promote sharing. 

4.I. Safeguarding sensitive, proprietary and nonpublic information are legitimate barriers to 

interagency sharing.

Information sharing among federal agencies does not mean that all federal information is available to 

the general public. There are many statutes that restrict federal employees from sharing information 

not released to the public. Among these are: 

• The Procurement Integrity Act (41 U.S.C. 423) restricts the release of source selection and 

contractor bid and proposal information; 

• The Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. 1905) makes it a crime to improperly release contractor trade 

secrets and other confidential information outside the Government because improper release of 

data could result in claims from the owner for breach of contract or loss of business; 
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• The Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. 552a) restricts release of personal information about individuals, such 

as for private marketing purposes; and 

• Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (5 U.S.C. 552) as Amended by Public Law 104-231, 110 

Stat. 3048, includes several exemptions relating to release of federal information to the public.65

4.J. There are budgetary and organizational barriers to interagency sharing of government 

information. 

In addition to legal and policy constraints, barriers, and obstacles, there are significant technical, 

budgetary, and organizational challenges to the active intergovernmental dissemination and sharing of 

government information content. The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee 

(PITAC) reported in 1999 [Information Technology Research: Investing in Our Future] that such 

technical challenges developing significant improvements in systems and methods for accessing 

dataóincluding high performance data storage and tools to locate and present information, and 

developing reliable, secure networks and software to deliver and protect critical data needed to be 

addressed. The PITAC charged its Panel on Transforming Government to identify key technical 

challenges and develop a long-range technology-based strategy to harness the power of advanced 

information systems to make government's stores of information and vital services easily accessible to 

and usable by all U.S. Citizens. 

While the Panel's findings, in its report, Transforming Access to Government through Information 

Technology, address the issues from the perspective of public access, they are translatable into 

equivalent concerns for active intergovernmental dissemination and sharing of government 

information content. In terms of finding, sharing, and using government information resident in an 

agency, other government agencies are often no better situated than the public. 

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) Panel on Transforming 

Government said in its 1999 report that: 

"Major technological barriers prevent citizens from easily accessing government information 

resources... Today government information is often unavailable, inadequate, out of date, and 

needlessly complicated." 

In addition, the Panel noted that: 

"[S]tovepiping of both congressional and executive review processes causes stovepiping of plans and 

programs. The Government Performance Results Act (GPRA), for example, while valuable in 

requiring agencies to set goals against which they can be held accountable, tends to hinder agency 

interdependencies in plans and programs because no agency will create a GPRA objective that 

depends on budgeting and operational success in another agency." 

4.K. Sunk Costs of Obsolete Information and Communication Hardware, Software, Systems, 

and Network Investments 

In his comments on the draft report, Terry Ballard, an automation librarian at Qunnipiac College in 

Hamden, Connecticut, pointed out that the move from CD-ROM, paper, and microform to the Web 

has come during eight years of economic growth, "but the day is coming when the economy will pack 

 

65 The nine FOIA exemptions are listed earlier in this report in the section entitled A Working Definition of Public 

Information. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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ó 56 ó 

its bags and head South. Once libraries purchase these products and redesign their work flow to 

accommodate them, they can't go back to doing things the old way." 

Mr. Ballard makes the case for planning and budgetary guidance and policies that take into account the 

enormous sunk costs involved as a result of the continual replacement of older information and 

communication technologies with newer ones. Libraries, archives, museums, and records depositories 

should not be punished for "bad mistakes" in these investments. They must be treated as nonrecoverable sunk costs in most cases. 

4.L. Lack of uniformly prescribed standards for determining authenticity of official agency 

electronic information creates mistrust and fosters public disillusionment in utilizing 

government information 

To date, the most common means to guarantee of the authenticity of official government information 

has been reliance on source credibility. Increasing electronic dissemination of information by federal 

government agencies, however, highlights the need for agencies to take added measures to assure the 

public that specific electronic informationóespecially that contained on government websitesóhas 

not only been created, validated, and initially provided by the federal government, but to understand 

which information carries the imprimatur of an official agency promulgation. The growing 

decentralization of agency electronic information dissemination activities, coupled with the ease of 

tampering or misrepresenting digital records, are likely to increase the focus on authentication 

procedures in the near future. 

Despite the lack of agency application of sophisticated digital watermarking or authentication 

technology, public concerns that information provided by government in electronic formats may not 

be authentic have been kept relatively minimal. The American public continues to rely on a trusted 

source for such information, e.g. an established agency website. This is well earned trust that should 

not be betrayed. 

The federal government must assume the primary role of assuring authenticity. Several challenges 

must be overcome, however. Although there are some agencies working on methods to ensure 

authentication, no standard procedures have as yet been adequately analyzed, tested and translated into 

sound overall government policy and guidance. A system like Fist Gov does nothing to overcome this 

inadequacy. Second, government information is produced by so many agencies in all three branches of 

government that any attempt at consistent application of standards or new technologies to provide a 

digital watermark or other types of digital rights management controls is almost impossibleónot to 

mention the threat that employing such technologies may likely interfere with unrestricted access to 

and re-dissemination of government information. Third, technology that would provide some sort of 

automatic electronic authentication is still in the developmental stages. Applying such technologies 

would be costly or technologically challengingóboth for government and the public. 

As we advance further into era of e-government, with its concomitant and significantly increased 

public need to obtain government information electronically, concerns about what constitutes 

authentic government information provided federal agencies will also grow. If a technological solution 

is chosen, the greatest challenge will be to ensure that the public has the means by which to access the 

information with minimal encumbrance, so that there is no threat to the unfettered flow of government 

information. 

4.M. Central official scientific and technical information policy and oversight executive branch 

authority never established. 
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The intent was to establish a coordinated, consistent framework for obtaining STI. 

This included the establishment of a standard information categorization system 

known as the COSATI standardóthe code for the cataloging of technical information. 

This "standard" is still used by DTIC, NTIS and some commercial organizations. 

However, the central authority has never been established. 

In 1962 Dr. Jerome Wiesner, Science Advisor to the President, appointed a special task force to 

examine federal STI programs. The task force made two major organizational recommendations to 

improve the flow of STI within the federal government. One was a central authority to define the 

objectives of government information programs; to plan, develop, and guide organization of 

government information activities; and to develop criteria (including financial) for effective operation 

of government-wide information system. The second recommendation was that each research and 

development agency of the federal government should set up an office exercising agency-wide 

direction and control of information activities." 

The then Office of Science and Technology (now the Office of Science and Technology Policy 

(OSTP)), an agency by law designated to coordinate and provide oversight in the effective 

management and dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI), assigned a fulltime staff 

member to information systems and an interagency committee, the Committee on Scientific and 

Technical Information (COSATI) was established in 1963. The recommendation that each R&D 

agency establish an organization responsible for management of the Department's STI Program was 

largely implemented. 

COSATI was created to develop among the Executive Agencies a coordinated, but decentralized, STI 

system for scientists, engineers and other technical professions. Additionally, it sought to foster an 

improved national system for handling STI and it was made clear that if the blueprint didn't include 

the private sector there was little chance of an orderly growth of a national information system. 

COSATI became the national focal point for coordinating the development of a national network of 

independently operating but at the same time, cooperating STI systems. The key factor responsible for 

the success of COSATI was its organizational placement in the Executive Office of the Presidentó

essentially above the level of the federal agencies themselves. The central authority was not intended 

to be a central operating activity. The intent was to establish a coordinated, consistent framework for 

obtaining STI. This included the establishment of a standard information categorization system known 

as the COSATI standardóthe code for the cataloging of technical information. This "standard" is still 

used by DTIC, NTIS and some commercial organizations. However, the central authority has never 

been established. 

Indeed a dramatic decline began from the high level interest in management and transfer of scientific 

and technical information that was the hallmark of the 1960's science policy. The result was, by the 

mid-1970s, the disestablishment of the COSATI and the virtual elimination of OSTP staff associated 

with STI systems. Beginning about this time and continuing through the mid-1980s leaders of the STI 

facilities in major R&D agencies met regularly but informally to discuss and, if possible, take action to 

address problems associated with the cooperative management and transfer of federal STI. These 

meetings led to the formal establishment of CENDI in 1985. Details of the role of CENDI appear 

below under Findings Relating to the Federal GovernmentóInteragency Groups. 
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5. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóINDIVIDUAL FEDERAL 

AGENCIES WITH OPERATING MISSIONS 

5.A. The basic value of agency websites as prime public information dissemination vehicles is 

unquestioned, but qualified. 

I think it is important to recognize that despite the tremendous potential and, in many 

cases, compelling advantages of electronic information, the reliable and flexible 

information infrastructure necessary to support a predominantly electronic Federal 

Depository Library Program is not yet in placeónot in the federal agencies, not in the 

Internet and supporting networks, not at the libraries, and not with the public at large. 

Dan O'Mahony 

Government Documents Librarian, Brown University 

All of the agencies the Commission surveyed in its limited survey designed to try and pinpoint key 

public information dissemination policy and program issues recognized the value of the web in 

helping federal agencies to make their information publicly available, but indicated that the 

government still had a long way to go to create a federal information infrastructure that was fully 

responsive. The agencies also felt strongly that information paid for by the taxpayers must be 

accessible within the context of legal restrictions on its release. However, they asserted that a more 

aggressive program management is needed to ensure that the public receives effective and complete 

dissemination of, or access to, agency information. One agency suggested that a requirement should be 

imposed for the creation and maintenance of an authoritative and comprehensive listing of all 

available information on every agency website. At the same time, many agencies felt that any new 

requirements imposed should carefully evaluate the impact of workload and staff capacity to meet the 

workloads or burdensome and unreasonable expectations or deadlines. 

A more aggressive program management is needed to ensure that the public receives 

effective and complete dissemination of, or access to, agency information. 

Dan O'Mahony, Brown University government documents librarian, in his testimony before the Senate 

Committee on Rules and Administration on "Public Access to government Information in the 21st

Century," held May 22, 1996, said: 

I think it is important to recognize that despite the tremendous potential and, in many 

cases, compelling advantages of electronic information, the reliable and flexible 

information infrastructure necessary to support a predominantly electronic Federal 

Depository Library Program is not yet in placeónot in the federal agencies, not in the 

Internet and supporting networks, not at the libraries, and not with the public at 

large.66

5.B. Additional steps to strengthen existing government-wide policy and procedural guidance 

need to be taken by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. 

Several agencies suggested that additional guidance on implementation of the e-FOIA from the 

Department of Justice is needed. Also, from the Office of Management and Budget, strengthened 

guidance is needed on the Privacy Act as well. The reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act in 

2001 offers yet a third opportunity to improve government-wide policy leadership and guidance. In 

 

66 [Insert citation] 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

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addition, better guidance is needed from government central oversight agencies on web posting and 

content management (which is dealt with in the following section). 

Current legislative and executive mandates were initiated largely for a paper-based world, but a great 

deal of agency information is either: 

• not available as an electronic version; 

• nor are there any plans to ever make the information available in electronic form, for many 

reasons including: there are simply too many graphics and visual materials to make digitizing a 

cost-effective alternative; there are simply too many scientific and technical data attachments; the 

material is simply too old to be able to decipher the document because the physical substrate 

medium is beyond "refreshing"; and many other reasons; 

• is incomplete; 

• is inaccurate; 

• is untimely because it is outdated; 

• is not officially recognizable (authenticatable) as being a "certified, true copy" by the agency; 

• is unreliable (e.g. the content is replaced or overwritten without notice); or 

• far more difficult to use in electronic form than the paper or pre-electronic forms ever were, 

because of the vagaries of specialized formats or mediums, or proprietary software requirements. 

Then there are problems with privacy and security mandates. At least one agency in the Commission's 

special survey of agency practices sees the need to review existing requirements with the objective of 

strengthening the government's ability to address security and privacy concerns associated with the 

aggregation of unclassified information made possible and increasingly easy to handle and access by 

electronic means such as the World Wide Web. 

Another agency surveyed suggested that federal libraries should be mandated to disseminate agency 

information and copies of everything printed (or issued electronically) should be forwarded to the 

library for cataloging for later retrieval. In some instances, issues/restrictions imposed on delivery of 

information on the web involved security considerations. Security, in particular, is in many cases 

overriding issues of public access and the free flow of information. Another challenge relates to the 

"dot.com" links, which the public does not always understand are not agency endorsements of a 

particular set of information, but have been selected to meet specific agency needs. Libraries need to 

be able to apply their criteria for collection building to commercial and other sources. Technology 

should enhance libraries in their ability to disseminate information, not be an end to itself or place 

undue restrictions on what libraries do and do well in delivering content, selectivity and quality. 

The survey of agencies conduct as part of this assessment leads the Commission to conclude that 

NARA should establish policies and standards for archiving. Responding agencies said that NARA 

should be directed to receive CD-ROM, as well as files electronically transmitted to them, or they 

should designate the PDF or another file format as acceptable to them. Requiring 62,050 bpi tape, no 

extraneous characters, and 7-digit block factor is simply not acceptable in today's environment.67

5.C. Many agencies have established standing public information dissemination policies and 

programs, but there are wide differences among them, and they could and should be 

standardized to a greater degree without sacrificing individual agency differences or stifling 

agency initiative. 

 

67 The survey results are available in Appendix 26 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/nclismsg.html. 
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As noted above, the Commission surveyed a dozen or so federal agencies as a part of this study, 

asking them about their public information policies, programs, and practices. 68 Their responses were 

quite "upbeat." 

Within the last five years, significant strides have been made in the dissemination of government 

information in electronic format. Agencies are convinced of the advantages both for accessibility and 

availability and the resultant economic, effectiveness, and efficiency gains, as well as programmatic 

gains. Information provided to the public is more timely when in electronic format, and the posting of 

rules and regulations requiring public comment provide a quick and easy means of transmitting 

comments within the review period. Filing of information required for permits, licenses, and the like, 

can often be done electronically and, in fact, will be required under the Government Paperwork 

Elimination Act (GPEA). Those wishing to acquire information on a specific subject can search the 

catalogs of publications (printed and electronic) posted on the website, be told where to obtain the 

information, and in many instances request the information through e-mail to the site. 

All agency survey respondents reported having websites at the departmental and lower unit levels. The 

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts' Office of Public Affairs manages the AO website. The 

department/agency sites include policies and procedures, press releases, fact sheets, listings, and 

indexes of publications, and in some instances the full text of a publication, statistical, and other data 

sets. Respondents for the Departments of Labor and Treasury, and the U.S. Geological Survey 

specifically mentioned the requirement for appropriate review and clearance of information being 

placed on the web. Most respondents indicated the existence of policies and procedures for the web, 

although only the Indian Health Services, the Departments of Defense and Treasury, and the AO 

indicated coverage for adding, changing, and deleting information.69

The Electronic Freedom of Information Act (e-FOIA) appears to have impacted agencies heavily, in 

that several agencies reported indexes and search capabilities for use by the public in FOIA Reading 

Rooms. The Indian Health Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs refer to their e-FOIA 

Reading Rooms, though they do not specifically refer to the e-FOIA itself. 

Only the Department of Defense and the Smithsonian Institution report a comprehensive listing of 

electronically published information. In DoD information is included in the DoD Resource Locator. In 

other departments, the divisions, bureaus, and small organizational units maintain listings of their 

publications (print and electronic) on the web. 

5.D. There are many success stories in interagency sharing of government information. 

Despite the many statutory and policy barriers to interagency sharing, the Commission found many 

success stories for which the agencies must be given a good deal of credit. Here are just a few, and 

additional examples appear in Panel Two's Final Report.70

The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is a broad, collaborative program to provide 

increased access to data and information on the nation's biological resources. The NBII links diverse, 

high-quality biological databases, information products, and analytical tools maintained by NBII 

partners and other contributors in government agencies, academic institutions, non-government 

organizations, and private industry. Resource managers, scientists, educators, and the general public 

 

68 Ibid. 

69 Ibid. 

70 The final report from Panel 2 is available in Appendix 18 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel2.html. 
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use the NBII to answer a wide range of questions related to the management, use, or conservation of 

this nation's biological resources. 

Gray literature is foreign or domestic open source material that usually is available through specialized 

channels and may not enter normal channels or systems of publication, distribution, bibliographic 

control, or acquisition by booksellers or subscription agents. The GrayLIT Network makes the gray 

literature of U.S. federal agencies easily accessible over the Internet. It taps into the search engines of 

distributed gray literature collections, enabling the user to find information without first having to 

know the sponsoring agency. The GrayLIT Network is a comprehensive portal to federal gray 

literature. By offering a mode of communication for this hard-to-find class of literature, the GrayLIT 

Network enables convenient access by the American public to government information. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) provides public access to this research tool through GPO Access in 

partnership with the Government Printing Office. Federal agencies participating in this project are 

DOD/DTIC, DOE, EPA, and NASA. Participation will be expanding as the site develops. 

A new program area at Commerce assumed responsibility for bringing the Commerce Business Daily 

(CBD) into the 21st century. They solicited proposals from organizations to fulfill their vision of a 

new, electronic CBD that would serve the needs of the government procurement community and 

American business in the information age. The result was a partnership with the Government Printing 

Office to produce CBDNet. This popular database is available free to the public on the GPO Access 

system. 

The Commission is delighted to acknowledge that even as it was preparing this report for publication, 

a brand new Guide to Federal Publishing reached its desks. This new publication reflects the ideas 

and participation of the Interagency Council on Printing and Publications, the Federal Publishers 

Committee, the Government Printing Office, this Commission, the Consumer Information Center, 

NTIS, and the federal Webmasters Forum. It is a significant updating of prior guidance, taking into 

account the Web and Internet publishing. 

5.E. Statistical indicators of interagency information sharing show positive results. 

There are indicators that there is demand for government information both from inside government as 

well as outside. Namely, there is a demand from one federal organization for information generated by 

another government organization. For example, 

• NTIS is an access point for federal Scientific and Technical Information (STI). Annually NTIS 

disseminates:71

Paper Reports 75,000 

Microfiche/SRIM 750,000 

Subscriptions 175,000 

Best Selling Books 75,000 

Computer Products 20,000 

Audiovisuals 7,000 

Online/Distributions Millions 

• DTIC is an access point for the Defense Department, Defense contractors and grant recipients. In 

FY 1999 DTIC provided nearly 53,000 unclassified non-digital documents to 30 federal 

 

71 NTIS does not separately report government and non-government use; however, it is reasonable to assume that a 

significant percentage of NTIS use is by government organizations. 
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government organizations in the Executive and Legislative branches. While 45% of these 

documents went to NTIS and the Library of Congress for their collections serving both the Public 

and Private sectors, 55% went to federal agencies to meet local needs. In addition to these 

"physical" documents 2,410 digital documents were provided to other federal agencies. Delivery 

of digital documents will continue to grow, as more documents are made available electronically. 

• GPO is a public access point. During a recent 11-day period, GPO extracted the number of .gov 

and .mil addresses (excluding state and municipal .gov sites) referring users to GPO Access and 

the number of referrals and compared them to overall addresses referring and the total number of 

referrals. Some 635 distinct URLs referred users to the resources of GPO Access. This was 12 

percent of the total. In all 32,185 referrals were received from these federal government addresses, 

or a little more than 23 percent. 

5.F. Technical information handling standards and protocols are needed. 

With respect to technical information handling standards and protocols, a recent OMB survey of 

agency e-Gov plans indicated that: 

• Agencies agreed that common standards would be useful, especially in the XML area. However, 

agencies generally opposed mandating a common XML or "GXML" standard by statute because 

this would be slow and overly prescriptive. Furthermore, they contended that it has not been 

demonstrated that government information is so significantly different that a separate language 

(GXML) is needed; 

• In general agencies did not believe that new statutory direction is needed in the area of 

interoperability standards. A strong administrative effort, they contended, would yield the benefits 

of common standards in terms of interoperability while minimizing prescriptiveness. Agencies 

also noted that OMB policy requires relying on private sector standards wherever possible; and 

• In the authentication arena, agencies strongly favored an interoperable public key infrastructure 

(PKI) through which multiple agencies could rely on a single digital signature. A federal PKI 

Steering Committee is studying the "Bridge" as a means for accomplishing this objective. 

5.G. Agency policy guidance on public information resources availability, management, and 

dissemination is spotty, but with some notable exceptions. 

