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APPENDIX 23. PANEL ONE: FINAL REPORT ON A REFORMED NTIS BUSINESS 

MODEL FOR THE INTERNET AGE 

This and the other three panel reports were submitted to the U.S. National 

Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) as part of the assessment. 

However, the opinions are those of the panel members, not necessarily those of the 

Commission. Any panel recommendations that the Commission has accepted are 

reflected in the Commission's own recommendations in A Comprehensive Assessment 

of Public Information Resources, Volume 1. 

REPORT OF STUDY PANEL NUMBER ONE:

REFORMING THE NTIS BUSINESS MODEL FOR THE INFORMATION AGE 

CONTENTS25

Introduction 

The NTIS Business Model—What Went Wrong? 

Is There a Need for NTIS in the Internet Age? 

Scope of the NTIS Collection 

NTIS Operations in the Internet Age 

NTIS Mission 

A "New" Business Model for NTIS 

Depository Libraries 

Reorganization of Government Information Activities 

Recommendations 

Panel 1, Appendix A, Members of Panel 1 

Panel 1, Appendix B, NTIS Estimates of Funding 

INTRODUCTION 

The assignment of Panel One was to focus on the business model of NTIS and recommend a new 

business model for NTIS for the Internet age. The work done in the first phase of the NCLIS study of 

NTIS suggested that the current business model—full cost recovery—was a major contributor to the 

current fiscal instability of the organization. The Panel concluded that proposing a new business model 

for NTIS in itself would not be sufficient but that a broader look at NTIS, its mission, its relationship 

to other Government information organizations and its role in the Internet age was needed. This report 

sets forth the Panel's views and conclusions. 

The Panel—consisting of eleven members, a diverse mix of representatives of industry, Federal and 

state government, consultants, and trade associations—conducted its work exclusively by e-mail 

exchanges with no face-to-face meetings. The Panel conducted e-mail correspondence over a twomonth period from late July to late September 2000. The members of the Panel are listed in Appendix 

A. 

 

25 Available at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.appen23.pdf. This report was last revised on October 15, 2000. 
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The preliminary report from the first phase of the NCLIS NTIS study contains many of the same 

conclusions and recommendation reached by this Panel.26 The Panel reviewed this preliminary work 

and sought to expand those conclusions with which the Panel was in agreement. 

THE NTIS BUSINESS MODEL—WHAT WENT WRONG? 

NTIS is a federal agency, not a hot Internet startup. Thus, when we speak of the NTIS business model 

we refer to the way in which NTIS obtains its funding (appropriations, sales income, or 

reimbursements from other agencies) not whether it obtains its revenue from banner ads, charging for 

links or auction services. 

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 sales based 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 collection—the 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. 

Over the years there was an ongoing pressure to reduce appropriations and increase sales income and 

in good times—with many new publications coming in and with substantial sales—this 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 costs...associated 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 buyer—whose 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 report—was 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. 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 publication for its list. Deals were struck with private vendors a 

development that had the Commerce Department Inspector General "...concerned that in order to 

replace lost sales, NTIS is seeking business opportunities on the perimeter of its statutory mission, 

 

26 US 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: Government 

Printing Office, March 2000; http://www.nclis.gov/govt/ntis/presiden.pdf. 
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where it risks competing against private businesses." (Department of Commerce, Inspector General's 

Semiannual Report to the Congress of March 31 1999, page 14) 

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 Web sites 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' 

control—possibly relating to the Govsearch and World News Connection controversies,—the 

Department of Commerce recommended the closing of NTIS and the transfer of its archive to the 

Library of Congress. 

It cannot be a surprise that the combination of events—lower report input, competition with free 

agency Web sites, loss of appropriated funds, aggressive entrepreneurial zeal with perhaps 

inappropriate business arrangements—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. 

If the Department of Commerce proposal to close NTIS is adopted, there is no need for a new NTIS 

business model for the Internet age. Therefore, before we explore a new business model we must first 

determine whether there is a need for an NTIS in the Internet age. 

IS THERE A NEED FOR NTIS IN THE INTERNET AGE? 

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 Web sites, 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 Web site. 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 Web site 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? 

Certainly, specific Commerce publications, as cited in the Commerce Fact Sheet in August of 1999 are 

available on the Commerce Web site. (The Commerce Fact Sheet cites two high profile policy studies 

as examples). But how long will they be maintained on the Department's Web site and how about the 

many less prominent Department studies not on the Web site? 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 Web site? Will even the most sophisticated search engines locate them? 
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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 Web site 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 were 

over 10 years old. Agency based Web servers cannot meet this demand unless substantial investment 

in backfile conversion is made. Or 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? 