The Commission found that agency policy and procedural guidance laying out clearly what the 

agency's policies are for planning and managing its public information resources, making its 

information easily and cost-effectively available, findable, and accessible by the public is spotty with a 

few notable exceptions. One notable exception is the guidance laid out in Chapter 21 of the EPA IRM 

Policy Manual, entitled "Policy on public access to EPA information." This document clearly 

establishes: 

• Purpose; 

• Scope and applicability; 

• Background; 

• Authorities and references; 

• Policies (discussed below); 

• Responsibilities; 

• Definitions 
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Here are the EPA public information resources policies: 

• The Agency shall ensure that all information products created electronically be inventoried, stored, 

retrieved and, if appropriate, disseminated electronically. Agency contract agreements, grants, and 

interagency agreements shall require that deliverables be submitted in both paper and electronic 

format; 

• The Agency shall provide an array of information products and services targeted to the customer 

and determined to be cost-effective. These services may include simplified, integrated entry points 

for information seekers, such as information telephone service and a single Internet address 

connecting to all EPA-provided information; 

• All new and enhanced data systems, data collections, and databases shall be designed with 

consideration of the need to permit and facilitate public access to that information; 

• The Agency shall provide, where available, information on the uses and limits of each data 

product released to the public. The information provided may describe the Agency's purpose for 

collecting the data, the source of the data, the known quality of the data, the Agency's application 

of the data, and limitations or cautions in using the data. The Agency may issue a disclaimer 

against using the data for other than the purpose intended, because there is a high risk of 

misinterpretation of the information; 

• The Agency shall encourage and facilitate the integration of data and the exchange of information 

across EPA programs and with federal and state agencies to conserve resources and to improve the 

usefulness of the information to the public; 

• The Agency shall adhere to its written, Universal Customer Service Standards, and in particular to 

the EPA Customer Service Standards for Public Access; and 

• The Agency should consider, to the extent resources allow, ways to overcome barriers many 

citizens face in obtaining information, such as lack of Internet access, language, and physical 

disability (hearing and sight, especially). 

If the CIO Council establishes a "best practices" portfolio for model agency public information 

resources policy statements, in the Commission's view the EPA Chapter 21 material should certainly 

be included. There are other, very worthy examples as well that the Commission discovered as a result 

of its agency survey. 

5.H. Retention periods on agency websites are inadequate for much research and general public 

needs including genealogical research. 

Certainly, specific Commerce publications, as cited in the Commerce Fact Sheet in August of 1999 are 

available on the Commerce website. (The Commerce Fact Sheet cites two high profile policy studies 

as examples), but how long will they be maintained on the Department's website and how about the 

many less prominent Department studies not on the website?72

 

72 Here is an example of the effort that an experienced searcher made to find the two documents mentioned (but not cited by 

their Internet addresses) in the Fact Sheet. On November 26, 2000, an NCLIS staff member went to the Department of 

Commerce website (www.doc.gov) to determine the current availability of the reports referenced in the Fact Sheet. The 

document entitled Emerging Digital Economy II could not be found searching the site; however a search of the GPO Catalog 

of U.S. Government Publications (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/cgp/index.html) quickly located the document 

at http://www.ecommerce.gov/ede/report.html. A subsequent search of the National Telecommunications and Information 

Administration website (www.ntia.doc.gov) retrieved a slide presentation about the report that included the correct Internet 

address. A similar search for the other report referenced in the Fact Sheet, the first annual report of the U.S. Government 

working group on electronic commerce, found a link to the second annual report (http://www.ecommerce.gov/annrpt.htm), 
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The two Commerce publications cited in the example above were published in late 1998 and 1999 and 

Commerce has them on their website for public access. How about older publications, say those predating 1996 and the use of the Web for public access of government documents? Most of these are not 

available in electronic form for Web mounting. Does Commerce intend to invest millions of dollars in 

converting these older documents to Web-ready form? Does Commerce expect other agencies to do 

so? At whose expense and with what funds? Note that 36% of NTIS' report titles sold in 1998 was 

over 10 years old. Agency-based Web servers cannot meet this demand unless substantial investment 

in backfile conversion is made. Should we simply assume that anything not in Web-ready form that 

was previously published is of no value to the public and no longer requires public access? Clearly this 

is not the case. 

5.I. Sometimes unpopular agency policy positions disappear quickly from their websites, or 

never appear at all. 

How about those studies paid for with taxpayer funds whose results do not support the Department's 

policy positions? Will they be featured on the Department's website? Will even the most sophisticated 

search engines locate them? The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and e-FOIA will remain 

necessary tools for public oversight of government activities, and strengthened rules for transfer of all 

appropriate agency information products to a central facility will help to safeguard current and future 

access to government information. However, central information organizations are merely stewards for 

the information entrusted to them. The current laws requiring transfer of information products to NTIS 

and GPO lack the means to ensure agency compliance. There is a need for enforcement mechanisms 

with real consequences. 

5.J. Serving populations that are not directly associated with operating agency missions is 

secondary insofar as the agency is concerned, but the central mission agencies must address the 

needs of the general public. 

Agency websites are intended to provide agency information (and perhaps external information related 

to the agency mission) to the agency's constituency in support of the agency's mission. That may not 

be consistent with providing government information to those members of the general public not 

specifically associated with the agency mission. For example, the Defense Department is responsible 

for providing access to its extensive collection of research reports to its internal scientists and 

engineers and its large contractor community. How much effort should DOD expend to insure that 

non-defense related users have adequate access to this information and how concerned should the 

Defense Appropriation Committees be with this? Will a website designed to meet the needs of the 

Defense community always meet the needs of a non-defense related university researcher or small 

businessman? Should it? The fundamental mission of providing access to government information to 

avoid duplication of research effort and to promote economic growthóa mission that might at one 

time have been thought to be a part of the Department of Commerceógets lost in the specific 

missions of the various agencies and their websites. 

5.K. The critical distinction is oftentimes not made between a "passive dissemination" agency 

posture and a "proactive dissemination" agency posture. 

 but there were no links to the first annual report on the GPO, Commerce or NTIA or websites. A search of the 

www.ecommerce.gov website also located only the second annual report. The site map for www.commerce.gov does not 

include a link to the www.ecommerce.gov website, although there is a link labeled "E-Commerce Initiative" elsewhere on the 

main page. Apparently the www.ecommerce.gov website is not included in the search of the www.commerce.gov website. 
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Having Defense (as well as other mission agencies) make its (their) technical information available to 

the general public as a near-free by-product of meeting its mission needs is worthwhile and should be 

encouraged. It is not, however, sufficient to fulfill the government's responsibility to make government 

information available to the public. There needs to be a clear focus on public information 

dissemination, which is not likely to be present (all the time) in the mission agencies. That is the role 

for NTIS.73

5.L. The need for safety net remains, no matter how much information is posted to agency 

websites. 

There also needs to be a back-up system, a safety net or failsafe mechanism, to insure that what the 

mission agency does not disseminate or does not mount on its website, or takes down or does not 

properly process for public access is still accessible to the public. That is the role that the National 

Technical Information Service (NTIS) serves for scientific and technical information (STI) and that 

the Government Printing Office (GPO) serves through its Catalog of U.S. Government Publications 

and the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Both agencies are well aware that they fall short 

of comprehensive coverage, in spite of statutory mandates for agency submission of information and 

their own best efforts to obtain information from the agencies.74 Clearly a central information service 

needs to take advantage of each mission agency's efforts to distribute the agency's information to 

minimize duplicative costs, but it also must be prepared to step in and provide access when the 

mission agency does not. That is currently the role for NTIS and GPO, and if the Commissions 

recommendations are accepted, will be the role for the proposed Public Information Resources 

Administration (PIRA).75

Some of the shortcomings identified in this section can and probably will be overcome in time. Once 

standards are set and adhered to some of these access problems will disappear. As the technology 

improves more of these problems will disappear. Yet today, with the current state of the Internet, 

standards and technology, public access to agency publications via agency websites is very much a hit 

or miss proposition. Once again, there is a need for a back-up mechanism, a safety net or failsafe 

mechanism, to insure that the public has access to the mission agency reports and publications. That is 

currently the role for NTIS and GPO, and if the Commissions recommendations are accepted, will be 

the role for the proposed Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA). 

5.M. Older format and medium conversions are not systematically and regularly taking place; 

preservation of materials to protect against technological obsolescence is not high priority. 

As mentioned above, there is the rather significant matter of providing access to the tens of thousands 

of valuable reports and publications that are not in Web-ready form. These require either expensive 

 

73 These terms are defined and discussed earlier in the report in the section entitled What This Report Is About and What It Is 

Not About. The issue is also discussed in Finding 1.A. 

74 As noted in Finding 3.A, in spite of the efforts of the federal STI organizations, NTIS estimates that approximately 25% of 

reports that should be submitted to them under the American Technology Preeminence Act are not submitted, and are 

therefore not available for current and future use. While no precise numbers are available, the Government Printing Office 

also estimates that there are a significant number of "fugitive documents" that come under the statutory mandate for inclusion 

in its Catalog of U.S. Government Publications and the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), but are never provided 

to GPO for dissemination. 

75 It should be noted that a significant part of the information available through NTIS comes from DOD, DOE and NASA, 

which provide just such a safety net for the information products of their own agencies through their STI programs. Many 

other publishing agencies lack this additional safety net. 
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conversion to Web-ready form or old-technology reproduction and represent at least one half of the 

total current NTIS demand. Clearly, there is a role here for NTIS. 

5.N. Need for specialized searching and locator tools requires substantial new knowledge and 

research. 

In addition to mounting the full text of some of their reports on their websites and thereby providing 

some public access, the mission agencies may also provide some finding tools to identify reports 

sought by users. These tools might include some indexing, abstracting and cataloging of the reports 

and publications, or they might not, as is the case with the two Commerce Department examples. The 

tools might include a search engine on the website to locate reports or the site might rely upon users 

accessing commercial Web search engines to locate reports on the site. The search engines will work 

for some reports but not for others. Where reports and publications are stored in PDF image form 

without a full text search capability neither the search engine on the site or the commercial search 

engine will find the document. Where the agency choosesófor more efficient searching of its 

materialóto store its reports and publications in a separate searchable database on its website, an 

external search engine will not be able to search the contents of the database and the reports will not be 

found. 

5.O. Permanent public availability of, and access to, government information are critical parts 

of the overall strategy to meet the government information needs of the public, and they must be 

strengthened. 

"Permanent Accessibility," much less "Permanent Public Availability of, and Access to," are 

confusing and imprecise terms in the context of government information. Moreover, a closely related 

but different term "Permanent Access to Federal Records" is provided for under the Federal Records 

Act but many agency publications and other important documents are not permanent federal records 

(and hence not permanently accessible) unless individual agencies take action to make them so. Many 

agencies do not schedule all of their publications and important documents as permanent records, nor 

do they have policies to ensure their permanent public availability and accessibility whether they are 

official agency records or not. 

Depository libraries provide a safety net of last resort for the purpose of permanent access to 

government information, but NTIS reports are not generally distributed to depository libraries and, in 

any event, to the extent that depository libraries acquire them outside of the Federal Depository 

Library Program (FDLP), they are not required to maintain them permanently. Whatever the problems 

with permanent accessibility may have been in pre-Internet daysóand there were manyóthey have 

been compounded with the extensive federal agency uses of the Internet to publish and disseminate 

information. 

Government information to which the public should have access, particularly the results of research 

work that are likely to have long term value beyond the purpose of the original research, should be 

permanently availably to and accessible by the public. Public access should not end when the agency 

sponsoring the research decidesópossibly for budgetary reasonsóthat the report will no longer be 

made available on the agency's website. For example, the research reports on energy conservation and 

alternative energy sources from the early 1970's are suddenly very relevant again today. Are they still 

up on DOE and Transportation Web servers? NTIS should be the fallback source to make these 
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research results available when it is no longer available from the generating agency.76 In the Internet 

age, where agencies mount some of their information on their own servers and make it available to the 

public free of charge, NTIS processing should provide pointers to the information on the agency's 

website. When the information is removed from the original agency's website NTIS should provide 

access to the full text of the information on its own website or by some other means.77 In the case of 

older, less frequently accessed, information, the public requester will have to purchase a print or 

microfiche copy of the report from the NTIS archive copy or have a digital copy created through 

scanning. However, once the first person purchases a retrospective report and pays for its digital 

conversion as part of the purchase price, it should then be on the free website. 

Since there is no assurance in the present highly volatile technological environment that we will be 

able to use government information electronic files 10 or 20 years in the future, there should be a 

policy that central information service organizations such as the Government Printing Office ride 

agency orders for tangible products (primarily print) for at least the 53 regional depository libraries, 

the National Archives and records Administration (NARA), and the Library of Congress. Distribution 

of the paper copies provides a safety net assuring permanent public availability and access to the 

material. The GPO has traditionally held to the view that if a publishing agency deemed a product 

sufficiently important to print (paper) copies, GPO should put paper copies in the depository library 

program at least for the 53 regional libraries. 

But what about electronic products? 

Finally, "Permanent Public Availability" (or more accurately and precisely Availability and 

Accessibility) seems a preferable term to Permanent Public Accessibility since the emphasis is on 

maximizing the information government should make available to the public. What good does it do to 

ensure permanent accessibility if the information is not available to the public in the first place 

because they are not entitled to it because disclosure is statutorily prohibited? 

5.P. The Federal Depository Library Program has a permanent mission, but also a critical need 

for new vision and updated service model. 

The Commission strongly believes that there is, and will continue to be, a substantial 

need for a distributed network of libraries nationwide with a commitment to assist the 

public with the identification, search, retrieval and use of public information 

resources. 

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a strategic element of the Nation's information 

infrastructure, but is in dire need of a new vision and a new service model appropriate to the Internet 

Age. John Q. Citizen can communicate just as easily and directly, or more easily and directly, with a 

federal agency website, access a remote library's electronic catalog, or even access a foreign archive or 

museum, than he or she can walk to, or telephone or fax the nearest library in his own home town. 

Moreover, the word "depository" means to deposit something, meaning to physically take it from one 

 

76 To the extent that this information also falls under the statutory mandate of the FDLP, and much of it does, the federal 

depository libraries should also receive it. Some of this information already flows through GPO to the depository libraries; 

however, many agencies are unaware of this responsibility or falsely assume that by placing the information in NTIS it 

reaches the depository libraries. The recommendation to combine NTIS and the GPO Superintendent of Documents 

responsibilities in a new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA) will help to close the gap in both the NTIS and 

the FDLP safety nets. This is included in Recommendation 5. The text of the proposed legislation is in Appendix 21. 

77 GPO is already taking such steps for information that falls within the scope of the FDLP and NTIS should find ways to join 

in this effort so that both programs are strengthened, and new redundant efforts are not initiated. 
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place and put it in another place, but eventually there will be few tangible information products78 left 

to "deposit" once government information is almost entirely in electronic digital form. In short, the 

term "deposit " is becoming less and less appropriate as the key operative word to describe this 

program, although the program itself will remain a critical and strategic resource. The challenge, 

however, is that we are a long way from that Utopian state of affairs. In the meantime, it is imperative 

that the many interim steps necessary to effect that transition be identified and scheduled in the shortterm, in the mid-range period, and in the long-term.79

The FDLP has long played an important role in providing public access to government information. 

The system, based initially on low cost override printing by the Superintendent of Documents, later 

augmented by microfiche distribution and now moving rapidly to the Internet, provides broad public 

access at no cost to the public user. Most NTIS reports do not make it into the FDLP since they are not 

printed by or through the Government Printing Office.80 Agencies are required by 44 U.S.C. 1903 to 

provide copies of their publications to GPO for the FDLP when those publications are not printed at, 

or procured through, GPO; however, many agencies are unaware of this responsibility or falsely 

assume that by placing the information in NTIS it reaches the depository libraries. This has been a 

longstanding source of disagreement between GPO, NTIS and the report originating agencies. There is 

some limited purchasing of NTIS microfiche by a handful of depository libraries and a new pilot 

program between NTIS and GPO to provide some libraries with access to NTIS material on the Web 

in image form. However, generally the depository libraries do not have ready access to NTIS reports. 

The future availability of NTIS reports without charge on the Web should solve this problem since 

depository libraries serve their users through Web access. No fee public access through federal 

depository libraries is one more reason for making sure as many NTIS reports as possible are available 

without charge on the Web. When NTIS reports are available without charge to federal depository 

libraries, GPO will recognize the reports as officially coming under the auspices of the FDLP, as many 

publications on agency websites already are, and no-fee public access to NTIS reports through the 

FDLP will be assured.

Commenting on the draft report and the proposed legislation, Professor Charles A. Seavey of the 

School of Information Resources and Library Science at the University of Arizona said, "One of the 

inevitable consequences of the move towards a more electronic dissemination system is that every 

library is essentially a depository library. Somewhere along the line Congress, and/or the [Public 

Information Resources Administration (PIRA)] has to figure out a role for the existing FDLP libraries. 

There is a huge pool of expertise in those libraries, yet if the intent of Congress is to move towards 

purely electronic dissemination, what is the point of a paper-based FDLP?" The Commission strongly 

believes that there is, and will continue to be, a substantial need for a distributed network of libraries 

nationwide with a commitment to assist the public with the identification, search, retrieval and use of 

public information resources. 

 These libraries maintain integrated collections of government information in many formats and media 

(paper, microfiche, and digital). More importantly, they have highly trained professional staff who 

 

78 Tangible information products include any information that can be physical transferred, e.g., a paper publication, a paper 

map, a poster, a document on microfiche, a CD-ROM, or a video tape. 

79 GPO and the federal depository libraries have been working on this transition the first CD-ROM titles came into the 

program in 1990. A formal transition plan was developed in 1996 in conjunction with a report to the Congress entitled Study 

to Identify Measures Necessary for a Successful Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program 

(http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/pubs/study/studyhtm.html) and that effort has accelerated each year. This statement 

is not intended as a criticism of what has already been accomplished, but rather in recognition that there is much more to be 

done. 

80 Most paper publications get into the FDLP because Superintendent of Documents has the opportunity to "ride" the agency 

printing requisition to purchase copies for the program. 
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understand the information content and formats and can assist users to identify, locate and use 

government information. 

5.Q. Reorganization of government public information resources management authorities, 

missions, functions, programs, policies, and resources is essential. 

The Superintendent of Documents was established within the Government Printing Office at a time 

when all government publishing was done in print form and the Congress did nearly all printing for 

the entire government. Times have changed. As Executive Branch publishing and information 

dissemination has increased dramatically the issue of separation of powers has intensified with the 

Congress doing much printing and distribution to enable Executive Branch agencies to carry out their 

missions. The advent of information technology and the Internet/Web have further exacerbated this 

issue and made it virtually impossible and impractical to effectively manage Executive Branch 

information activities from a Legislative Branch office. 

There has always been a tension between NTIS and SUDOCS. In recent years this tension has gotten 

more intense as NTIS has sought to achieve or retain profitability in difficult financial circumstances. 

Both agencies have similar problems with congressional appropriations committees that seek to cut 

appropriations for their "public good" functions, mistakenly believing either that the costs can be 

recovered entirely from sales or that, with the Internet, there are no costs. Both agencies will have to 

streamline their operations for the Internet and make the case to Congress that their "public good" 

functions should be properly funded with appropriated funds. 

Other issues between the two agencies include differences in bibliographic control and the fact that 

most NTIS documents do not make it into the depository libraries. As long as the two agencies exist as 

separate entities the elusive goal of "one stop shopping" for government information will continue to 

be that much harder to achieve. 

Combining NTIS and SUDOCS into a single organization is an appealing notion. It would provide the 

means to eliminate the tension and competition between the two organizations, make it easier to 

standardize cataloging and bibliographic processes, consolidate databases and searching tools, and 

begin a serious move to simpler, unified public access to government information. There will also be 

significant opportunities for cost savings by elimination of duplication of effort. Particularly with both 

agencies moving rapidly toward Web based distribution of much of their information; the notion of a 

consolidation is attractive. 

Several of the study panels addressed the idea of merging the two organizations, and concluded that 

the disadvantages would be primarily political. For example, could such a merger be made to happen 

when either the Executive or the Legislative Branch would lose a major central information 

distribution component to the other? 

 Strong arguments can be made for having the combined agency in the Executive Branch because of 

the increasing interaction with the Executive agencies, the decreasing involvement with print product, 

and the fact that information dissemination is inherently an executive rather than a legislative function. 

However, the likelihood of the Congress approving a shift of the Superintendent of Documents to the 

Executive Branch seemed so remote to many of the panel members that they were very reluctant to 

even want to propose it.
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One panel discussed an even broader reorganization proposal that would consolidate even more of the 

existing government information activities from various agencies than just NTIS and SUDOCS. Such 

a consolidation involving not only NTIS and SUDOCS but also related functions from NARA, LC, 

OMB and GSA was believed to have merit, but admittedly would be far more difficult politically to 

achieve than just a merger of NTIS and SUDOCS. However the Commission, taking into account the 

views of many other experts and groups on the matter, is prepared to raise the matter. 

6. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóCENTRAL AGENCIES 

WITH GOVERNMENT-WIDE INFORMATION SERVICES AND INFORMATION 

MANAGEMENT MISSIONS (EXCEPT NTIS) 

6.A. Central agency(s) government-wide information services and information management 

roles still crucial; overall policy leadership and oversight unfulfilled. 

The individual agencies believe, incorrectly, that it is less important to provide the 

documents to the central information service organization since the public can get it 

from the agency (or bureau or division) website, notwithstanding the statutory 

mandates to do so. This is a dangerous fallacy. 

As mentioned early in this report, central information service agencies within the government such as 

NTIS and the Superintendent of Documents Federal Depository Library Program and Sales Program, 

as well as the sales programs of the Census Bureau, the U.S. Geological Service, and many others, all 

have made their mark by providing a convenient central service to their constituent agencies, and to 

their ultimate service beneficiariesónotably, the public. These services to federal agencies have had 

the virtue of eliminating some of the agency burdens of distributing information products to agency 

users. 

Admittedly, now with electronic documents and the Web, agencies can perform many of the same 

functions themselves without significant cost and efforts, so their support for the government-wide 

information services provided by NTIS, the Superintendent of Documents, and others, has begun to 

diminish. The individual agencies believe, incorrectly, that it is less important to provide the 

documents to the central information service organization since the public can get it from the agency 

(or bureau or division) website, notwithstanding the statutory mandates to do so. This is a dangerous 

fallacy. 

When agencies, bureaus or divisions that do not have the primary mission of information 

dissemination go into the information dissemination business, they do so with a different orientation 

and different motives than those of the central information services. The central information services 

ensure easy access to all segments of the public for all of the information products on a permanent 

basis. 

The mission oriented agencies, however, are more likely to provide ready access to only those 

documents that further the agency's mission, and only for as long as they further the agency's 

mission,81 and only to those particular users and user groups in whom the agency's management is 

 

81 The major research and development agencies, such as the Departments of Defense and Energy and the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), do consider access to relevant research and development part of their 

mission, but have traditionally focused most of the efforts on service to the agency personnel, contractors and grant 

recipients. Recently the Department of Energy and the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) have begun to offer 

access to the general public through their websites. 
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most interested. Moreover, when agencies stray too far from their legislatively mandated and 

authorized missions, Congress chastises them for doing things that they are not supposed to do with 

their appropriated funds. 

Thus, the principles of public access are not achieved uniformly through all of the agency information 

systems, and no one knows which of the thousands of systems is missing what particular information 

products. There is therefore no assurance that the government is providing full public access to what 

should be public information. There is also no assurance on what that information is, or where it is. 

Instead, proper public information dissemination depends on the judgment of thousands of 

unmonitored officials at all levels in thousands of lower level units of government. 

There is a critical need for overall policy leadership and oversight in the area of public information 

resources management. While some have argued that the Congress intended that OMB's Office of 

Information and Regulatory Affairs should have that role, they have not fulfilled that mandate for a 

wide variety of reasons. Perhaps the main reason is that the migration of information from preelectronic to electronic formats and mediums has been so rapid, so dramatic, and so pervasive and farreaching, that OIRA simply has not been able to cope with the need for detailed policy leadership and 

operational guidance. The Commission is convinced that OIRA will not be able to fulfill that detailed 

role in the future, and therefore new solutions are needed. If and when OIRA is relieved of the burden 

of keeping up with detailed guidance, hopefully it will be able to revert to its statutory role of general 

oversight guidance. 

6.B. Central information services and information management agencies have an even more 

critical role in the Internet age than they did in the pre-Internet age. 

There are some who believe the Web signifies a world of completely dispersed, decentralized, and 

distributed missions and functions that require virtually no coordination or controls. The Commission 

strongly disagrees with this viewpoint and holds to the view that, for a wide variety of reasons, central 

information services and information management missions and functions are even more critical in the 

Internet Age than they were in the pre-Internet Age. 

The general reason is to ensure overall policy leadership and oversight of public information resources 

management. Some specific reasons are: 

• Concerted and centralized acquisitions of mission agency information products to ensure that 

government-wide collections of information (such as STI information collected by NTIS) are 

complete and the public does not have to confront a bewildering array of different websites. It 

should be remembered that even if powerful new search engines such as the one contained in 

FirstGov eventually succeed in enabling cross-agency searching, the user still would be 

confronted with a bewildering array of websites once the search was completed, from which s/he 

would have to obtain the information; and even then there would be no guarantee that all of the 

information needed was identified;

• Permanent public availability and accessibility policies are more likely to be followed and applied 

in a uniform fashion than if each agency were left to its own policies; 

• Concerted and closer attention can be paid to authentication of the official version of a public 

information product, and the minimization of the proliferation of unofficial, unauthenticated 

versions; 
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• Single, central, authoritative sources of the major collections of government information products 

and services for the public would greatly simplify the initial locator, search, retrieval, access, and 

delivery of the information; 

• Cost effectiveness determinations to consider fully the trade-offs between the relative benefits and 

values on the one hand, and the costs and burdens on the other hand, of alternative information 

formats, mediums, and other publishing considerations; 

• A standard cataloging and indexing system appropriate for the majority of public users would be 

followed by all agencies, or provided by the central information dissemination agency, to simplify 

and streamline the process of identifying public information products when they are brought into 

the system;82

• The availability of many products which are not in electronic form, both "current" and "old," could 

be much more easily assured; 

• The availability of products in non-electronic form for those users unable to use Web-based 

information because they are insufficiently computer literate, information literate, or do not have 

convenient and easy access to a public information resources facilities such as a library, could be 

more easily ensured; 

• Assurance, in most cases, that products will make it into depository library system albeit under a 

changed set of guidelines as described elsewhere in this report; and 

• A single, authoritative focal point for private sector information vendors to negotiate value-added 

services for government information products for the public would be a better approach than the 

alternative. 

6.C. Government-wide information service business models must be revised. 

Government-wide information service roles and activities are usually legislatively mandated to be selfsupporting. Document sales income is often used not only to pay the costs of actually providing the 

ordered document, but of running the central service and processing the new documents into the 

central system. 

This posture made some sense when the central service was the primary source for the agency 

information, and when its sales income could support the central service. Now, however, with agency 

documents being made available for free on the Web, the bottom is cut out from under the central 

sales services, and they are destined to fail financially. 

Continuation of present funding policies based on the pre-Internet environment will result in the 

elimination of all of the central information services as one after the other fails to achieve the level of 

sales income necessary to sustain its operations. NTIS just happened to be the "tip of the iceberg" that 

first popped into the public spotlight. 

Does this mean the central services should be closed down, as the Department of Commerce suggested 

in 1999 in its proposal regarding NTIS? If the public can get free access to agency documents from 

agency websites at minimal cost to the government and the user, why do we have to continue to fund 

the pre-Internet central services? Do the central services provide any value that is not obtained by the 

 

82 Such a service is currently provided by the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications produced by the Government Printing 

Office (www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/locators/cgp/index.html). A standard cataloging and indexing systems would augment, 

but not necessarily replace, the specialized controlled vocabulary indexing developed for the primary community of users in 

specific disciplines, such as the National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). 
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mounting of documents for public access on agency, bureau, or division websites? Isn't any document 

of consequence likely to be mounted on one or another of the thousands of government websites, 

where it can probably be found by one search engine or another, even though the finding process may 

be long, complicated, and costly? 

In its recent e-Gov survey of agencies, OMB indicated that moving to an entirely electronic or 

"virtual" model was not a good idea. They indicated, "online scientific and technical information" (for 

example, in the case of NTIS) "must be carefully scrubbed to protect privacy and provide adequate 

security for sensitive data." Agencies also "noted the tension between relying on agencies to make 

information available as opposed to having the information retained in a central repository. These 

agencies argued that it would be best if these questions (as well as cost and access issues) were 

resolved before legislating a solution." Several agencies suggested a virtual STI database, but 

reaffirmed the need for an NTIS role in providing this centralized function. 

The Commission is not the only body to come to the conclusion that "front-end" information 

preparation tasks must be undertaken by any agency which is preparing information products for the 

public (not just NTIS). For example, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) 

commissioned three distinguished economists, all of whom had held key positions in the Clinton 

Administration, to study the Role of the Government in the Digital Age. Their report, dated October 

2000. 

The authors first established three sets of "Principles for Government Action" which they designated 

as "green," "yellow," and "red." Green principles are those that they asserted the government should 

undertake with little concern; yellow those that the government should undertake with caution; and red 

those that the government should generally not undertake.83 Three red light principles were identified. 

Principle 11 says "The government (including governmental corporations) should generally not aim to 

maximize net revenues or take action that would reduce competition." Then on page 118 of their 

report, they say: 

Principle 11 raises serious questions about whether NTIS should be a "self sustaining" 

agency. The core clearinghouse function of NTIS, which entails the collection and 

dissemination of government scientific, technical, and engineering information, is 

certainly a proper government role (see Principle 1). But based on the principles 

described above, it would be more appropriate for the Congress to appropriate funds 

for this public good function than to require that NTIS offset losses in the 

clearinghouse with other business lines. 

6.D. Central agencies with government-wide information services and information management 

missions are nevertheless sometimes needlessly overlapping, duplicative, and wasteful of 

resources and sometimes also promulgate conflicting and inconsistent policies and guidelines; 

the information life cycle approach must be utilized. 

While the Commission strongly supports the need for continuing central, government-wide 

information services for the reasons outlined above, nevertheless, the Commission found that the 

mission, functions, and activities of the existing central mission agencies are sometimes needlessly 

 

83 Stiglitz; Joseph E., Peter R. Orszag, and Jonathan M. Orszag, ìThe Role of Government in a Digital Age.î Commissioned 

by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, October 2000; http://www.ccianet.org/digitalgovstudy/main.html. 
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overlapping, duplicative, and wasteful, and they could be consolidated into a more effective 

government-wide public information resources organization.

84

The government currently has multiple programs and channels for dissemination and access to 

tangible and electronic government information products and services, but the systems are not 

coordinated to guarantee comprehensive coverage and ready access or retrieval for current electronic 

information products, much less long term/permanent public access. The National Archives and 

Records Administration (NARA) has responsibility for the retention and preservation of the records

of government, but not necessarily for all publications of the federal government. Therefore, from an 

agency standpoint, there is considerable confusion as to the laws, policies, and guidelines they should 

apply in differentiating between records they must schedule under the federal Records Act, and 

publications they retain which are not necessarily an official agency record. 

GPO distributes tangible publications to depository libraries for current and permanent access in 

decentralized locations around the country, and provides cataloging and locator services for tangible 

and online federal government information products and services. In addition, GPO Access provides a 

number of electronic publications from all three branches of government to the public. GPO also 

offers many high-interest federal government print and CD-ROM publications for sale on a cost 

recovery basis. 

Let us be a bit more specific about the inconsistency, overlap, and duplication between GPO and 

NARA. First of all, many of the publications in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) 

would never be accepted by NARA for permanent preservation as records, but for the fact that they are 

evidence of GPO fulfilling its mission to operate the FDLP. NARA itself will not accept deposits of 

documents from the FDLP except every four years at the end of a Presidential term (and the agency 

would prefer to take them when they are even older). NARA refers routine inquiries for government 

documents to the regional depository libraries (as do many federal agencies). In short, the NARA staff 

indicates it wants to be considered the 'source of last resort,' not the source of first resort. Also, NARA 

does not have a program for interlibrary loans; they will duplicate material for a fee (not usually on a 

timely basis, however), but not lend materials. Depositories do loan as well as duplicate, and, as 

libraries, are usually able to respond more quickly when the occasion calls for it. NARA collects 

information at the end of the government information life cycle, not in the middle or at the beginning 

of it. NARA arranges materials in groupings by archival categories (such as agency programs), not by 

library classification or subject headings. Consequently, accessing at the level of individual items is far 

more difficult using the National Archives Information Locator (NAILS), than using library systems. 

Finally, NARA is not currently set up (or funded) to handle the volume of requests that would occur if 

that agency were the sole source, or even the primary source, of government publications and 

information products. 

NTIS collects scientific and technical information ("STI") for their permanent collection and makes 

copies available for sale in multiple formats. The NTIS catalog and index are only available to the 

public on a fee basis and most of the STI reports included in the NTIS clearinghouse are not provided 

to the FDLP for no-fee public access. 

The Commission fully understands the historical reasons why these different entities with overlapping 

and duplicative central information services and information management missions and functions were 

 

84 The Commission does not mean to imply that all duplication is bad. For example, agencies maintaining information 

collections for internal agency use and agency contractors can focus their resources on these primary constituencies and save 

both time and money for their agencies, while the Federal Depository Library Program has proven a cost effective means of 

establishing distributed collections of government information throughout the nation, accompanied by staff with expertise to 

assist users. 
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established. However, the seekers of the data, documents, and literature held by these different entities, 

including agencies, other levels of government, and the public, have the heavy burden of learning and 

utilizing quite different for searching and retrieving materials. In short, there is considerable room for 

harmonizing these statutory requirements by using an overall systems approach, including greater 

utilization of the information life cycle management concept so as to integrate searching into a single, 

unified protocol. The Commission addresses this approach in greater detail in its White Paper dealing 

with the Information Life Cycle Management approach.85

6.E. Central mission agencies may also overlap with cabinet departments and independent 

agencies with operating missions with respect to public information resources collections and 

services. 

A number of operating agencies sponsor subject-oriented information clearinghouses for material in 

tangible and electronic formats in no-fee or cost recovery programs (DTIC, ERIC, MEDLINE, 

NCJRS, etc.). In addition, many agencies operate public information centers, public reading rooms, or 

specialized depository programs (such as the Census Bureau, PTO). As a rule, however, operating 

agencies are focused exclusively, or primarily, on their statutorily mandated missions, which may or 

may not emphasize provision of current or long-term broad public access and dissemination of their 

information products to the public. This occurs despite Title 44 requirements for distribution to GPO, 

the Administrative Procedures Act, and legislation requiring submission of scientific and technical 

reports to the NTIS. 

6.F. Lack of uniformly applicable guidelines and standards to create electronic information 

products causes confusion. 

In January 1999, NTIS initiated a pilot project with the Federal Depository Library Program was 

initiated to provide access for 22 depository libraries to new titles added to the NTIS collection in 

digital format from October 1997 to the present. They are producing an increasing volume of their 

information products and services on a decentralized, local basis through the Internet. Public access to 

these web-based information products and services may be limited, since they are not consistently 

included in the various existing government programs that foster information dissemination or 

information access, such as GPO Access or NTIS. Moreover, there are no agreed-upon standards used 

by federal agencies to produce tangible or online electronic products. The lack of standards causes 

problems for access to current materials, as well as for preservation and permanent public access of 

historical materials. Likewise, there are no coordinated programs or standards for permanent access to 

or preservation of tangible or online electronic media across all branches of government. 

Notwithstanding this finding, the Commission was pleased to see the distribution of "Guide to 

Electronic Publishing" by the Federal Publishers Committee and the Interagency Council on Printing 

and Publishing, which was received just as the Commission was going to press with this report. 

6.G. The Government Information Locator Service (GILS) and metadata are critical to the 

national information infrastructure. 

The crucial question to address is whether the government can and should invest the 

resources required to add metadata/indexing functionalities to all federal government 

information or whether priorities, primarily the needs of the American public to gain 

access, should be established as to which information requires such detailed handling. 

 

85 The White Paper is available in Appendix 12 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/infolife.html. 
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An example of an attempt to instill some discipline in the federal government, so that information, or 

information sources, can be discovered and accessed is GILS. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 

(44 U.S.C. 3511) directed the establishment of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) to 

help the public and federal, state, and local government agencies locate and access information 

throughout the federal government. In concept, GILS could also assist agencies in complying with 

aspects of the Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. 3301) and the Freedom of Information Act as amended 

in 1996 (5 U.S.C. 552). To date GILS, however, has been less successful than anticipated for a wide 

variety of reasons. Federal components that had significant information management organizations or 

interest (e.g. GPO, EPA, NTIS, DoD) successfully implemented GILS. GPO, with its GPO Access and 

NTIS with its FedWorld, implemented a GILS system that can serve all federal agencies and the 

public at large. 

As well intentioned as these efforts are they are at the mercy of the various federal agencies 

implementing GILS. Many federal agencies, having higher spending priorities than GILS, did not 

implement GILS and OMB failed to enforce the requirement. OMB Bulletin 95-1, "Establishment of 

Government Information Locator Service," which guided the initial startup of GILS, expired. In lieu 

thereof OMB Bulletin No. 98-03, November 18, 1997 requires agencies to describe GILS progress in 

their annual reporting under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. It is an irony that GILS has been 

far more successfully implemented by many states and internationally through the Global Information 

Locator Serviceóthe international byproduct of the U.S. GILSóthan in the U. S. federal government. 

Problems also exist in regard to government locator services. GPO Access, for example, contains a 

broad array of links to federal government information. Yet in many instances, GPO must on its own 

seek out these online resources in order to assure that the general public is aware of them. Similar 

problems plague the Library of Congress' Thomas system in its collection of congressional 

information, and NTIS' FedWorld in its efforts to collect federal scientific and technical information. 

The judicial branch has proven particularly problematic in terms of providing locator services of even 

the most basic nature. This is due primarily to the lack of a defined and implemented program for 

posting opinions and court decisions online. 

Beyond GILS, there are very important technical questions relating to the need to standardize metadata 

elements. 

There is currently much discussion about the need for developing and deploying "metadata" or 

indexing systems to aid in the retrieval of documents, data sets, and other digital objects. If federal 

government agencies do not go to the effort of adding metadata/indexing terms to the digital objects 

they are providing on the WWW, neither the Internet search engines nor agency/interagency search 

engines can retrieve them in a reliable or consistent way or rank them for the user. The result of 

skipping the indexing step is a bad experience for most users. 

The more information that becomes available in electronic form, the more necessary it is to provide 

would-be users of the information with a summary of the contents to facilitate indexing and retrieval. 

Of the technologies available today, automatic summarization programs generally extract only the first 

few lines of text as the summary. This method works if the author of the document has summarized its 

findings in the first few lines. Too frequently, however, the first few lines tell the user nothing about 

the contents of the document. This exacerbates the ability of the public to effectively sort through an 

answer setóone that may include hundreds of possible "hits"óto find the information sought. In 

short, summarizing or abstracting information has classically been done by humans, and often at great 

expense. That situation is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. 
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The crucial question to address is whether the government can and should invest the resources 

required to add metadata/indexing functionalities to all federal government information or whether 

priorities, primarily the needs of the American public to gain access, should be established as to which 

information requires such detailed handling. 

There is another side to this issue. The following response from one the Departmental libraries queried 

for this effort is typical of the responses from others: 

The Main Departmental Library does not have a formal or informal arrangement with 

another government agency. We use the Library of Congress and GPO extensively 

and are pleased with the responses. We are a selective depository library, which 

adequately meets the needs of our Department. We receive minimal requests from 

other government agencies to share depository items. I would estimate that 50% of 

our clients' needs are satisfied via free websites. We rely on private sector products for 

about 30% of the needs of our Departmental clientele. Standardization could improve 

the environment of interagency sharing of information.86

6.H. The Government Information Locator Service (GILS) and FirstGov are both commendable 

initiatives and should development and testing should be continued and supported. 

The Government Information Locator Service (GILS) established under the Paperwork Reduction Act 

of 1995 might have been expected to solve some of the problems identified in this section, and perhaps 

to a very limited extent it has. However, GILS has not been widely implemented throughout the 

government. The GILS record structure was publicized and agencies were required to use GILS but 

were permitted wide latitude in how GILS was to be applied. The result, to the extent that agencies 

participate, is a lack of consistency and predictability in search results. 

Similarly, the brand new FirstGov.gov website might solve some of these problems in time, but the 

initial implementation of the website suggests that much work remains to be done, particularly with 

respect to search precision, which is critical to the NTIS application. 

Even if GILS or FirstGov improve dramatically, some issuesósuch as detailed searching within a 

very large database such as the full text of NTIS reportsówill not be solved by these very large 

government-wide systems. Thus, there will continue to be a role for NTIS. 

6.I. Unnecessary duplication and overlap among agencies with central government-wide 

information services and information management roles and activities is critical and must be 

resolved. 

The relationship between NTIS and the Superintendent of Documents, including the Federal 

Depository Library Program, addressed more fully later in this report, clearly involves some 

unnecessary conflict, overlap, and duplication between these organizations and their missions and 

functions, and there is a critical need to rationalize their roles. This challenge, while beyond the scope 

of the efforts of the four panels, nevertheless is addressed squarely by the Commission based on other 

research and findings. 

There appears to beóespecially at this stage of Internet developmentóa clear need for an NTIS-like 

organization to provide overall management of the system that provides public access to agency 

 

86 The results of the survey are available in Appendix 26 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/nclismsg.html. 
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scientific and technical reports and publications. Sometimes this organization would directly provide 

public access to reports and publications, sometimes it would simply point to where the material is 

available on agency websites and it would insure that all content is available and accessible. It would 

also provide access to private vendors seeking to redistribute government information. Closing NTIS 

before such alternative systems are in place and operating would deprive the public of the access to 

government information that was available in pre-Internet days. 

7. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóTHE NATIONAL 

TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE 

7.A. The pre-1980's sales based business model is an historical artifact that is no longer 

appropriate. 

In the 1970's and earlier, NTIS and its predecessor organizations received a mix of funding from 

appropriations, sales income and reimbursements from other agencies. The basic business model, 

however, was based on sales revenue, with report sales and subscription income generating the lion's 

share of revenue. Appropriations in the earlier years were used primarily for the costs associated with 

acquiring publications and for processing the publications into the NTIS collectionóthe costs of 

indexing abstracting, creating master microfiche and archiving master copies. Sales income was 

recovered from the purchasers of publications and subscription services, essentially for the incremental 

costs of providing these services, although in later years excess sales income was also used for input 

processing to offset declining appropriations. Reimbursements from other agencies were received to 

cover the costs of the services provided to these agencies. 