Agency Web sites 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 Web site 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 growth—a mission that might at one 

time have been thought to be a part of the Department of Commerce—gets lost in the specific 

missions of the various agencies and their Web sites. 

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. 

There also needs to be a back-up mechanism, a safety net, to insure that what the mission agency does 

not disseminate or does not mount on its Web site, or takes down or does not properly process for 

public access is still accessible to the public. That is the role for NTIS. 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 the role for NTIS. 

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 

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. 

In addition to mounting the full text of some of their reports on their Web sites 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 Web site 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 
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engine will find the document. Where the agency chooses—for more efficient searching of its 

material—to store its reports and publications in a separate searchable database on its Web site, an 

external search engine will not be able to search the contents of the database and the reports will not be 

found. 

Some of these shortcomings 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. But today, with the current state of the Internet, standards and technology, 

public access to agency publications via agency Web sites is very much a hit or miss proposition. 

Once again, there is a need for a back-up mechanism, a safety net, to insure that the public has access 

to the mission agency reports and publications. That is the role for NTIS. 

The Government Information Locator System (GILS) established under the Paperwork Reduction Act 

of 1995 might have been expected to solve some of these problems 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 Web site might 

solve some of these problems in time, but the initial implementation of the Web site 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 issues—such as detailed 

searching within a very large database, e.g. NTIS reports—will not be solved by these very large 

Government-wide systems. Thus, there will continue to be a role for NTIS. 

As the result of the National Technical Information Act of 1988, NTIS has unique statutory authority 

for joint ventures with private sector information vendors (see 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. 

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 Panel, 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. 

The relationship between NTIS and the Superintendent of Documents/Depository Libraries, discussed 

later in this paper, warrants mention here. There is clearly some conflict, overlap, and duplication 

between these organizations and there is a need to rationalize their roles. This problem, however, is 

beyond the scope of this Panel's effort. Nevertheless, the unique functions that NTIS performs for the 

scientific, technical and engineering information of the Government must be continued and thus there 

is an ongoing role for NTIS. 

There appears to be—especially at this stage of Internet development—a clear need for an NTIS-like 

organization to provide overall management of the system that provides public access to agency 
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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 Web 

sites 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. 

SCOPE OF NTIS COLLECTION 

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 (STEI) is 

defined 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 Panel 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 direct 

relationship with business, industry or technology. 

NTIS OPERATIONS IN THE INTERNET AGE 

The roles for NTIS in the Internet age—at least until such time as improvements in standards and 

technology solve some of the current problems—would 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) Web site, 

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 Accessibility. 

SEARCHABLE ACCESS 

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 who 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 
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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 Web site 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. 

POINTING TO DOCUMENTS ON THE WEB 

Providing access to information about the document is only the first step. NTIS must also provide the 

user with a means of obtaining the documents identified. In the past, NTIS sold the documents from its 

warehouse or produced copy on demand when requested or distributed microfiche. In the future, in 

addition to these established methods of distribution, NTIS will also point the user to the document on 

the agency's Web site where the full text of the document is available for free. Whenever there is a 

Web version of the document available, NTIS (the NTIS database) would point the user to the 

agency's Web location where the document can be obtained. In some instances a document, not 

available on an agency's site, might be available on a depository library site under the Federal 

Depository Library Program Electronic Collection. NTIS would then point to the depository library 

site. 

NTIS would develop and operate, in conjunction with the originating agencies, a Persistent Uniform 

Resource Locator (PURL) system for all of the agency documents included in the NTIS database. This 

would provide a means of maintaining the pubic accessibility of documents on agency Web sites 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 that 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. 

BACKUP DISTRIBUTION 

The user would normally only come to NTIS and pay for a document when it is not available for free 

on a Web site 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 Web sites, an NTIS Web site would provide free 

access to the full text of selected NTIS documents in reasonable demand (recent important 

documents), which are not available on agency Web sites. 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. 
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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 

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 Web site if they are not available 

on the originating agency's Web site or some other publicly accessible Web site, e.g. depository library 

site. 

As a result of this approach—substantial free access to documents on agency and NTIS Web sites—

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 Web site requires the appropriation of funds for the so called public good operations of NTIS 

(see following section on "A New Business Model for NTIS"). 

PERMANENT ACCESSIBILITY 

Permanent Accessibility is a confusing term in the context of Government information. Permanent 

access to Federal Records is provided for under the Federal Records Act but 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. 