7.B. The transition to 1980's sales income model was detrimental to NTIS' core mission. 

Over the years there was an ongoing pressure to reduce appropriations and increase sales income and 

in good timesówith many new publications coming in and with substantial salesóthis was feasible. 

Increasing prices and new products combined with growing sales volume contributed to growing sales 

income. In fact, all appropriations for input processing were phased out by 1977 and sales income was 

used to pay all input costs from that point on. 

In 1992, as part of the American Technology Preeminence Act (15 USC 3074b-1), Congress added the 

requirement that "operating costsÖassociated with the acquisition, processing, storage, bibliographic 

control, and archiving of information and documents shall be recovered primarily through the 

collection of fees." This had the effect of locking in the practice of shifting the costs for the central 

collection and initial processing of the NTIS publications for public availability from the general 

taxpayer to the purchaser of NTIS products and services. The government was essentially abandoning 

responsibility for paying for the management and organization of its information, the very library-like 

functions that have always been taxpayer-financed. The report buyerówhose tax dollars had already 

paid for the agency research and the preparation of the research report itself and who was being 

charged the incremental cost of distribution of the reportówas now also being asked to pay the costs 

of making the reports accessible to the public through a central repository. 

This had the effect of making NTIS more entrepreneurial and aggressive in its business dealings to 

raise the operating funds lost in the appropriation. These activities were sometimes at the expense of 

the core mission for collection, organization and dissemination of scientific and technical information 

(STI). Competition with the Superintendent of Documents for popular titles increased with NTIS 

seeking to offer the publication-originating agency a more attractive arrangement to secure the 
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publication for its list. Deals were struck with private vendors a development that had the Commerce 

Department Inspector General "Öconcerned that in order to replace lost sales, NTIS is seeking 

business opportunities on the perimeter of its statutory mission, where it risks competing against 

private businesses." 87

7.C. Agency competition with NTIS began in the 1990's with free web availability. 

Concurrently, in the late 1980's and 1990's, because of the strong economy there was a shift from 

publicly funded research to private research and as a consequence the number of government research 

reports provided to NTIS declined. At the same time, with the growth of the Internet, agencies began 

to make their research reports available on agency websites for free, competing with NTIS report 

sales. The combination of lower new report input (a 35% drop in items added to the collection from 

1993 to 1998) and competing free sources for the information NTIS sold, resulted in declining sales (a 

43% drop in publications sold from 1993 to 1998). This in turn led to the financial difficulties of 

NTIS. In August 1999, based on these financial difficulties and political considerations beyond NTIS' 

controlópossibly relating to the Govsearch and World News Connection controversies,óthe 

Department of Commerce recommended the closing of NTIS and the transfer of its archive to the 

Library of Congress. 

7.D. Incomplete holdings available on agency websites force users to search both agency and 

central mission websites such as NTIS. 

If the picture painted in the Department of Commerce Fact Sheet and Press Release (Department of 

Commerce August 12, 1999) is correct, all agencies will mount all of their publications and reports on 

their own websites, which are then kept there as long as the public has a need to access the 

information. Powerful search engines search the full text of all the reports across all agency sites to 

identify the specific information the public user requires. The identified full text of the publication is 

then available for free downloading from the agency website. Thus, the public has free access to all 

government information all of the time and anything required can be located with ease and there is no 

need for a central NTIS, a central Superintendent of Documents or any central document locating 

service or information accessing tools. This picture, however, is not anywhere near accurate. 

Unfortunately, not all of each agency's public information is available on the agency's website and 

perhaps much of it never will be. What is there today may not be there tomorrow. Not all of the 

information on the Web can be searched and found with the search engines. Can the United States 

afford to rely upon the simplistic and utopian picture painted by the Department of Commerce and 

close down its central information repositories? 

7.E. The NTIS collections are "of value to business and industry" regardless of subject matter. 

NTIS' predecessor organizations began operations with a scope limited primarily to scientific, 

technical and engineering information, the so-called STEI gray report literature. Over the years the 

scope of the NTIS collection expanded to include social science and business information to meet the 

needs of government agencies for the distribution of their content. 

These changes in scope were approved in a 1954 Controller General opinion later codified in the Code 

of Federal Regulations (15 CFR 1180). Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information is defined 

 

87 Department of Commerce, Inspector Generalís Semiannual Report to the Congress of March 31 1999, page 14. 
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as "information that bears on business and industry generally, such as economic information, market 

information and related information" that "can embrace matters beyond the restricted field of applied 

science and the mechanical arts" so long as it is "limited to information which has a direct relationship 

to business, industry or technology" (15 CFR 1180.2). 

The Commission does not believe NTIS' scope should be restricted to science and technology 

narrowly defined. However, the scope should not include general public information that does not 

have a strong and direct relationship with business, industry or technology. In its efforts to find 

revenue to support its operations, NTIS has expanded to scope of its coverage well beyond its primary 

mission.88

7.F. NTIS operations in the Internet age require searchable access that cuts across agency 

boundaries. 

The roles for NTIS in the Internet ageóat least until such time as improvements in standards and 

technology solve some of the current problemsówould be to provide: 

1. Searchable access to the reports and publications published by the mission agencies, particularly 

to those users outside the agency's constituency, 

2. Pointers to where the report may be obtained on an agency (or other) website, 

3. Backup distribution of the report or publication content itself when it is no longer available from 

the originating agency or where the user requires a paper or microfiche copies and the agency only 

provides electronic access, and 

4. Permanent Availability and Accessibility. 

Providing searchable access to agency reports has been the basic business of NTIS and its 

predecessors since its inception over half a century ago. NTIS performs this function by cataloging, 

indexing and abstracting the reports of the smaller agencies and other sources that do not perform 

these tasks for their own audiences and creates the searchable NTIS database. For the larger agencies 

that do this work themselves (DOD, DOE, NASA, etc.), NTIS obtains their cataloging, indexing and 

abstracting information in machine readable form, reformats it, if necessary, and adds it to the 

searchable NTIS database. NTIS now augments this with similar data obtained by NTIS' web capture 

of agency documents not forwarded to NTIS. The resulting NTIS database provides consistent 

searchable access to the NTIS collection across all of the participating agencies. 

This database should be made available on an NTIS website for free public search, thus providing free 

(publicly funded) access to a searching capability of the information collected by NTIS. This same 

capability would provide depository libraries and their patrons with convenient, free searchable access 

to the NTIS database. Note that this is not access to the content of NTIS reports, but only to the 

database of information about the reports, usually referred to as the bibliographic database. 

7.G. Pointing to documents on the web is an essential service. 

Providing access to information about the document is only the first step. The Panel recommended that 

NTIS provide the user with a means of obtaining the documents identified. In the past, NTIS sold the 

documents from its warehouse, produced copy on demand when requested or distributed microfiche. 

 

88 For example, the Department of Commerce has questioned NTIS' role in the dissemination of tax forms for the Internal 

Revenue Service (IRS), and GPO has questioned the need for NTIS to distribute the Government Manual and other GPO 

general interest "best sellers." There is additional discussion of these issues under Recommendation 14. 
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In the future, in addition to these established methods of distribution, NTIS will also point the user to 

the document on the agency's website where the full text of the document is available for free. 

Whenever there is a Web version of the document available, NTIS, through its bibliographic database, 

would point the user to the agency's Web location where the document can be viewed or downloaded. 

In some instances a document that is not available on an agency's site, might be available at the 

Government Printing Office (GPO) or on a depository library site under the Federal Depository 

Library Program Electronic Collection. NTIS would then point to that site. The Commission notes that 

the Government Printing Office (GPO) is already taking steps to establish such links for information 

that falls within the scope of the FDLP, as most of the NTIS collection does, and NTIS should find 

ways to join in this effort, so that both programs are strengthened, and new redundant efforts are not 

initiated. 

The Panel recommended that NTIS develop and operate, in conjunction with the originating 

agencies,89 a Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL)90 system for all of the agency documents 

included in the NTIS database. This would provide a means of maintaining the public accessibility of 

documents on agency websites as the agencies move the documents from site to site and from location 

to location. The NTIS database would provide the PURL address of the document so that users of the 

database would always be able to access the complete text of the document available for free on the 

Web. NTIS would operate a PURL server, which keeps track of actual document locations on the Web 

updated with new location information provided by the agencies or by NTIS' monitoring of existing 

links to documents in the database. Again, the Commission notes that the Government Printing Office 

(GPO) is already taking such steps for information that falls within the scope of the FDLP, and NTIS 

should find ways to join in this effort, so that both programs are strengthened, and new redundant 

efforts are not initiated. 

7.H. NTIS would be a backup distribution source. 

The user would normally only come to NTIS and pay for a document when it is not available for free 

on a website or when the user desires paper or microfiche. Some users would no doubt find paper or 

microfiche preferable to Web access and would choose to pay NTIS for the copy, paying the full 

incremental cost of distribution even though free Web access is available. 

In addition to pointing to documents on agency websites, an NTIS website would provide free access 

to the full text of selected NTIS documents in reasonable demand (recent important documents) which 

are not available on agency websites. To do this economically, NTIS will have to change the way in 

which it scans reports for the Web. NTIS currently scans documents in image-only format, which does 

not provide for searchable full text, limits the utility of the product offered on the Web and increases 

the costs of storage and electronic distribution. By moving to fully electronic documents with encoded 

text, NTIS can lower storage and bandwidth costs and improve product utility. This will however 

increase NTIS' scanning costs. 

There will continue to be a substantial number of image-only scanned documents in the NTIS system 

for some time (representing at least the three-year backfile that has already been scanned). Over time 

 

89 As noted elsewhere, GPO is already taking such steps for information that falls within the scope of the FDLP. Therefore, 

NTIS should not just cooperate with the originating agencies, it should find ways to join in the GPO effort, so that both 

programs are strengthened, and new redundant efforts are not initiated. 

90 The use of PURL is not a definitive statement of the appropriate technology. Another option identified by the Commission 

is the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), currently used by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The statement 

here is rather an indication that some effort must be made to provide stable links to information on agency websites. It should

be noted that establishing a PURL or a DOI cannot ensure that the agency will maintain the publication on its website; it 

merely increases the chances that the user will find the information as long as it does remain on the website. 
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we would expect more and more of the publications available from NTIS to be available in full 

electronic format, either forwarded to NTIS from other agencies or scanned in full electronic form 

(OCR) by NTIS itself. 

All of these documents in Web-ready form, whether in image-only form or in full electronic form, 

would be made available to the public without charge from an NTIS website if they are not available 

on the originating agency's website or some other publicly accessible website, e.g. Depository library 

site. 

As a result of this approachósubstantial free access to documents on agency and NTIS websitesó

NTIS document sales income will continue to decline dramatically as more and more content is made 

available on the Web without charge. This expected decline in sales income would have to be 

considered in the new business model. Specifically, the notion of free public access to NTIS reports 

on an NTIS website requires the appropriation of funds for the so-called public good operations of 

NTIS (see following section on "A New Business Model for NTIS"). 

7.I. NTIS has a permanent mission, but needs a new vision and new business model. 

The NTIS mission, which began (in the days when it was known as the Publications Board) with a 

focus on the cataloging, announcement and sale of copies of captured World War II technical 

documents, has changed and expanded over the years, and was later expanded by statutes such as the 

American Technology Preeminence Act. There was some sense among the study participants that in 

recent years the mission and scope had expanded well beyond the statutory boundaries in part to 

increase revenues to offset declining sales income and decreasing appropriations. The scope of NTIS 

information has expanded from scientific and technical reports to almost all manner of reports and 

publications of interest to business, industry and technology. 

One Commission expert disagreed with this idea, believing that agency publishing on the Web has, or 

will soon completely replace the need for an NTIS, no matter where it might be organizationally 

located. 

8. FINDINGS RELATING TO INTERAGENCY GROUPS (E.G. CIO COUNCIL, FEDERAL 

WEBMASTERS FORUM, CENDI, ETC.) 

8.A. CENDI was established because of an absence of central official STI policy and oversight 

authority in the Executive Branch. 

CENDI was originally the Commerce, Energy, NASA, Defense, Information group, a voluntary group 

comprised of the heads of Commerce's National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Energy's 

Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), NASA's Scientific and Technical Information 

(STI) program, and Defense's Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). 

The four founding organizations from some of the largest federal agencies involved in research 

development were principally involved in managing STI recorded in technical reports. This type of 

report is not formally published but records results of federal R&D done either in house or through 

contracts or grants. Such reports may or may not be made publicly available since they may contain 

information falling within the exemptions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Energy, 

NASA, and Defense organizations traditionally shared their collections with each other and provided 

publicly available information to NTIS for acquisition by the general public. In 1986 the National 

Library of Medicine (NLM) joined CENDI. NLM, while not handling technical reports, had many of 
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the same information management challenges. Thus, with these five organizations meeting regularly 

and sponsoring working groups and standing committees, the federal agencies responsible for over 

90% of federal R&D had established a voluntary interagency information and information 

management sharing effort to fill the void left with the disestablishment of COSATI. CENDI now has 

ten members from nine different departments or agencies. The CENDI Secretariat is paid for through 

member contributions. 

8.B. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is also a success story. 

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is an interagency committee, organized under OMB 

Circular A-16. Organized in 1990 the FGDC promotes the coordinated use, sharing, and dissemination 

of geospatial data on a national basis. The FGDC is composed of representatives from seventeen 

Cabinet level and independent federal agencies. The Steering Committee sets high-level strategic 

direction for the FGDC as a whole. The Coordination Group advises on the day-to day business of the 

FGDC. The FGDC Secretariat staff provides staff support for FGDC committees. For example, the 

Federal Geographic Data Committee coordinates the development of the National Spatial Data 

Infrastructure (NSDI). The NSDI encompasses policies, standards, and procedures for organizations to 

cooperatively produce and share geographic data. The federal agencies that make up the FGDC are 

developing the NSDI in cooperation with organizations from state, local and tribal governments, the 

academic community, and the private sector. 

The CENDI group mentioned in the preceding finding, and the FGDC's efforts mentioned here, are 

examples of what can be done to share information among agencies. There are three keys to these 

efforts. One key is agency recognition that their information may have a wider value beyond its 

original use. A second key is the existence of either a central agency information management 

organization or an organization that acts as one. A third key is some level of funding. 

8.C. The CIO Council still leaves unfulfilled expectations vis-‡-vis information content 

management. 

The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) Panel on Transforming 

Government said in its 1999 report that: 

The Federal CIO Council's...mandates require them to focus primarily on near-term 

operational issues and acquisitions. Budget planning processes make it difficult to carry out 

effective cross-agency coordination and execution and the long-term research efforts that 

many of the goals require.91 

The Committee noted that, while "the CIO Council has established mechanisms for sharing results and 

lessons, the process of creating standardized processes and information representations, eventually 

leading to cross-agency transactions and information federation and integration, is much harder and 

requires cross-agency budget planning and execution. Creating cross-agency budgets requires 

substantial work and, therefore, is used only for large initiatives. Depending on cross-agency plans is 

very risky because of the uncertainty that all participants will receive adequate funding. Ö"92 

 

91 [Insert citation] 

92 [Insert citation] 
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9. FINDINGS RELATING TO STATE, LOCAL, AND TRIBAL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT 

9.A. Distinctions between different levels of government are critical in finding public 

information resources. 

In its October 18th evaluation of FirstGov, one of the criticisms made by the American Library 

Association93 was that many users (of government information portals and websites) "are not aware 

that the .gov domain may also be used by state or local governments. FirstGov is supposed to be 

primarily a federal government information resource. Links to state and local governments that come 

up in search results should, therefore, either be expressly identified as such to distinguish them, or be 

searched with a different search form." 

The point here can be usefully generalized. Too often agencies assume when they design, develop, 

test, and eventually "go live" with information systems, portals, websites, and other information 

resources designed for the public, that important distinctions can and should be made between the 

federal level and the other levels of government when it comes to public information resources 

availability and accessibility conventions. In some cases it may make sense to make such systems and 

resources applicable to all governmental levels, but if that is the decision, the scope of the holdings to 

be made available should clearly indicate all levels of government. In other cases, however, only the 

federal level is applicable, and in still others only the state level, or only local level, or only the tribal 

level, and so forth. 

9.B. Beyond finding public information, the federal government needs to strengthen its 

intergovernmental information interchange coordination role. 

Beyond the questions above surrounding the importance of governmental level distinctions in finding 

tools for government information, the Commission found that the coordination between and among the 

different levels of government when it comes to interchanging and sharing government information is 

flawed and needs to be strengthened. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relation 

(ACIR) has a statutory mandate pursuant to Public Law 104-328, Oct. 19, 1996, to oversee this area. 

10. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE COMMERCIAL (FOR PROFIT) SECTOR 

10.A. The private sector has a key role both by itself and as a "partner/provider" that adds 

value and further disseminates government information. 

The private sector plays an important role in providing government information to the public, as well 

as in enhancing the value of products and services, in online, print, and other mediums and formats. 

Libraries and businesses rely heavily on the private sector for packaged and repackaged information 

products and services. However, for that purpose, the private sector, like libraries and federal agencies, 

needs to acquire government information efficiently, quickly, and in usable and flexible formats and 

mediums, in order to supply value-added information to its customers. Private industry also can help 

government by sharing experience and expertise in electronic publishing, packaging, and related 

fields. 

 

93 [Insert citation] 
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The private sector role in adding value to government information to create new products and services 

fulfills the needs of those citizens who are willing and financially able to pay for these enhancements, 

and/or who wish to obtain access to government information from sources other than the government 

itself. Private sector organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, play an essential, complementary 

role in making optimum use of government information. They may repackage the information in 

value-added products, and provide value-added dissemination, in order to reach wider audiences 

including disadvantaged and special populations. By incorporating the information in supplemental 

catalogs and indexes, they expand use many times over. 

In some cases, through public-private sector joint partnerships, the private sector assists in the 

publication of information products that may otherwise not have been published. In the best models of 

such public-private sector partnership programs, the products are included in GPO'S cataloging 

services, and the publications are provided to the FDLP for some limited no-fee public access to 

complement the sales access. Moreover, the private sector plays an important role in the development 

of new technology and new systems for information publication, access and retrievalófunctions that 

enhance government programs. It is very likely that when there is market demand, value-added 

private-sector government information products and services will be maintained for permanent public 

access. Once the economic motive disappears, the future access to such products and services is less 

certain. 

10.B. Business and industry utilization of government information is evidence of the return on 

taxpayer investment. 

Business and industry, not to mention universities and other elements of the private sector all need 

government information for all aspects of their operations. Their government information needs range 

from regulatory information to financial, economic, and demographic data, scientific and technical 

information, and weather. Making information easily accessible to business can result in better 

decisions, better compliance with regulations, greater productivity, and improved balance of trade 

status. Efficient and widespread dissemination of information using the Internet is the key to 

connecting agencies collecting and storing information with the individuals and organizations that can 

use the information to solve problems and generate new knowledge. 

One very specific and tangible example of this is that R&D contractors who do business with the 

government often look upon the reports deposited with NTIS as a de facto archive of their 

information, rather than go to the expense of creating their own special archival collections that 

duplicate what they've deposited with the government. This is a substantial return on investment that 

would be eliminated if NTIS were to disappear. 

10.C. The private sector faces difficulties in keeping up with government rules and regulations 

relating to public information dissemination. 

Specialized government search and locator services run by private or non-profit sector entities have 

even greater difficulty than the government itself does in keeping up with new federal information 

sources provided online. Unlike the Government Printing Office or the Library of Congress, the 

private sector, including private sector libraries and educational institutions, enjoys no special 

relationship, nor has it been able to rely on legal or regulatory mandates, to assure that they are kept 

informed of new government information services. Two areas of user assistance in which the private 

sector tends to excel for those who purchase the services are in providing personal interfaces and in 

maintaining quality search and retrieval mechanisms. They have likewise been more effective in 
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developing and providing summary source information, including special indexing and abstracting 

services. 

10.D. Joint ventures and private sector partnerships are often a preferred modality, rather than 

government trying to "go it alone". 

As the result of the National Technical Information Act of 1988, NTIS has unique statutory authority 

for joint ventures with private sector information vendors (15 U.S.C. 3704b(a)(1)(A)). NTIS will 

typically use this authority to find a private sector partner who is willing to underwrite the cost of 

producing an information product that an agency can no longer produce either because it lacks the 

funds for printing or the staff resources to develop it. It will then share the resulting revenue with the 

partner and provide copies to the depository libraries. A good example is the Commerce Department's 

own "U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook," the successor to the "U.S. Industrial Outlook" which had 

been produced for more than thirty years but had been discontinued. It was reintroduced in 1998 with 

a new focus on trade pursuant to a partnership between NTIS and the McGraw Hill Companies and 

was reissued in 1999 and again in 2000. However, the mix of public and private (copyrighted) 

information in the publication made it difficult for users to know what information was protected by 

copyright and what was in the public domain. 

In addition to joint ventures, NTIS makes its own Bibliographic Database available to vendors who 

add value to it, redistribute it, and pay NTIS a portion of the revenue they derive from it. Although this 

royalty may not be appropriate under the new business model to be suggested by this report, the role 

of NTIS in providing a central gateway to government information for potential private sector vendors 

is a valuable role that would continue in the Internet age. 

11. FINDINGS RELATING TO THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR, INCLUDING 

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS 

11.A. The not-for-profit sector is a user of government information and is quite diverse. 

The not-for-profit sector, like the other sectors, is quite diverse, and includes associations and 

societies, foundations, think tanks, consulting organizations, public interest groups, consumer groups, 

local community organizations, social clubs, and so on. These organizations play a major role in the 

redissemination of government information, including notification of their constituencies of the 

availability of relevant government information products and, in some cases, value-added 

republishing. Academic and public libraries, whether publicly or privately funded, organize collections 

of government information and have knowledgeable staff to assist their patrons with the location and 

use of government information. 

11.B. Role of not-for-profit sector is important as a value-adder to government information 

Like the for-profit sector, the not-for-profit sector also plays an important role in adding value to 

government information to make it more valuable for all users. More specifically and importantly, 

associations and societies, and public interest groups, repackage information for their respective 

members or special clienteles, making the information easier to use, and more applicable and relevant 
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to their specific concerns. The results of the Commission's survey of disadvantaged and special 

populations attests to the importance of this role.94

11.C. Partnerships between federal agencies and major research libraries are critical to 

preservation and access solutions. 

The major research libraries of the country are key elements of any system for preservation and access 

of government information and therefore partnership arrangements that currently exist between the 

two sectors should be strengthened to squarely address these challenges. One commendable 

arrangement is the one entered into by the Government Printing Office, the Department of State, and 

the University of Illinois at Chicago for the selection, acquisition, preservation, and archiving of 

certain foreign affairs materials. 

11.D. Library and information professional associations are well positioned to expand education, 

training, career advancement, and related professional opportunities workshops; funding should 

be provided in part through grants from the library services and technology act grants 

programs 

Elsewhere in this report the Commission has addressed the need to transform the Federal Depository 

Library Program (FDLP) from a largely paper-based collections model, to a modern, Internet-based 

electronic model. One of the expanded functions contemplated for the revitalized FDLP would be as a 

trainer to other librarians, information managers, and other information professionals, user groups, and 

the public at large, for accessing government information. There is a critical need to significantly 

expand and extend the education and training of librarians who are not already in the FDLP because, 

in an Internet-based model, not just depository libraries, but public, academic, school, law, and special 

libraries, information centers, record and archive facilities, museums, and other repositories, will also 

require specialized government information access skills and knowledge. 

Many depository librarians already offer training and instruction to other librarians and user groups 

within their respective Congressional Districts and beyond. A central web list of FDLP 

Reference/Training Partnership Participants could be established and linked to by several central 

information services agencies as well as individual mission agencies. This web list could be 

Organized by topic/expertise of the Partnership Participants and by Geographic area. The FDLP 

Reference/Training Partnership Participants would list training expertise and preferred audience: 

business, K-12, special libraries, and so on, and preferred geographic area served. 

12. FINDINGS RELATING TO OTHER AREAS, INCLUDING INTERNATIONAL 

INFORMATION POLICY 

12.A. The United States is looked upon as a leader in the Internet Age and should share its 

findings and expertise with respect to helping every country, especially those in the developing 

world, better exploit and utilize their government information holdings for the betterment of all 

of their citizens. 

The United States already participates in many international intergovernmental forums with other 

nation-states in arenas where various ìspecializedî information policy issues and concerns are debated 

 

94 The survey results are available in Appendix 27 and at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/special.html. 
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and discussed. These include the United Nations and its many specialized agencies, as well as the 

International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Council of Scientific Unions 

(ICSU), and many others. However, there is no fully appropriate existing international intergovernmental forum in which the key concepts espoused by the Commission in this reportóthe idea 

of treating public sector information as a strategic national assetóare advanced and discussed. If the 

United States rejoins UNESCO soon, that might well be the most appropriate forum, but, if U.S. 

membership is appreciably delayed, then other international avenues need to be explored. The 

Commission is already committed to supporting the National Forum on Information Literacy, in close 

coordination with the U.S. Department of Education, in planning the first international congress for 

information literacy, perhaps utilizing UNESCO as the forum even though the U.S. is not currently a 

member. 

E. CONCLUSIONS 

After reflecting carefully on all of its findings, the Commission reached the following conclusions 

with respect to the significance, implications, and consequences of the findings. Conclusions 

consolidate all of the findings relating to the same category.

1. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO INDIVIDUAL CITIZENS (THE GENERAL PUBLIC) 

The federal government should continue with the development of prototype new portals, such as 

FirstGov, for the purpose of putting in place a "yellow pages" approach to help citizens know what 

government information exists that may help them, whether it is available to them, how it is identified 

so they can search for and retrieve it, and how to utilize it effectively to meet their needs once 

retrieved. Lower levels of government should coordinate closely with the federal initiatives to ensure 

that the availability of government information can be determined by level of government as well as 

subject matter, and to ensure the intergovernmental finding tools are complementary and consistent. 

Locator tools must be fine-grained enough to distinguish the full range in the level and quality of 

computer and information literacy among the public at large, from the very sophisticated at the one 

extreme, to the disadvantaged and severely handicapped at the other. The public should come to regard 

government information as one of the first places to go, not a "court of last resort." User assistance 

methods, tools, and techniques should be tailored to the full range of quite diverse usersóthere is no 

"one size fits all" approach. 

2. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO DISADVANTAGED AND SPECIAL POPULATIONS 

The federal government should monitor Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act very carefully, as well 

as other statutes with provisions to responding to the needs of the disadvantaged and disabled, to 

ensure that the goals and objectives of the legislation are implemented both in spirit, and "to the letter 

of the law." Disadvantaged and special populations, especially the physically and emotionally 

handicapped and disabled, but also including race, religion, culture, ethnic, or other minorities, the 

gender-discriminated, senior citizens, school age children, and rural populations, all face formidable 

barriers to accessing government information which are not faced by the general population. 

Therefore, the government must be sensitive to these special needs, and constantly strive to innovate 

in the application of state-of-the-art technologies and approaches to providing public information 

resources. 
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3. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO ACADEMIC, RESEARCH, AND RELATED 

INSTITUTIONS 

The federal government cannot afford to erode the level and quality of government information 

services provided to the nation's academic, research, and related institutions. The science laboratories, 

the classrooms and lecture halls, and the workbenches of individual entrepreneurial inventors working 

in their garages or basements across the country are, in a very real sense, the front lines of America's 

highly touted distinctive economic competency in the world. The government cannot risk reducing the 

level of government information services to these individuals and institutions because of quarreling 

over which financial account funding for government information services comes from. 

 

4. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóGOVERNMENTWIDE POLICY LEADERSHIP AND OVERSIGHT

The government should not undermine or close down central information services, which provide 

indispensable services to all mission agencies, because of the Internet, just to save a few pennies. The 

services they need could not otherwise be done for themselves individually, much less in a coordinated 

fashion across all agencies to serve their own missions as well as the public at large. The challenge is 

to redesign, reconfigure, and consolidate government-wide policy leadership and oversight in four 

areas: 

• the agency or "institutional" area; 

• the statutory area; 

• the policy guidance area; and 

• the technical guidance area. 

Traditional information services and information management approaches, including public 

information dissemination machinery, must be harmonized and blended with electronic, web-based 

approaches so that both domains are perceived as part of the same whole fabric, not overlapping and 

competitive, or downright inconsistent and incompatible in some cases. At the same time, the level 

and quality of government-wide information services, as in the case of NTIS, must not be degraded 

until such reforms can be affected. 

This means: 

• Consolidating, simplifying, and streamlining the government-wide public information services 

organizations into a single, new Executive Branch agency, the Public Information Resources 

Administration, and creating comparable organizations in both the Judicial and the Legislative 

branches; 

• Revisiting the mandates for using sales income to support the central services and, instead, 

providing appropriated funds for the limited central services (public good function) that provide a 

true benefit to the public that would not otherwise be provided by uncoordinated individual 

agency web initiatives; 

• Upgrading and modernizing pre-Internet Age authorities, responsibilities, missions, and functions, 

with a new vision that is Web-based and predicated on the ultimate, inevitable shift of public 

information products from pre-Internet to Internet availability; 

• Paying special attention to the information needs of the disadvantaged and special populations, 

intergovernmental sharing of government information, interagency sharing of government 
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information, better use of public-private sector partnerships, and renewed attention to the 

development of information standards and guidelines; 

• Strengthening government-wide detailed guidance on interagency sharing. OMB Circular A-130 

does not adequately address government information sharing among federal organizations. There 

is provision to guard against the creation of new information flows and systems where existing 

flows and systems could satisfy a need, and thereby preclude the development of new, duplicative 

flows and systems, but Circular A-130 addresses information sharing among government agencies 

primarily from the standpoint of paperwork reduction, urging agencies to look at satisfying new 

information needs through interagency or inter-governmental sharing. In fact, intra-agency or 

interagency use of sharing of government information is specifically excluded from the A-130 

definition of the term "dissemination." Sharing of information systems, not information content, is 

the focus of the policy requirement, but sharing of content is even more important than avoidance 

of unnecessary overlap and duplication of systems; 

• Rooting the definitions of three key public information resources management in statutes and 

appropriate policies, including permanent public availability, authentication, and preservation; 

moreover, the first one of these, permanent public availability, needs to be carefully harmonized 

with the notion of permanent records retention as that term is used in the Federal Records Act; 

• The Information Life Cycle concept needs to be strengthened and clarified in the forthcoming 

reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act in 2001, and the corresponding changes in the 

next revision of OMB Circular A-130 so as to link internal and external agency information 

management more closely together at each stage of the life cycle; and 

• The time is overdue for the Congress to review the hundreds of laws that it has enacted over the 

last several hundred years for the purpose of assessing how the government's cumulative, overall 

public information resources program can be strengthened, especially in the Internet Age; the 

Commission could be directed by Congress to undertake this analysis, but would prefer to do so 

with the assistance of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the General Accounting Office 

(GAO) and the National Research Council.95

5. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóINDIVIDUAL 

AGENCIES WITH OPERATING MISSIONS 

Individual agencies are experimenting a great deal with employing creative and innovative ways to 

disseminate information to the public, and to interact with the public using state-of-the-art interactive 

and multi-media formats. Yet many of these experiences, and the lessons learned, are lost because 

there are so few effective mechanisms for systematically capturing and recording these experiences 

and sharing them among the federal agencies, between branches, and even inter-governmentally. 

Smaller agencies, in particular, are disadvantaged in this respect, because they need such ideas the 

most, but yet they have the least effective capabilities to capture this kind of information. An expert 

advisory list, an email newsletter and portfolio with interesting "What's Worked for Me" ideas, and/or 

tools that is available for the agencies to use, etc., could be very helpful. The CIO Council could pull 

together such a compilation and such tools, and some good work has already been done along these 

lines. A number of excellent model agency public information resources policy statements, such as 

EPA's Chapter 21 cited in the corresponding Findings section above, could be included in such a 

portfolio of best practices. 

 

95 The need for such an analysis is discussed in Findings 4.C and Recommendation 15. 
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We have mentioned more than once in this report that the current information technology environment 

is extremely volatile. New formats are being developed every week and every month. Not without 

cause, many are worried, for example, that the advent of XML will automatically cause the 

obsolescence of public information products available in other formats, especially PDF which is 

considered vulnerable because the text cannot be manipulated. There is a strong feeling in federal 

agencies that periodically, perhaps once every three years, a survey should be undertaken similar to the 

one undertaken by Westat for NCLIS on the migration of pre-electronic to electronic formats. That 

survey would endeavor to pinpoint "preferred" formats for the full range of data types: 

• Bibliographic data; 

• Graphical data (photos, charts, graphs, tables, drawings); 

• Numerical data; 

• Sound; 

• Spatial data (maps, coordinate files); 

• Textual data (books, serials, reports); 

• Video; 

• Multimedia (sound, video, text, graphics); and 

• Other. 

The major format types should also be surveyed to attempt to discern patterns of preference, including: 

• Database formats (Oracle, Sybase, dBase, WAIS, MARC); 

• Spreadsheet formats (Excel, Lotus 1-2-3); 

• Tagged Markup formats (HTML, XML, SGML); 

• Image formats (GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PDF); 

• Audio formats (WAV, AU, AIFF); 

• Video formats (MOV, MPEG, AVI); 

• Text format (ASCII, Rich Text, ANSI); 

• Word Processing format (WordPerfect, Microsoft Word); and 

• Other formats. 

Online approaches would also be tracked. For example: 

• User Interfaces Supported (Netscape, Internet Explorer, Telnet, FTP, non-graphical/dial-up shell); 

• Web Design Approaches (Basic HTML only, Tables, Frames, CGI Scripts, use of Java script, Use 

of Java Applets, XML); and 

• Bulletin Board Systems (Graphical interface/browser) 

How information products are searched, how they are retrieved, changes if any in the type of data 

included, changes if any in what particular timeframe (short, medium, long-term), the use of metadata 

records, and policies relating to permanent public availability and accessibility, permanent records 

retention, preservation, and authentication, would also be surveyed. 
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Additionally, despite the fact that paragraph 9(a)5 of OMB Circular A-130 specifically requires that 

agencies "maintain an inventory of agencies' major information systems, holdings, and information 

dissemination products, as required by 44 U.S.C. 3511 (italics supplied), this requirements has never 

been adequately enforced. Without a comprehensive, authoritative inventory of products, it is virtually 

impossible to systematically know that a given product still exists, whether it has been changed or not, 

when it was changed, how it was changed, or whether it has been discontinued entirely. Is it any 

wonder that the public views with alarm the tendency of some agencies to take down from their 

websites products that were put up only the day before? 

Finally, the Commission is disappointed that in most agencies, with the notable exceptions of the 

defense and intelligence communities, by and large agency public affairs officials do not normally 

involve themselves in "institutional matters relating to electronic information publishing and 

dissemination." Perhaps, in the paper era they did get involved, but few such officials with whom the 

Commission discussed this matter, indicated that they had "hands on responsibility" to work with 

agency webmasters, for example, in the development of agency electronic publishing guidelines. 

Perhaps it can be argued that such officials have their hands already full putting out the hour-to-hour 

fires related to the agency's complex relationships with the media, public speeches of their principal 

officers, legislative liaison with the Congress, and so on. 

However, a laissez-faire, hands-off attitude cannot but exacerbate the already difficult challenges 

facing agency chief information officers in the electronic publishing arena. In short, most agency 

public affairs offices are staffed with professionals whose expertise in dealing with the public on 

agency information products is unmatched anywhere else within the agency. Their expertise must be 

harnessed and mobilized in the service of public information dissemination. 

6. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóCENTRAL 

AGENCIES WITH GOVERNMENT-WIDE INFORMATION SERVICES AND 

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT MISSIONS (EXCEPT NTIS) 

It seems quite apparent that the same problems that precipitated the proposal to close 

NTIS in the first place are not limited to NTIS, but are endemic to all agencies with 

public information dissemination missions and functions, whether agencies with 

government-wide, central missions, or agencies with operating missions such as the 

cabinet departments and independent agencies. The Commission faults the rationale 

that would lead to a "solution" of the problems by one such agency (e.g. NTIS), when, 

in fact, a different solution is left in place for another agency (e.g. GPO, USGS, the 

Census Bureau, and so on). The statutorily authorized sales policies, the statutorily 

authorized revenue policies, and the statutorily authorized charging policies for all 

agencies should be reasonably consistent, albeit taking into account some exceptions. 

There is an unnecessary and wasteful proliferation among agencies with government-wide information 

services and information management missions and functions, including databases and collections, 

portals and websites for access, and metadata locator and classification tools. This wasteful overlap 

and duplication should cease, and these missions and functions should be consolidated into a new 

Public Information Resources Administration. 

In its March 2000 report dealing with NTIS, the Commission indicated that more time was needed to 

investigate carefully the pros and cons, and the benefits and costs of alternative solutions to the "NTIS 

matter." Eleven different alternatives were then considered, including: 
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• Retaining NTIS in the Department of Commerce; 

• Transferring collections and service responsibilities to the Library of Congress as initially 

proposed by Commerce; 

• Transferring collections and service responsibilities to the Government Printing Office; 

• Transferring collections and service responsibilities to the National Archives and Records 

Administration; 

• Establishing a new national library of science, engineering, and technology, sometimes also 

designated as the national library of science, energy, and technology; 

• Transferring some or all of the NTIS collections and services to the National Academy of 

Sciences, the National Science Foundation, or the Smithsonian Institution; 

• Creating a new independent agency as a service bureau to consolidate public information 

management functions now dispersed; 

• Privatizing some NTIS activities; 

• Establishing NTIS as quasi-governmental corporation; 

• Transferring NTIS collections and services to a "lead host scientific and technical information 

intensive agency such as NASA, DOE, or DoD; and 

• Transferring NTIS collections and services to the General Services Administration. 

Only one of the eleven alternatives listed above, in the Commission's view, holds out 

real hope for dealing with the root cause of the problem instead of dealing with the 

effect, and that is to create a new independent agency in the Executive Branch as a 

service bureau to consolidate government-wide public information resources 

management missions, functions, and programs. Not only would the new independent 

agency have overall policy leadership responsibility over the government's public 

information resources dissemination programs, but it would also be the federal 

government's staunch advocate for explaining, advancing, and diffusing government 

knowledge holdings as a strategic national asset. 

Since the Commission's initial investigations, a number of other closely related proposals have been to 

study similar alternatives, not for NTIS, but for the transfer of the Superintendent of Documents 

functions in the Government Printing Office to the Library of Congress. During the FY 2001 budget 

hearings, the Appropriations Committees' Conference conferees directed GAO to study such a 

transfer. Moreover, Congressmen Moran and Davis, and Congresswoman Morella, directed GAO to 

study NTIS operations in greater depth. Both these studies are still underway as we go to press with 

this report. It is hoped that the General Accounting Office (GAO) will take the Commission's findings 

and recommendations into account in its current endeavor. 

It seems quite apparent that the same problems that precipitated the NTIS problems in the first place 

are not limited to NTIS, but are endemic to all agencies with public information dissemination 

missions and functions, whether agencies with government-wide, central missions, or agencies with 

operating missions such as the cabinet departments and independent agencies. 

In short, the Commission faults the rationale that would lead to a "solution" of the problems by one 

such agency (e.g. NTIS), when, in fact, a different solution is left in place for another agency (e.g. 

GPO, USGS, the Census Bureau, and so on). The statutorily authorized sales policies, the statutorily 

authorized revenue policies, and the statutorily authorized charging policies for all agencies should be 

reasonably consistent, albeit taking into account some exceptions. 
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Only one of the eleven alternatives listed above, in the Commission's view, holds out real hope for 

dealing with the root cause of the problem instead of dealing with the effect, and that is to create a new 

independent agency in the Executive Branch as a service bureau to consolidate government-wide 

public information resources management missions, functions, and programs. Not only would the new 

independent agency have overall policy leadership responsibility over the government's public 

information resources dissemination programs, but it would also be the federal government's staunch 

advocate for explaining, advancing, and diffusing government knowledge holdings as a strategic 

national asset. 

With respect to the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Federal Depository Library Program 

(FDLP), a new vision and a new service model are needed. 

What is needed is a new vision, and a new Internet Age business model to replace the 

traditional depository library program, and one in which the role of the government 

documents librarian is more fully expanded and exploited to help citizens diagnose 

their information problems and help them learn how to use the information they have 

found more effectively in applying that information to help them cope with their 

personal, family, job-related, and other challenges. 

In the long run, the importance of the Federal Depository Library Program as it is currently 

constituted, based largely on tangible government information products, might be expected to decline 

as more and more government content becomes available on the Web and as the Web becomes more 

accessible to more and more people, the need to physically travel to a depository library to physically 

search for and access tangible government documents is replaced by remote access using computers 

and modems to government information on the Web. 

The full realization of this vision of the transition from a fully or partially tangible product program to 

a virtual program where the great bulk of government information products are in electronic form, is 

still a very long way off. Congress should not take the growth of the Web and the increasing amount 

of government content available on the Web as a signal to cut appropriations to the Federal Depository 

Library Program. For many years to come, neither will substantial numbers of important government 

documents yet be available in electronic form on the Web, nor will many citizens will not have ready 

access to the Web be able to find and retrieve them. 

What is needed is a new vision, and a new Internet Age business model to replace the traditional 

depository library program, and one in which the role of the government documents librarian is more 

fully expanded and exploited to help citizens diagnose their information problems and help them learn 

how to use the information they have found more effectively in applying that information to help them 

cope with their personal, family, job-related, and other challenges. 

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is well positioned to expand its collections and 

services from so-called tangible information products to digital publications distributed over the 

Internet directly to the depository libraries. Most depository libraries have adapted rapidly to the 

changes in the program and their services to the public have kept pace with the expanded volume of 

digital materials. The current FDLP should immediately include such items for selection by depository 

libraries and ensure their delivery to the libraries prefer affirmative dissemination to access. The 

proposed Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA) should have as its foundation the 

active dissemination of digital publications to widely distributed, locally based and maintained digital 
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library collections of federal depository libraries in exchange for their continued commitment to no-fee 

public access to the materials received or accessed. 

In a digital age of instant access over the Internet, there are still good reasons for establishing and 

maintaining the dissemination of electronic government information to depository libraries, even while 

the federal government provides services for the same materials. Among these are: 

• It provides a non-federal government infrastructure for preservation and access, apart from the 

federal government infrastructure. This will protect access and preservation regardless of future 

changes in policy, mission and funding of federal agencies. 

• It will result in multiple, specialized collections in the depository library community. Each library, 

by addressing the needs of its own community (whether or not that is a geographically local 

community, as it has been historically been, or a virtual community of users with common 

interests) will be able to select, organize, preserve and provide access to that information that is 

most important to its community. This will provide better access that a government-centered 

collection that contains only government information, by providing many different user-centered 

collections and presentations of government information. In addition, libraries can continue to 

integrate and provide their collections of federal government information along with other types of 

government information (foreign, state, local, tribal, etc.), private sector publications and valueadded products. Decisions about the value of particular publications and about the preservation of 

free access to those publications can then reside with the local communities of interest, regardless 

of decisions made at the federal level. 

• It can be implemented immediately without additional legislation or funding and can provide a 

foundation on which the changes that the Commission recommends can be built. The FDLP exists 

today and has no-fee public access to federal government information as its primary mission. In 

the event that the proposed legislation to establish a Public Information Resources Administration 

(PIRA) is not passed quickly, or is significantly altered or inadequately funded, the dissemination 

of digital publications to depository libraries would provide much more assurance of permanent 

public access than exists today. 

• It fulfills the requirement of Section 3506(d)(1)(A) of the of the Paperwork Reduction Act that 

agencies shall "(1) ensure that the public has timely and equitable access to the agency's public 

information, including ensuring such access through (A) encouraging a diversity of public and 

private sources for information based on government public information." 

7. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENTóTHE NATIONAL 

TECHNICAL INFORMATION SERVICE (NTIS) 

The government should not abandon the need for a central STI policy and oversight agency in the 

Executive Branch because of past difficulties. It cannot be a surprise that the combination of events 

described in the Findings section aboveó lower report input, competition with free agency websites, 

loss of appropriated funds, aggressive entrepreneurial zeal with perhaps inappropriate business 

arrangements -ñ led to financial and other difficulties for NTIS. However, it does not follow that the 

government should therefore abandon the notion of a central source for government technical 

information charged with making this information accessible to the Public. 

The NTIS mission in the Internet age should have four primary components: 
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• The collection and processing of government scientific, technical, and engineering information so 

that it can be made accessible to the public including facilitating access to the information on 

government websites; 

• The sale of this information to the public in print, microfiche and electronic form; 

• Related services to other government agencies on a cost reimbursable basis; and 

• Value-added information services provided by NTIS itself or by NTIS in conjunction with private 

sector information vendors. 

The last point is potentially the most controversial because it is here that the potential lies for conflict 

and competition with the private sector. Value-added services would seem to be appropriate when the 

service is directly related to the dissemination of information, or a natural outgrowth of, activities that 

NTIS would normally perform in furtherance of its own mission, such as disseminating an agency's 

database or delivering specific information products to an agency's customers. 

The "new" business model for NTIS recommended by the Commission is a return to the earlier model 

with a mix of appropriated funds for input processing, sales income from report and publication and 

subscription sales and reimbursable funds for services provided to other agencies. 

Some of the functions performed by NTIS benefit the people of the United States and government 

agencies as a whole. These are the functions that make the results of government funded research and 

other NTIS publications accessible to the public. They include the functions of processing information 

into the NTIS collection and maintaining a searchable archive of government information for public 

access. These functions, which benefit the public at large and permit public access to government 

information, are properly supported with public funds, i.e., appropriations. 

When the DOD processes a research report of Defense funded research into its system and mounts it 

on its Web server for Defense community and public access all of the costs are taxpayer funded. The 

Department of Transportation recently received a $250,000 appropriation expressly for the purpose of 

mounting Transportation Department reports on a Web server for public access.96 Even the 

Department of Commerce, when it mounted its two policy reports mentioned in its "Fact Sheet" 

referred to in the earlier section of this paper, used taxpayer funds to pay for the preparation, 

processing, mounting and public availability of the reports. Why should providing public access to 

reports at DOD, Transportation and Commerce be a taxpayer-funded public good while providing the 

same access to the same reports via NTIS require user charges? At present, unlike GPO, Library of 

Congress, DOD, Transportation or Commerce, NTIS is required to fund these same "public good" 

operations from sales receipts and, surprise, prices are high and there is not enough money to fund the 

entire operation when sales turn down. The consequence of this approach to funding is the inevitable 

development of shortsighted recommendations to close down the money losing operation when the 

real problem is with the business model. 

The government has the responsibility to insure that the public has adequate access to the government 

reports and publications collected by NTIS from originating agencies. This responsibility cannot be 

met by shifting it to mission agencies that do not have public information distribution or economic 

growth missions. Nor can it be metóand the funding savedóby transferring the responsibility to 

other central information repositories, which would require essentially the same level of funding to 

perform the same tasks. The government's continuing responsibility to provide public access to 

government information carries with it a responsibility to properly fund the dissemination operation. 

 

96 DOT Gives Users Free Ride to Online Researchî, Government Computer News, April 3, 2000, page 13, at 

http://www.gcn.com/vol19no7/news/1630-1.html. 
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That is why the Commission will formally advocate an information dissemination budget as part of the 

President's budget.97

This is not to say that specific users should not pay the incremental cost of specific access that is not 

normally provided and that incurs extraordinary costs. They should, but in today's Internet world, 

normally free access is likely to mean Web access, which can be provided by the government at 

negligible incremental cost for each additional user. 

The specific operations, which benefit the general public and should be funded with appropriated 

funds, are: 

• Collection or acquisition of reports; 

• The indexing, abstracting and cataloging of these reports; 

• The further processing of reports into the NTIS collection by scanning, microfiching and 

archiving; 

• The creation and maintenance of the NTIS database which provides searching and locating 

information for this report collection including the maintenance of a PURL system to maintain 

accessibility to reports on agency websites; 

• The mounting and maintaining of the searchable NTIS database on a website for free public 

access; 

• The mounting of the full text of the reportsóto the extent they are not available on agency 

serversóon NTIS servers for free public access; and 

• The maintenance of archive files to insure permanent, but not necessarily free, public access to 

material not otherwise available. 

These functions would cost an estimated $5 million per year in ongoing operating costs and would 

permit NTIS to operate effectively independently of the vagaries of future report input or demand.98

There will also be some one-time startup costs to establish the new system. These costs are on the 

order of $1.7 million. NTIS estimates for performing these tasks are shown in Appendix 2 to the Panel 

One Report (Appendix 17). Note that periodic updating and replacement of IT hardware, possibly 

every five years, is not included in the recurring cost estimate in Appendix 2 to the Panel One Report. 

If the functions of NTIS were transferred to the Library of Congress as proposed by the Department of 

Commerce, or to the Superintendent of Documents in the Government Printing Office, to NARA, or 

anywhere else, essentially the same "public good" costs would be incurred and the same appropriation 

for these functions would be required. The Commission made this point in its September 2000 letter to 

the Secretary of Commerce, strongly suggesting that direct-hire full time hiring authority be reinstated 

in order to bring the agency up to a satisfactory staffing and service level, and avoid the danger of the 

agency falling below that satisfactory level. 

In contrast to the inherently governmental responsibilities that the Commission recommends be paid 

for with appropriated funds, the functions of NTIS, such as the distribution of print or microfiche 

copies of reports in response to individual orders or through subscription services, which benefit only 

the specific individuals who make use of these NTIS services and incur specific, measurable, costs for 

 

97 The information dissemination budget is in Recommendation 4. 

98 This estimate for the required annual appropriation was provided by NTIS as part of the Commission's earlier study. The 

specific purposes for which it is to be utilized, along with the exact amount required, must be verified before final numbers 

are presented to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. 
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each additional user, should be paid for directly by the user who benefits through a user charge that 

recovers the incremental cost of the product or service distributed. 

Moreover, the work performed by NTIS for other agencies would also be reimbursed on the basis of 

costs actually incurred. 

If the changes contemplated in this report are accepted by the President and the Congress, then even 

though NTIS document sales income could be expected to fall dramatically as more and more content 

is made available on the Web, since document sales income would only be used to pay the actual costs 

of document distribution and not the cost of processing documents or maintaining the PURL system, it 

should be relatively simple to manage the operation without the kinds of deficiency problems faced in 

the past. Without those financial pressures, the financial instability would disappear, much of the 

aggressive entrepreneurial zeal that led to aggressive competition with the GPO and possible 

questionable partnerships would be reduced. The result would be a stable NTIS cooperating with the 

publication-originating agencies and the other centralized information distribution centers to provide 

ongoing public access to government information on the most economical basis. 

8. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INTERAGENCY GROUPS 

(E.G. THE CIO COUNCIL, FEDERAL WEBMASTERS FORUM, CENDI, ETC.) 

More often than not, the most knowledgeable official for a particular public 

information product may not even be in one of the central agency staff offices, but, 

rather, way down in a subordinate operating sub-unit in an program area, at the 

bureau, division, branch, or even lower level, but the mechanisms for identifying, 

harnessing and mobilizing all of this expertise are too often deficient. The situation 

cries out for closer agency coordination and control. Oftentimes there is not even an 

"IRM committee" that is agency-wide, to advise the CIO. 

It is evident that while responsibility for public information dissemination is nominally vested in 

agency chief information officers pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1995, 

and the Stevenson-Wydler Act, responsibility is, in fact, decentralized and splintered among a wide 

variety of agency central staff and operating program sub-unit offices within individual agencies. For 

example, the following central agency staff offices are all intimately involved in one way or another, 

at some stage in public information dissemination: 

• Public Affairs office; 

• Printing and Publishing activities; 

• Information Technology staffs; 

• Libraries, Information Centers, Clearinghouses and Referral Offices; 

• Webmasters; 

• Records and Archives staffs; 

• Statistical/Reporting staffs; 

• Legislative Liaison offices; and 

• FOIA and Privacy staffs, including Reading Room staff. 
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Moreover, more often than not, the most knowledgeable official for a particular public information 

product may not even be in one of the central agency staff offices, but, rather, way down in a 

subordinate operating sub-unit in an program area, at the bureau, division, branch, or even lower level, 

but the mechanisms for identifying, harnessing and mobilizing all of this expertise are too often 

deficient. The situation cries out for closer agency coordination and control. Oftentimes there is not 

even an "IRM committee" that is agency-wide, to advise the CIO. 

The newness of the CIO position in agencies (only a few years old), coupled with the newness of the 

incumbents appointed to those agencies, compounds the problem of coordination and control because 

these individuals are so new to their jobs. Sometimes even when a CIO has been on the job for a 

relatively long period (i.e. 18 months or longer), s/he is reluctant to "do battle" with peers because of 

ignorance of agency culture and 'ways of doing business.' 

9. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO STATE, LOCAL, AND TRIBAL LEVELS OF 

GOVERNMENT 

Distinctions can and should be made in public information resources regarding the scope and 

applicability of holdings as to whether they are all government, federal only, state only, tribal only, or 

some permutation of these categories 

FirstGov is an example of the critical need to make these governmental level distinctions. 

10. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE COMMERCIAL (FOR PROFIT) SECTOR

The American public's access to government information needs has traditionally been best served 

through multiple, non-exclusive program and delivery channels provided by both the public and the 

private sectors so as to reach the widest possible public audiences, and meet the most diverse and 

specialized kinds of information needs. Neither sector can meet fully the totality of all public user 

needs for government information, nor should they even if they could. 

Moreover, users who are clienteles of a given agency (or perhaps even a few different agencies 

because of overlapping subject matter) develop a certain kinship and affiliation for "their" agencies. 

That is fine and natural, and is as it should be, but it is another reason why diverse and multiple 

channels are essential to a democracy. 

If the NTIS mission were to disappear, those corporations that have come to regard their information 

deposited with NTIS as a de facto archive, would have to go to considerable expense to establish and 

maintain their own archives. 

11. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR, INCLUDING 

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS 

The Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) program is an excellent financing mechanism, 

already in place and operating well, to utilize for helping to fund the education and training of 

librarians and other information professionals in order to upgrade the level and quality of their skills 

and expertise needed to help train other information professionals, user groups, and the public. A 

variety of grant program offerings provides considerable flexibility for designing a program for this 
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purpose. The Commission should work with the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), 

and other appropriate governmental and non-governmental bodies (e.g. the professional societies, and 

professional education and training associations) for this purpose. 

The sort of arrangement entered into by the GPO, the State Department, and the University of Illinois 

at Chicago with respect to the latter institution providing various services to the public and the 

government with respect to foreign affairs materials, should be emulated more broadly across mission 

agency lines to other sectors, including, for example, the environment, energy, space, defense, and 

others.

12. CONCLUSIONS RELATING TO OTHER AREAS, INCLUDING INTERNATIONAL 

INFORMATION POLICY 

If the United States rejoins UNESCO that forum should be explored as a suitable venue for the U.S. to 

pro-actively helping other countries, especially developing countries, learn how to organize, 

disseminate, and more generally exploit the notion of regarding public sector information as a strategic 

national resource. Meanwhile, the Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Education, 

and other stakeholders, is working with the National Forum on Information Literacy to prepare for the 

first international congress for information literacy. 

F. RECOMMENDATIONS 

The concept of public information dissemination should be formally recognized by the United States 

as a strategic national resource. To provide the necessary statutory foundation and other mechanisms 

necessary to achieve the goals and objectives of this new public information resources national 

mission, the Commission has thirteen strategic recommendations and a variety of other, more general, 

recommendations. 

STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS 

1. The United States Government should formally recognize and affirm the concept that public 

information is a strategic national resource; the President should issue an Executive Order 

or Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies emphasizing the 

importance of agency proactive initiatives in making their information resources more 

effectively and efficiently available to, and permanently accessible by all Americans, 

including those who are disabled or disadvantaged; the President and the Congress should 

ensure that this concept is reflected in all appropriate legislative, policy, budgetary and other 

contexts. 

The United States Government should formally recognize and affirm the concept that public 

information is a strategic national resource. To accomplish this, the President should issue an 

Executive Order or a Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies formally 

designating the government's knowledge holdings as a strategic national asset and emphasizing the 

importance of agency proactive initiatives in making their information resources more effectively and 

efficiently available to, and permanently accessible by all Americans, including those who are disabled 

or disadvantaged. The President and the Congress should ensure that this concept is reflected in 

appropriate legislative, policy, budgetary and other contexts. 
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The Commission has determined that there is an absence of an accountability focus for the policy 

leadership, management and oversight of public information resources as a strategic national asset. To 

this end, the Commission has drafted such an instrument,99 as well as proposed legislation for a Public 

Information Resources Reform Act of 2001,100 which along with its other recommendations suggest 

means to respond effectively to this challenge. 

2. The Congress should authorize, and the President should establish, a new independent 

agency in the Executive Branch, the Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), 

to provide overall policy leadership, management, oversight, and accountability for public 

information resources; both new authorities and responsibilities, and transfers of existing 

authorities and responsibilities from extant government entities are required. 

The Congress should authorize, and the President should establish, a new independent agency in the 

Executive Branch, the Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA). The President should 

announce the creation of the new agency, stressing the importance the Administration places on 

making agency information holdings more easily available to and accessible by the public on a 

permanent basis. For this purpose the President may use the above mentioned Executive Order or 

some other instrument. 

Following enactment of the proposed legislation, and pursuant to the enabling statutory authority, the 

Congress and the President should take the necessary steps to establish a new independent agency in 

the Executive Branch, the Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA). The absence of a 

clear, single, central focal point within the government for the policy leadership, public information 

resources planning and programming, cross-platform information handling and interchange standards 

and guidelines development, and enforced use, intergovernmental and interagency sharing of federally 

created information resources, and management of public information resources, is contributing to: 

• unnecessary and wasteful overlap and duplication of government-wide information services and 

information management missions, roles, and functions that are now fragmented, 

compartmentalized and dispersed all over government; 

• the loss of important information, formal or fugitive electronic government information products, 

because there is no single, authoritative backup ("failsafe") electronic depository for government 

information products that agencies post on their web sites;101

• inadequate attention to the special public information needs of disadvantaged and disabled 

Americans; 

• the difficulty of inter-branch, intergovernmental, and interagency sharing of government 

information, and the lack of a federal information infrastructure which can be linked effectively to 

state, local, and tribal government public information infrastructures; and 

• a serious lack of coordination in public information storage, communication and handling policies, 

programs, standards, guidelines and practices that is hampering information preservation and 

storage, communication and interchange between government and public users, and the efficient 

 

99 A draft proposed Executive Order is available in Appendix 29. 

100 This proposal is in Recommendation 5. 101 The major research and development agencies, such as the Departments of Defense and Energy and the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have centralized information programs, but even these programs do not 

capture all public information resources relevant to their missions. 
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and effective interchange of public information between platforms, systems, and networks because 

of inadequate locator and other metadata tools and controls. 

3. The Congress and the President should ensure that there is a standard paragraph in every 

agency's mission statement identifying public information dissemination as a primary 

responsibility; the Congress should ensure through its oversight responsibilities that revised 

missions, once promulgated, are reflected in agency plans, budgets, programs, and 

performance, and should amend agency and program authorization to identify public 

information dissemination as a primary responsibility; the cost of disseminating information 

to the public must be considered an essential, integral and direct cost of an agency's doing 

business (not an overhead cost or financed through user fees), as reflected in procurement 

and contracting regulations, the annual budget process as prescribed by OMB Circular A11, and in other contexts; 

The cost of disseminating government information to the public should be explicitly identified in 

agency budgets as a direct cost (not an overhead cost). Too often disseminating information to the 

public is viewed as a by-product of other, more important agency business, or subsumed in agency 

overhead calculations, and yet, disseminating government information to the public should be 

considered an essential and integral cost of the agency's doing business. Therefore, the Congress and 

the President should ensure that there is a standard paragraph in every agency's mission statement 

identifying public information dissemination as a primary responsibility, and the cost of disseminating 

information to the public must be considered an essential, integral and direct cost of an agency's doing 

business (not an overhead cost or financed through user fees), as reflected in procurement and 

contracting regulations, the annual budget process as prescribed by OMB Circular A-11, and in other 

contexts. 

The Internet provides an unparalleled opportunity to adjust traditional incentives and disincentives 

with respect to motivating agencies to maximize rather than minimize their information flows to the 

public. Agencies are now able to reach out to all citizens in a far more effective manner, and are 

motivated to do so. Not only are the incentives enhanced, but also the disincentives to withhold 

information are reduced. Moreover, to the extent that individual agencies are successful in 

disseminating their own information directly, the burdens on and the costs to central information 

service agencies are correspondingly reduced, but redundancy is still absolutely essential as a 

safeguard. 

4. The President should require an Information Dissemination Budget line item at the 

individual agency level and establish an overall Information Dissemination Budget line item 

in the President's Budget that aggregates individual agency requirements with those of the 

new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA); this budget line will contain two 

major componentsóan STI component and a non-STI component; for the STI component, 

the Congress should enact legislation that automatically reserves at least three onehundredths of one percent (.03%) of all funds appropriated for research, development, and 

comparable government and government-funded activities; this reserve would be a minimal 

reduction of the funds available for R&D, but it would ensure that a minimum of $300,000 

was available for identification, acquisition, cataloging, indexing, and dissemination of 

research and development results for every $1 billion expended on the research. 

The government employs an ìInformation Collection Budgetî line item to keep control of otherwise 

burgeoning agency collections of information from the public, businesses, lower levels of government, 

and so forth. The President should require an ìInformation Dissemination Budgetî (IDB) line item as 
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well, in order to ensure that individual agency efforts, and the overall government effort, to maximize 

the dissemination of information to the public, are clearly identified and statutorily guaranteed. This 

approach would minimize mission agency fears that the Congress would cut their budgets because 

they have strayed too far from utilizing their appropriations for information dissemination purposes 

not directly related to their primary missions.102 To this end, two levels of IDBs are required, one at 

the individual agency level, and an overall IDB in the President's Budget that aggregates individual 

agency information dissemination requirements with those of the new Public Information Resources 

Administration (PIRA). 

To help fund this budgetary line item, the Congress should enact legislation that automatically sets 

aside at least three one-hundredths of one percent (.03%) of all funds appropriated for research, 

development, and comparable government and government-funded activities, to fund the STI 

component of the Information Collection Budget, including the relevant public good functions 

currently performed by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and the Government 

Printing Office (GPO). This reserve would be a miniscule reduction of the funds available for R&D, 

but it would ensure that a minimum of $300,000 was available for identification, acquisition, 

cataloging, indexing, and dissemination of research and development results for every $1 billion 

expended on the research. Based on the current FY 2001 proposed government expenditures of 

approximately $85 billion for R&D, the reserve would make available at least $25.5 million to finance 

direct agency public information dissemination programs and the relevant public good functions 

currently performed by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and the Government 

Printing Office (GPO).103 

Once established, the Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA) will estimate its own 

budgetary requirements, and review those of other Executive Branch agencies. All of those 

requirements will be included in the overall IDB. The portion of PIRA requirements not funded by the 

.03% reserve from R&D budgets, or through its statutorily authorized information sales programs, will 

still require direct appropriations. Until PIRA is created, funding for the relevant public good functions 

of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and the portions of the Superintendent of 

Documents' expenses that are related to the identification, acquisition, cataloging and organization, as 

well as the dissemination of the results of federally funded R&D through the Federal Depository 

Library Program (FDLP), should be financed through the funds reserved from the R&D 

appropriations. However, this will not eliminate the requirements for appropriated funds to support 

and sustain the FDLP and other channels for dissemination of public information not generated 

through federally funded R&D. 

The Commission fully realizes that estimating a minimum IDB budgetary floor, at this stage, is 

hazardous because agencies have never prepared such budgets and neither the Office of Management 

and Budget (OMB), nor the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have, as yet, any experience in 

making such estimates. Until they do, there is no reliable statistical precedence available for budget 

estimation purposes. Moreover, although the figure of $4.5 million was utilized in the Commission's 

earlier NTIS report as a ìreasonable estimateî for defraying the public good functions that should be 

 

102 This issue is also discussed under Finding 1.A. 103 For example, the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) all identify, collect, abstract, index and either scan or microfilm reports for 

their own agency missions that are eligible for public information dissemination. They then transfer the abstracting and 

indexing records, and in some cases, copies of the documents themselves, to NTIS for public availability, which right now 

means sale. If this effort was not performed by DTIC, DOE and NASA, it would have to be performed by NTIS in order to 

make these materials available to the public; therefore, the public good functions of collecting, abstracting, indexing, and 

scanning or microfilming of these public information resources, in so far as they are related to the results of federally funded 

R&D, could and should be funded through the reserve. 
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financed through appropriated funds for STI information, that does not necessarily mean that a 

proportionate amount would be required for the non-STI public information dissemination activities. 

That figure could well, proportionally, be higher, or lower. The Commission's $25.5 million estimate 

for public dissemination of STI is, indeed, a very preliminary and minimum estimate. A more accurate 

estimate of the STI costs and identification of the probable costs for dissemination of non-STI public 

information resources most certainly need to be more carefully developed by OMB and the CBO 

before consideration by the appropriations committees of the Congress. 

There is also the need to recognize and preserve existing budgetary authority that is utilized to defray 

the statutorily authorized costs of mission agency public information dissemination programs to ensure 

that the portions of existing agency budgets utilized for public information dissemination are 

appropriately reflected in the agency IDB. This will also ensure that there is no "double counting" 

between amounts appropriated to the mission agencies on the one hand and the amounts appropriated 

to a central information services agency, such as PIRA, on the other. Where an agency already has 

explicit statutory authority enabling it to disseminate its information to the public, the Commission 

recommends that budgetary authority remain in place and continue. Those amounts, most assuredly, 

should not be considered as "budgetary trade-offs or offsets" against the PIRA budget. 

5. The President and the Congress should review, refine and modify the draft legislation 

proposed by the Commission, the Public Information Resources Reform Act of 2001, and the 

Congress should enact, and the President should approve, the legislation in the 107th 

Congress. 

The Commission has drafted a proposed bill, the Public Information Resources Reform Act of 2001 to 

provide a new statutory foundation for the formal establishment of government's knowledge holdings 

as a strategic national asset.

104 The draft bill is an expanded outline of key provisions, but is not a 

complete bill. It is fully recognized that both the new President and the new Congress will need to 

examine the detailed provisions of the bill very carefully, and make whatever modifications they 

believe necessary. The Commission's thought in preparing a draft was to simply facilitate this process 

and provide a catalyst for discussion and action. 

Such a bill could be introduced as early as in the First Session of the 107th Congress. The Senate 

Committee on Governmental Affairs, and the House Committee on Government Reform, because they 

have paramount jurisdiction over government information matters, should take the lead in reviewing 

the proposed draft, modifying it as necessary, and eventually sponsoring a revised bill in their 

respective Houses. Because of their keen interest in the matter, the Senate Committee on Commerce, 

Science, and Transportation, and the House Committee on Science should also play a key leadership 

role. Undoubtedly the Appropriations Committees of both Houses will also be keenly interested, as 

will the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and the House Committee on House 

Administration. 

6. The Congress should establish a new office, the Congressional Information Resources Office 

(CIRO), with appropriate authorities, functions, funding, and programs necessary to 

support the full range of Legislative Branch public information resources management 

responsibilities; the CIRO should incorporate the Government Printing Office 

responsibilities for Legislative Branch printing and related publishing services, whether 

performed directly or procured; and the Congress should extend key provisions of the 

Paperwork Reduction Act, notably Section 3506(d) to the Legislative and Judicial Branches. 

 

104 The proposed legislation is available in Appendix 21. 
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The Legislative Branch should also establish a new office, the Congressional Information Resources 

Management Office (CIRO). This new entity should have authorities, functions, and programs 

necessary to support the full range of Legislative Branch public information resources management 

responsibilities, throughout the entire legislative information life cycle. The new office would provide 

overall policy leadership, oversight, and accountability for the Legislative Branch's public information 

resources programs and have new responsibilities for working with the Clerk of the House, Secretary 

of the Senate, and the heads of other Legislative Branch offices to ensure that information resources 

management principles and practices are diffused more widely throughout the entire Legislative 

information life cycle. 

The Government Printing Office (GPO) is a long-established institution that has served the nation 

extremely well. However, a new vision and business model appropriate to the Internet Age are now 

needed. Incorporation of GPO into a new CIRO will streamline, simplify, and modernize the mission 

of that organization, so that it can continue to support printing and related publishing services, whether 

performed directly or procured, to meet the needs of the Congress and the Legislative Branch. 

 

The scope of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 currently applies only to the Executive Branch. 

However, several key sections, notably Section 3506(d), could usefully be extended to the Legislative 

and Judicial Branches as well. Section 3506(d) of the Paperwork Reduction Reauthorization Act of 

1995 states: 

(d) With respect to information dissemination, each agency shall - 

(1) ensure that the public has timely and equitable access to the agency's 

public information, including ensuring such access through 

(A) encouraging a diversity of public and private sources for 

information based on government public information; 

(B) in cases in which the agency provides public information 

maintained in electronic format, providing timely and equitable 

access to the underlying data (in whole or in part); and 

(C) agency dissemination of public information in an efficient, 

effective, and economical manner; 

(2) regularly solicit and consider public input on the agency's information 

dissemination activities; 

(3) provide adequate notice when initiating, substantially modifying, or 

terminating significant information dissemination products; and 

(4) not, except where specifically authorized by statute - 

(A) establish an exclusive, restricted, or other distribution 

arrangement that interferes with timely and equitable availability of 

public information to the public; 

(B) restrict or regulate the use, resale, or redissemination of public 

information by the public; 

(C) charge fees or royalties for resale or redissemination of public 

information; or 

(D) establish user fees for public information that exceed the cost of 

dissemination. 
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Commenting on the proposed report, James Jacobs, data services librarian at the University of 

California, San Diego, suggested that Section 3506(d)(1)(C) of the Paperwork Reduction Act could be 

amended to say "agency dissemination of public information in an efficient, effective, and economical 

manner, including deposit of publications with depository libraries through the FDLP or its 

successors." 

7. The Judicial Branch should establish a new office, the Judicial Information Resources Office 

(JIRO), in the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, with comparable authorities, 

functions, funding, and programs necessary to support the full range of Judicial Branch 

public information resources management responsibilities, including procurement of 

printing and related publishing services. 

Similar to the foregoing recommendation with respect to the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch 

should also establish a new office, the Judicial Information Resources Management Office (JIRO), in 

the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. This new entity should have comparable authorities, 

functions, and programs necessary to support the full range of Judicial Branch public information 

resources management responsibilities, throughout the entire judicial information life cycle. The new 

office would provide overall policy leadership, oversight, and accountability for the Judicial Branch's 

overall public information resources programs and have new responsibilities for working with the 

Clerk of the Supreme Court and other Judicial Branch offices to ensure that information resources 

management principles and practices are diffused more widely throughout the entire Judicial 

information life cycle. 

8. State, local, and tribal levels of government should consider establishing comparable public 

information resources planning, management, and control machinery as that contemplated 

by this report, but tailored to their unique requirements and circumstances. 

State, local, and tribal levels of government should consider establishing comparable public 

information resources planning, management, and control machinery as that contemplated by this 

Report, but tailored and customized to their own unique requirements and circumstances. Lower levels 

of government should be encouraged to formally designate their respective knowledge holdings as 

strategic assets and take appropriate actions to implement that designation, so that it is not regarded 

just as an exhortation, but has practical value and utility as manifested by operational programs, 

policies, and practices 

9. The NTIS information collection, editing and related tasks are inherently governmental in 

nature and should be funded by Congress with appropriated funds. 

Beginning in FY 2001, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), wherever it may be 

located, should receive appropriated funds to cover its "public good" activities related to the 

acquisition, organization, and preservation of scientific and technical information for public access 

because those activities are inherently governmental in nature. NTIS should not be required to recover 

the costs of those activities from sales income. These "public good" operations include the functions 

necessary to ensure that NTIS reports are permanently accessible to the public. These functions 

include: 

• collection or acquisition of reports; 

• indexing, abstracting, and cataloging of these reports; 
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• further processing of reports into the NTIS collection by scanning, microfilming, and archiving; 

• creation and maintenance of the NTIS database which provides searching and locating information 

for this report collection, including the maintenance of a uniform locator system to maintain 

accessibility to reports on agency web sites; 

• mounting and maintaining of the searchable NTIS database on a web site for free public access; 

• mounting of the full text of the reportsóto the extent that they are not available on agency servers 

óon NTIS servers for free public access; and 

• maintenance of its collection to insure permanent, but not necessarily cost-free, public access to 

historical material not otherwise available.105

In its March 2000 preliminary assessment report to the President and the Congress on NTIS, the 

Commission recommended the currently estimated annual appropriation sufficient to defray these 

inherently governmental activities to be $5 million per year.106 

Recommendation 4 to establish an information dissemination budget mechanism implicitly recognizes 

the inherently governmental functions of NTIS and provides it with a clearly identifiable budgetary 

line item to give it "force and effect." 

10. The NTIS mission and functions are fundamentally sound even though the agency's business 

model needs to be changed; the agency should remain in the Department of Commerce, 

operating at a satisfactory level of staffing and service, until such time as it is transferred to 

the proposed new Public Information Resources Management Administration (PIRA). 

The President and the Congress should reject the August 1999 proposal made by the Department of 

Commerce to close NTIS and transfer its authorities, collections, and resources to the Library of 

Congress. Instead, NTIS should remain in operation in the Department of Commerce, empowered to 

perform at a satisfactory level of service and staffing, until such time as it's mission and functions are 

transferred into the proposed new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA). 

Commerce should make the necessary adjustments in its FY 2001, and subsequent fiscal year budgets 

relating to NTIS, so long as that agency remains in the Department, to change the NTIS financing plan 

in accordance with the mix of revenue requirements recommended below. Commerce should also 

ensure that as soon as the Congress authorizes the use of appropriated funds, NTIS change its business 

model as recommended below. 

11. The NTIS business model should be updated and revenues should be derived from a mixture 

of three sources: appropriated funds, sales income, and reimbursements from other agencies 

for services provided; charging policies need also to be simultaneously modified. 

The updated proposed NTIS business model should include a mix of three sources of revenue: 

• appropriated funds; 

 

105 As is discussed elsewhere in this report, the collection of information for permanent public access is distinct and separate 

from the responsibility of the originating agency to schedule an official record copy of each of its reports and other 

information products for disposition and possible transfer to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for 

"permanent records retention" under the Federal Records Act. 

106 This estimate for the required annual appropriation was provided by NTIS as part of the Commission's earlier study. The 

specific purposes for which it is to be utilized, along with the exact amount required, must be verified before final numbers 

are presented to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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• sales income; and 

• reimbursements from other agencies for services provided. 

Other key elements of the revised business model are: 

• NTIS should not charge royalties or impose copyright-like restrictions for products or services it 

provides; 

• charges for report copies, regardless of medium or format, should be based on the incremental cost 

of providing the copies; and 

• NTIS products and services, other than the retrospective report collection, must be available to the 

public through the Federal Depository Library Program. 

The cost of providing access to and delivering older reports will oftentimes be higher than the cost of 

providing and delivering current reports because of format and medium conversions and other special 

information handling requirements. This cost should be recovered through the pricing for such reports. 

12. Public and private sector partnerships should be strengthened, extended, and expanded 

where the private sector can serve as the government's agent in a wide variety of roles, as 

information provider or information value-adder. 

In this context, the private sector means entities other than the government itself. This includes both 

for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, such as academic and public libraries, professional societies 

and trade associations, hybrids that are joint government/private enterprise, and commercial 

enterprises. Organizations such as these continue to play a crucial role by partnering with the 

government to enhance and enrich the production, organization, searchability, access to, and 

dissemination of government information. In the Commission's view, government has an affirmative 

obligation to facilitate a multiplicity and a diversity of sources and roles for gaining access to and 

disseminating government information. Even if government could handle this total responsibility alone 

(which it cannot) the public and private sectors working together in a partnership will produce a far 

better mix of government information products and services for all citizens. However, the federal 

government continues to have primary responsibility for the entire life cycle of electronic government 

information, including the dissemination and permanent public access to government information, 

without restrictions, to the American public. 

13. Library and information professional associations are well positioned to expand education, 

training, career advancement, and related professional programs to better prepare 

librarians to assist end users of government information; funding should be provided 

through grants from the Library Services and Technology Act grants programs and by 

other means. 

The Commission will work closely with the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), 

various professional library and information societies107 and others to develop a program aimed at 

securing grants through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) authorities, for the purpose 

of developing training courses and modules, including online tutorials and other materials, targeted to 

 

107 This will include the American Library Association (ALA), the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), the 

Special Libraries Association (SLA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Association of College and Research 

Libraries (ACRL), the Chief Operating Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), the 

Medical Library Association (MLA), among others. 
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librarians that assist end users of government information. A core of trained experts already exists for 

this purpose in the cadre of highly skilled government document librarians who serve the public in 

virtually every Congressional District in the country through the Federal Depository Library Program 

(FDLP). The FDLP should be given responsibility for increased training of these depository librarians 

and they, in turn, should assume increased responsibility for training reference and other librarians to 

assist the public in the effective identification and use of government information. 

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 

The Commission has identified various additional budgetary, programmatic, and technical 

recommendations should be implemented by the President, the Congress, the National Archives and 

Records Administration (NARA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other appropriate 

agencies and organizations to improve dissemination of, and access to, public information resources. 

14. The Department of Commerce and NTIS management should take appropriate actions to 

implement other recommendations pertaining to NTIS 

The Commission reaffirms its recommendation made in the March 2000 report to the 

President and the Congress that a one-time appropriation, estimated by NTIS to be 

$1.6 million,108 should be approved to defray the costs to set up a mechanism to 

provide free and permanent public access to current materials and future acquisitions, 

primarily by electronic means, through the Federal Depository Library Program. 

The Panel on the Reform of the NTIS Business Model109 recommends that the scope of the NTIS 

collections continue to be guided by 15 CFR 1180 to include information that relates to business and 

industry. The Commission does not believe NTIS' scope should be restricted to science and 

technology narrowly defined. However, the scope should not include general public information that 

does not have a strong and direct relationship with business, industry or technology. The primary 

focus of NTIS should be on its statutory mission to disseminate scientific and technical information 

(STI), and it should not be distracted from that mission by its efforts to find sources of revenue. In its 

efforts to find revenue to support its operations, NTIS has expanded the scope of its coverage well 

beyond its primary mission, and even beyond the expanded mission described in 15 CFR 1180.110 

The Commission agrees with the Panel that NTIS should continue to sell report copies in paper, 

microfiche and electronic medium formats, as long as the demand for a particular format or medium 

justifies continuing its use. 

 

The Panel made a number of technical recommendations related to NTIS operations, including: 

• Full Electronic Scanning. NTIS should consider changing its method of scanning of report input 

from image-only scanning, which has high storage and bandwidth requirements and limited utility 

 

108 This estimate for a one-time appropriation was provided by NTIS as part of the Commission's earlier study. The specific 

purposes for which it is to be utilized, along with the exact amount required, must be verified before final numbers are 

presented to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. 

109 Additional details are available in the report from Panel 1 in Appendix 17 and at 

 http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel1.html. 

110 For example, the Department of Commerce has questioned NTIS' role in the dissemination of tax forms for the Internal 

Revenue Service (IRS), and GPO has questioned the need for NTIS to distribute the Government Manual and other GPO 

general interest "best sellers." These issues are also discussed in Finding 7.E. 
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on the Internet, to full electronic scanning, which permits full text searching across documents, 

and has lower storage and bandwidth requirements; 

• Source Data Automation. NTIS should obtain full text electronic files of reports from other 

agencies whenever possible to avoid scanning costs; 

• Pointing to Agency Websites. NTIS should provide its users with access to reports made available 

by other agencies on the other agency's websites by pointing from the NTIS database to the 

appropriate location on the other agency's site;111

• Persistent Uniform Resources Locator (PURL) System. NTIS should develop a Persistent Uniform 

Resources Locator (PURL) system and track reports within their scope that are available on other 

agency websites so that NTIS users can find reports on other agency sites when they are moved 

from site to site;112 and 

• Older Reports and Special Handling Requirements. Reports not available for free on agency sites 

should be made available without charge on an NTIS website whenever it is economically feasible 

to do so. Older reports not in electronic form would not be made available in this manner and 

reports that require special high cost handling could also be excluded.113 The technology used to 

maintain accessibility to older, less frequently used reports, should be selected so as to minimize 

storage and handling costs.

 

The Department of Commerce should lift the hiring freeze currently imposed on NTIS to the extent 

necessary to permit the hiring of a sufficient number of proper qualified information professionals 

needed to sustain NTIS at a satisfactory level of service and staffing until such time as it is transferred 

to the Public Information Resources Administration. As the Commission indicated in its October 10, 

2000 letter to the Commerce Department, no matter where, ultimately, NTIS is located 

organizationally, its functions and operations must continue. The government cannot afford to lose the 

skills and expertise of key NTIS staff as more and more NTIS information professionals, uncertain of 

their agency's future, seek opportunities in environments far less unsettled. If the agency's capabilities 

are allowed to gradually erode, inevitably, to a point where it will have become so dysfunctional that 

revitalizing it would be extremely daunting, if not impossible, then no one is the "winner"óthe 

Department, the government, the information user, or the taxpayer. 

The Commission reaffirms the recommendation made in the March 2000 report to the President and 

the Congress that a one-time appropriation, estimated by NTIS to be $1.6 million,114 should be 

approved to defray the costs to set up a mechanism to provide free and permanent public access to 

current materials and future acquisitions, primarily by electronic means, through the Federal 

Depository Library Program. Other details of this recommendation are contained in the earlier 

Commission report on the proposed closure of NTIS.115

 

111 GPO is already taking such steps for information that falls within the scope of the FDLP and NTIS should find ways to 

join in this effort so that both programs are strengthened, and new redundant efforts are not initiated. 

112 GPO is already taking such steps for information that falls within the scope of the FDLP and NTIS should find ways to 

join in this effort so that both programs are strengthened, and new redundant efforts are not initiated. 

113 No explanation of, or justification for creating or charging for, "reports that require special high cost handling" was 

provided by the Panel. Such reports should be funded by the originating agency or some other means, rather than creating an 

exception to the policies recommend by the Commission for free public access and public sale of NTIS reports once the 

public good functions are funded. 

114 This estimate for a one-time appropriation was provided by NTIS as part of the Commission's earlier study. The specific 

purposes for which it is to be utilized, along with the exact amount required, must be verified before final numbers are 

presented to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. 

115 Preliminary Assessment of the Proposed Closure of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS): A Report to the 

President and the Congress, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 16, 2000; 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/ntis/presiden.pdf. 
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15. The Congress should request the National Commission on Libraries and Information 

Science (NCLIS) to assess public laws with provisions for establishing and maintaining 

public information resources for the purpose of identifying ways to modernize and 

strengthen the government's overall program in the Internet age. 

The Congress should request the Commission to undertake an assessment of the hundreds of laws that 

have been enacted since the birth of the Nation, that contain provisions for the establishment and 

maintenance of a public information resource. The Commission would be pleased to perform this task, 

but would prefer to do so with the assistance of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the 

General Accounting Office (GAO) and the National Research Council. 116

The purpose of such an assessment would be to determine how the overall existing government 

program could be modernized and strengthened, especially in light of the Internet Age. It should not 

be assumed that the existing statutory foundation for disseminating government information to the 

public, notably FOIA and e-FOIA, but including the Privacy Act and other Congressional and 

Executive guidance, is adequate because the public has many information needs that are not 

necessarily and fortuitously addressed by existing legislation. Diffusing government knowledge to the 

public depends on first identifying the public's real needs for government information without being 

constrained by existing laws. 117

16. The Congress should exercise greater oversight in the context of authorization and 

appropriation hearings and budget reviews on the extent to which lack of enforcement of 

existing laws is a serious impediment to effective public information dissemination; the 

President should ensure that adequate attention is paid to enforcement in the context of 

preparation of the President's budget, in performance reviews, and in other contexts. 

Realistic, statutory enforcement provisions with real consequences are needed to assure that agencies 

abide by requirements to disseminate and provide access to government information. Such 

enforcement mechanisms are important regardless of whether the requirement is a more general one, 

e.g., to provide such information to all members of the public, or more specific, e.g., the provisions for 

cataloging, indexing and no-fee public access to federal government information through the FDLP. 

Agencies that run afoul of the law should be subject to enforcement mechanisms with real 

consequences. 

17. The President should direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in collaboration 

with the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to strengthen, and 

institutionalize if necessary, interagency and intergovernmental cooperative efforts to 

promote greater intergovernmental information sharing; the President should also direct 

OMB to coordinate with the Legislative and Judicial Branches to seek ways to improve 

inter-branch information interchange and sharing. 

At a minimum, OMB Circular A-130 should be amended to promote greater intergovernmental and 

interagency sharing of government information resources, not just for the purpose of avoiding 

unnecessary proliferation of new information systems where existing systems could serve the need, 

which is the current rationale, but, at the information product level for the purpose of diffusing 

 

116 The need for such an analysis is discussed in Findings 4.C and Conclusion 4. 117 This recommendation closely relates to Recommendation 21 on the need for new research in this area. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

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knowledge to a far wider government agency audience. In short, for both the "negative reasons" 

currently cited (i.e. avoiding unnecessary systems duplication), as well as for the "positive reasons" 

mentioned herein (i.e. because greater diffusion of knowledge leads to a multiplier effect for obtaining 

greater value from information investments). 

The Director of OMB should also meet with appropriate individuals in both the Judicial and 

Legislative Branches to identify ways to strengthen and improve inter-branch information interchange 

and sharing. 

18. The President should direct the Office of Management and Budget, in collaboration with the 

new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to clarify "Information LifeCycle Planning and Management" in the next revision of OMB Circular A-130, including 

taking steps to design, develop, and test an integrated information life cycle management 

software module that would satisfy multiple information policy requirements in a systematic 

and comprehensive manner; the Congress should include comparable and consistent 

revisions in the forthcoming reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act in 2001. 

The term "life-cycle planning" as defined in OMB Circular A-130, and its practical applicability to 

agency planning and managing goals, should be strengthened to address planning for the sharing and 

use of information content for research and development, for decision-making, and to ensure an 

adequate record of governmental activities. The core idea is to put in place an integrated and 

synchronized software program that would satisfy multiple, diverse statutory requirements for 

managing and disseminating information once created. 118 Analysis, recently begun by GAO, should 

be carried forward to determine what is needed to ensure privacy, confidentiality, security, and 

authenticity as information is shared and integrated across agencies, and policies established and 

implemented. 

19. The President should establish an interagency committee, in collaboration with the CIO 

Council and the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to identify and 

recommend how standard and consistent federal identifiers can be used to assist agencies 

and the public to obtain information residing in different agencies. 

Access should be designed to help agencies and the public to determine compliance with the laws and 

regulations, and identify duplicative requirements. Such recommendations should be forwarded to the 

President's Management Council and GSA for use in FirstGov, the government's web portal. 

20. The President should direct the Office of Management and Budget, in partnership with the 

CIO Council and the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to conduct 

a comprehensive analysis and make recommendations addressing the most efficient ways to 

crosswalk, coordinate, and harmonize the many state and local government uniquely 

assigned identification numbers. 

A comprehensive analysis should be conducted and recommendations formulated as to the most 

efficient ways to translate, coordinate, crosswalk, and harmonize the many state and local government 

uniquely assigned identification numbers that are used to manage permitting, licensing, and 

compliance records with the corresponding federal unique identifiers.

 

118 The White Paper on life cycle management is in Appendix 12 and available at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/infolife.html. 
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21. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation should coordinate 

the development and undertaking of an information research program to address the federal 

government's most critical requirements for long-term information content management 

needs. 

An information research program should be established to address the federal government's most 

critical requirements for long-term information content management needs. Certainly these needs 

include: security (including information integrity and authenticity); privacy; data integration; and the 

development of scalable federal information infrastructure to improve the capability and reliability of 

the federal information infrastructure. Even more importantly, this research should be aimed at 

identifying what new government knowledge sources, services, and systems need to be developed to 

help the public cope more effectively with the gaps in their knowledge. Traditionally, Congress has 

required government to disseminate information to the public primarily as a by-product response to 

very specific and carefully circumscribed program areas, such as energy, the environment, safety in 

the workplace, and so forth. Yet the public's information needs do not always neatly match these 

legislated program requirements. This is a chicken-and-the-egg proposition. That is, which comes 

first, the public information need, or the legislation? The Commission believes the former should not 

necessarily be predicated on the latter. That is why brand new government knowledge resources need 

to be identified, designed, developed, and provided to the public based on a continuous monitoring 

process of identifying the public's needs. This recommendation closely relates to the recommendation 

above regarding the need for the Congress, perhaps utilizing the vehicle of the CRS, to analyze 

existing statutes in this context. 

22. The President should direct the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in collaboration 

with the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to step forward to 

assume the role it already has in statute to provide policy guidance and oversight in the 

effective management of STIóand perhaps even to form a COSATI-like group, which has 

membership from both the public and private sectors. 

Although STI is better managed than most government information, it is a critical national resource 

and warrants a strong central leadership to maximize resource sharing, both among government 

agencies and with the general public. 

23. The Office of Management and Budget should specify that each data element in the 

reporting requirements for the Government Paperwork Elimination Act should be reported 

in XML. 

Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA), Title XVII of Public Law 105-277, promotes the 

use of digital signatures and the submission of reports to the federal government electronically. 

Attachment B, Element #4, Interagency Reporting Requirements of the OMB implementing guidance 

calls for "a short description of the interagency report or information dissemination product." Generic 

descriptions of each report and "dissemination product" are better than nothing. (By law, any 

"dissemination product" deemed to be "major" already should be described in GILS.) However, in 

order to share information efficiently and effectively across agencies, as well as with the public, each 

"data element' within each report or "dissemination product" will need to be identified and its 

characteristics should be specified. The logical time to do so is when designing the "forms" which will 

gather the data. The best way to avoid needless redundancies is provide for a registry of the data 

elements and require the agencies to consult it before establishing any new elements on any forms. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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24. When seeking National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) approval to schedule 

or dispose of records, agencies should be required, to specify the metadata by which each of 

their records series will be classified. 

This approach will aid in the searching and acquisition of government information, preferably on the 

Internet. Agencies should also be required to consult with their stakeholders concerning needed 

information taxonomies within the context of their annual GPRA performance plans and reports. 

25. An interagency ad hoc committee should be established, in collaboration with the CIO 

Council, to conduct a comprehensive analysis regarding which currently non-digital 

government information holdings should be converted to digital mediums, and the cost to do 

so. 

An interagency ad hoc committee should be established, in collaboration with the CIO Council, to 

conduct a comprehensive analysis regarding which currently non-digital government information 

holdings should be converted to digital mediums, and the cost to do so. The committee should also 

conduct a comprehensive analysis regarding what needs to be done to assure permanent public 

availability of, accessibility to, preservation of, and authentication of digital publications produced by 

federal agencies. 

In consort with the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the Federal Library and 

Information Center Committee (FLICC) and others, the committee should develop an information 

taxonomy for government-wide use. This is essential to portals such as First Gov and for maintaining 

a minimum level of consistent description for all government information resources, regardless of 

what other cataloging and indexing may be done for specialized purposes.119

The committee should ensure the development of an Information Life Cycle Management software 

module for use throughout the federal government that would permit the satisfying of multiple 

statutory information resource management requirements in a systematic, harmonized, integrated 

fashion so as to eliminate or minimize overlapping, duplicative, and conflicting ad hoc polices, 

procedures, and guidelines currently being followed. 

26. The President should direct the OMB/OIRA, the CIO Council and the Federal Webmasters 

Forum, in collaboration with the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), 

to develop guidelines for agency webmaster use to make distinctions regarding the 

availability of public information resources holdings by different government branches and 

levels; each of the three branches, as well as federal only, state only, local only, tribal only, or 

some permutation of these categories should be differentiated. 

The President should direct the OMB/OIRA, the CIO Council and the Federal Webmasters Forum in 

collaboration with the new Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA), to develop draft 

guidelines for use by all agencies to assist them in making the distinction regarding the applicability of 

public information resource availability to all branches and levels of government, including all three 

branches, the federal level only, the state level only, the tribal level only, or some permutation of 

these. The guidelines should be submitted to the CIO Council for review and concurrence. 

Knowledgeable interagency committees such as CENDI, the Interagency Committee on Federal 

Statistics (ICFS) and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) should assist 

it in the development of the guidelines, as well public user groups such as ADPU and ACE. 

 

119 There is additional discussion of this issue under Finding 6.B. 
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FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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27. Strengthened partnering mechanisms are needed to ensure close coordination between the 

Legislative, Judicial and Executive Branches. 

An effective means should be established for consultation and cooperation among the three branches 

of government to assure, to the greatest extent possible, that all federal government information is 

available to, and accessible by the public, and maintained in a cost effective manner that reduce s 

unnecessary overlap and duplication. Coordination of policies and procedures across the Executive, 

Legislative and Judicial Branches is crucial. A commitment by agency officials in each branch to share 

information and ideas would be advantageous to all involved in disseminating and providing access to 

government information. 

28. Academic and other types of libraries, information services agencies, and government-wide 

information services agency partnering arrangements should be extended and expanded 

across mission agency lines wherever cost-effective and practicable. 

The Commission, working closely with the government-wide information services agencies such as 

GPO, NARA, and the Library of Congress, and/or the new Public Information Resources 

Administration, if and when it is statutorily established, and various interagency committees such as 

CENDI and the CIO Council, should identify additional areas for collaboration between academic and 

other types of libraries (particularly federal depository libraries), mission agencies, and governmentwide information services agencies patterned after the arrangement entered into by the University of 

Illinois at Chicago, the Department of State, and the Government Printing Office with respect to the 

selection acquisition, preservation, and archiving of certain foreign affairs materials. 

29. Cooperation between the proposed Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA) 

and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish uniform 

standards and guidelines and make it easy for agencies to provide one copy of an 

information product for both permanent public access and, if scheduled by NARA, 

permanent records retention. 

There is understandable and justifiable concern that electronic public information 

resources are being lost even while we are struggling to develop and implement the 

necessary laws, policies and standards to preserve it. 

The Public Information Resources Administration (PIRA) and National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA) should establish a formal relationship to ensure that standards and guidelines 

are established within one year of enactment of the proposed Public Information Resources Reform 

Act of 2001, so that an agency transferring its public information resources to PIRA for permanent 

public availability can by that same transfer be ensured that its obligations for permanent records 

retention under the Federal Records Act will be met. To accomplish this PIRA and NARA must 

establish and promulgate standards and guidelines for the authentication and transfer of agency public 

information resources to PIRA. The PIRA will ensure the permanent public availability of these public 

information resources, and through cooperative agreements and partnership arrangements with NARA 

and the originating agency, PIRA will either maintain the public information resources that NARA 

schedules for permanent records retention, or transfer the official record copy of those public 

information resources to NARA at the appropriate time and in the appropriate format. Public 

information resources not scheduled for permanent records retention will nevertheless be maintained 

by PIRA for permanent public availability. Agencies that maintain their own permanent public 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

FIRST DRAFT, November 27, 2000

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availability by agreement with PIRA will be responsible for transfer of the official record copy of 

those public information resources to NARA at the appropriate time and in the appropriate format, if 

they are scheduled for permanent records retention. 

The Public Printer and the Superintendent of Documents have been conducting interagency meetings 

on the subject of permanent public access for some time. NARA is a participant in those meetings, as 

are the Commission, the Library of Congress, and the other national libraries. Until the Public 

Information Resources Reform Act of 2001, or other relevant legislation, is enacted, these meetings 

should become the locus for development and implementation of government-wide guidelines and 

standards to ensure permanent public availability and, where appropriate, permanent records retention 

of electronic public information resources. 

There is understandable and justifiable concern that electronic public information resources are being 

lost even while we are struggling to develop and implement the necessary laws, policies and standards 

to preserve it. Electronic publishing is widely decentralized in most agencies, making it difficult, if not 

impossible, to educate all of the individuals who need to know about the statutory obligations for 

transfer of agency information products to the Government Printing Office for the Federal Depository 

Library Program (FDLP), the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and NARA. Developing 

a simple, cost-effective means to transfer agency public information resources once and, by so doing, 

fulfill all of the mandates for deposit of that information is crucial to effective compliance. There are 

no statutory barriers to such an effort, and intra- and interagency collaboration is essential to preserve 

our public information resources, both for permanent public availability and, where appropriate, for 

permanent records retention. 

30. The Commission, working with the Department of State, the Department of Education, the 

National Forum on Information Literacy (NIFL), and other interested individuals and 

organizations, should pro-actively pursue the idea of advancing the concept of treating 

public sector information as a strategic national asset in other nations. 

The Commission, working with the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Education, the 

National Forum on Information Literacy (NIFL), and other interested individuals and organizations, 

should pro-actively pursue the idea of advancing the concept of treating public sector information as a 

strategic national asset in other nations. A modest start in this direction could be a planning workshop 

utilizing UNESCO as the venue. 

The European Union has already held the United States up as a model for public access to information 

in its Green Paper entitled Public Sector Information: A Key Resource For Europe; Green Paper on 

Public Sector Information in the Information Society.

120 The U.S. government can do more to make 

these policies known to other countries, and to the extent that the U.S. government reforms its own 

public information dissemination laws and policies as recommended by the Commission in this report, 

it can become an even better model for other countries to follow. 

 

120 European Commission, Public Sector Information: A Key Resource For Europe; Green Paper on Public Sector 

Information in the Information Society (COM(98)585final, adopted on 20 January 1999); 

http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/docs/policy/docs/COM(98)585/gp-intro.html. 
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APPENDICES

Appendices are not incorporated in this draft report, but are itemized below. Most appendices are 

available on the Commission website at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. Locations for 

individual appendices are provided where available. 

APPENDIX 1. LETTER TO NCLIS CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD FROM 

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, JUNE 12, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/mccain.html 

APPENDIX 2. REPLY TO SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN FROM CHAIRPERSON 

MARTHA B. GOULD, JUNE 27, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/replymcc.html 

APPENDIX 3. LETTER TO NCLIS CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD FROM 

SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, JULY 17, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/liebermn.html 

APPENDIX 4. REPLY TO SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN FROM 

CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD, AUGUST 7, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/liebresp.html 

APPENDIX 5. LETTER TO SECRETARY OF COMMERCE NORMAN MINETA 

FROM NCLIS CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD, AUGUST 1, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/mineta1.html 

APPENDIX 6. REPLY TO CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD FROM 

SECRETARY MINETA, SEPTEMBER 1, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/mineta.pdf 

APPENDIX 7. SECOND LETTER TO SECRETARY OF COMMERCE NORMAL 

MINETA FROM NCLIS CHAIRPERSON MARTHA B. GOULD, OCTOBER 10, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/mineta2.html 

APPENDIX 8. NCLIS PRESS RELEASE, JUNE 26, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/news/pr2000/assess1.html 

APPENDIX 9. NCLIS STUDY PLAN OUTLINE, JULY 25, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/planout.html 

APPENDIX 10. SOME ISSUES/CONCERNS TO ADDRESS, JULY 25, 2000 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/concerns.html 
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APPENDIX 11. SOME PARADIGMS, MYTHS, AND REALITIES 

NCLIS Staff White Paper 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/paradigm.html. 

APPENDIX 12. INFORMATION LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT 

NCLIS Staff White Paper 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/infolife.html. 

APPENDIX 13. CATEGORIES OF PUBLIC INFORMATION LAWS AND 

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES OF PUBLIC INFORMATION RESOURCES 

PROVISIONS 

NCLIS Staff Paper 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/statcat.html. 

APPENDIX 14. NCLIS COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT WEB PAGE TABLE OF 

CONTENTS 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html 

APPENDIX 15. NCLIS PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC INFORMATION, JUNE 29, 1990 

http://www.nclis.gov/info/pripubin.html 

APPENDIX 16. STUDY PANELS & GROUP OF EXPERTS MEMBERSHIPS 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panelmem.html 

APPENDIX 17. FINAL REPORT OF PANEL ONE, A REFORMED NTIS BUSINESS 

MODEL FOR THE INTERNET AGE 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel1.html 

APPENDIX 18. FINAL REPORT OF PANEL TWO, REFORMED FEDERAL 

AGENCY NEEDS FOR CENTRAL INFORMATION SERVICES AND 

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel2.html 

APPENDIX 19. FINAL REPORT OF PANEL THREE, REFORMED CITIZEN, 

BUSINESS, LOWER LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT, LIBRARY, AND OTHER 

NEEDS FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION PRODUCTS AND SERVICES 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel3.html 

APPENDIX 20. FINAL REPORT OF PANEL FOUR ñ RENEWED AND 

STRENGTHENED PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE 

SECTORS FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION DISSEMINATION 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/panel4.html 

APPENDIX 21. THE PUBLIC INFORMATION RESOURCES REFORM ACT OF 

2001 (RECOMMENDED LEGISLATION) 

Excerpts are available at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/legisum.pdf. Two Fact 

Sheets are also available, one on the Federal Depository Library Program at 
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ó 119 ó 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/fdlpfact.html, and the other on the recommended 

establishment of a public information resources agency in each branch of government 

at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/branch.html.121

APPENDIX 22. THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT REAUTHORIZATION 

(2001) AND OMB CIRCULAR A-130 (SUGGESTED REVISIONS) 

APPENDIX 23. AN INVITED RETROSPECTIVE APPRAISAL OF THE 1982 NCLIS 

PUBLIC SECTOR/PRIVATE SECTOR TASK FORCE REPORT 

Written by Robert M. Hayes, Member, NCLIS Group of Experts 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/hayes.html. 

APPENDIX 24. THE WORLD WIDE LIBRARY BY CHRISTOPHER BURNS, 

MEMBER, NCLIS GROUP OF EXPERTS 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/worldlib.html 

APPENDIX 25. FIRSTGOV: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT BY WILLIAM H. 

PRICE, MEMBER, NCLIS GROUP OF EXPERTS 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/price.html 

APPENDIX 26. SURVEY OF SELECTED FEDERAL AGENCY POLICIES, 

PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES RELATING TO PUBLIC INFORMATION 

DISSEMINATION (SUMMARY AND INDIVIDUAL AGENCY RESPONSES) 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/nclismsg.html 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/respdiss.html 

APPENDIX 27. SURVEY OF THE PUBLIC INFORMATION NEEDS OF 

DISADVANTAGED AND SPECIAL POPULATIONS (SUMMARY AND 

INDIVIDUAL ASSOCIATION RESPONSES) 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/special.html 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/respdiss.html 

APPENDIX 28. PUBLIC INFORMATION RESOURCES MAPS 

Compiled by the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) and the 

Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library 

Association (ALA). The public information resources maps are listed on the 

Commission website, under 4. Panel and Board of Experts Communications at 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.html. 

APPENDIX 29. DRAFT PROPOSED EXECUTIVE ORDER 

 

121 [Should the fact sheets should be included in this appendix, or should separate appendices be created? I recommend 

keeping them together.] 
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APPENDIX 30. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GOVERNMENT INFORMATION 

DISSEMINATION RESOURCES, COMPILED BY NCLIS CONSULTANTS 

http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/biblio.html 

APPENDIX 31. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NATIONAL INFORMATION POLICIES 

Compiled by Toni Carbo and University of Pittsburgh associates 

APPENDIX 32. A COMPILATION AND ANALYSIS OF FEDERAL STATUTES 

PERTAINING TO PUBLIC INFORMATION DISSEMINATION 

Complied by Jane Bortnick Griffith, Harold C. Relyea and Frances A. Bufalo of the 

Congressional Research Service in 1996, and updated by NCLIS consultants and staff.