Depository libraries provide a form of permanent access but NTIS reports are not generally distributed 

to depository libraries and to the extent that depository libraries acquire them outside of the Federal 

Depository Library Program, they are not required to maintain them permanently. Whatever the 

problems with permanent accessibility may have been in pre-Internet days—and there were many—

they have been compounded with the extensive Government use of the Internet to 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 accessible to the public. Public access should not end when the agency sponsoring the 

research decides—possibly for budgetary reasons—that the report will no longer be made available on 

the agency's Web site. For example, the research reports on energy conservation and alternative energy 

sources from the early '70'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 this information available 

when it is no longer available from the generating agency. 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 Web site. When the information 

is removed from the original agency's Web site NTIS should provide access to the full text of the 

information on its own Web site or by some other means. In the case of older less frequently accessed 

information, when it is no longer economically feasible to maintain it on a free Web site, the public 

requester may have to purchase a print or microfiche copy of the report made by NTIS from an archive 

copy or from a backup –non-publicly accessible—paid Web site. 
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NTIS MISSION 

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. There was some sense among the Panel 

members that in recent years the mission and scope had expanded 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. 

The NTIS mission in the Internet age should have four primary components: 

• 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 Web sites, 

• 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, 

• Value-added information services provided by NTIS itself or by NTIS in conjunction with private 

sector information vendors. 

The first three points are consistent with the Operations Section above and relatively straightforward. 

The last point, although also consistent with the Operation Section, 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. However, the focus of this Panel has not been on the 

NTIS—private sector interface. This is the charge of Panel Four and has not been pursued here beyond 

these few words and the Panel cautioning that this mission point is potentially troublesome even 

though joint ventures between NTIS and private vendors are explicitly authorized by law (15 USC 

3704b(a)(1)(A). 

A "NEW" BUSINESS MODEL FOR NTIS 

The "new" business model for NTIS recommended by the Panel 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 
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mounting Transportation Department reports on a Web server for public access.

27 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, LC, 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 met—and the funding saved—by 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. 

That 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 those of: 

• 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 Web sites, 

• The mounting and maintaining of the searchable NTIS database on a Web site for free public 

access, 

• The mounting of the full text of the reports—to the extent they are not available on agency 

servers—on 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. 

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 B. Note that 

 

27 "DOT Gives Users Free Ride to Online Research", Government Computer News, April 3, 2000, page 13, and at 

http://www.gcn.com/vol19no7/news/1630-1.html. 
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periodic updating and replacement of IT hardware, possibly every five years, is not included in the 

recurring cost estimate in Appendix B. 

Note also that 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 essentially the same "public good" 

costs would be incurred and the same appropriation for these functions would be required. 

The other functions of NTIS—the distribution of print or microfiche copies of reports or the 

distribution of subscription services—benefit only the specific individuals who make use of these 

NTIS services and incur specific, measurable, costs for each additional user. These services 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. The work performed by NTIS for other agencies would be 

reimbursed on the basis of costs actually incurred. 

Under the proposed system, NTIS document sales income could be expected to fall dramatically as 

more and more content is made available on the Web. However, 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. 

DEPOSITORY LIBRARIES 

The Federal Depository Library Program (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 Depository Library System since they are not printed at the Government Printing 

Office (no opportunity for SOD to override the printing requisition) and there are no funds provided 

for depository copies of these materials. This has been a longstanding source of disagreement between 

SOD, 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 on the Web 

should solve this problem since depository libraries provide their users with Web access. Depository 

library access is one more reason for making sure that as many NTIS reports as possible are available 

without charge on the Web. Although there would be no explicit statutory authority requiring 

depository libraries to provide their patrons with Web access to the NTIS content, it seems reasonable 

to suppose that if it is available most will do so. 

In the long run, the importance of depository libraries 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 

people, the need to go to a central depository to access Government documents is likely to decline. 

This, however, is a long way off and 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 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-87 

Depository Library Program. For years to come substantial numbers of important Government 

documents will not be available on the Web and many citizens will not have ready access to the Web. 

REORGANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT INFORMATION ACTIVITIES 

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 SOD. 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 SOD 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. However, the Panel did not have the time or resources to conduct a 

thorough study of the detailed pros and cons of a merger or of the many changes in organization, 

culture, standards and systems that would be required to make a merger successful. 

The Panel is also not in agreement on formally proposing a merger of the two organizations. The 

disadvantages are seen as primarily political. Can 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 seems so remote that a number of Panel members do not even 

want to propose it. Unfortunately this seems to be a case of good government falling to expected turf 

battles and political expediency. "Our task is to make recommendations on the NTIS business model 

and not proposals to improve overall Government information operations that have no chance of 

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

3-88 

Although the Panel could not agree on proposing a merger of NTIS and [the 

Superintendent of Documents (SOD), Government Printing Office (GPO)] it did 

discuss an even broader reorganization proposal that consolidates more of the existing 

Government information activities from various agencies. Such a consolidation 

involving not only NTIS and SOD but also related functions from [the National 

Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Library of Congress (LC), the 

Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Services Administration 

(GSA)] would be far more difficult politically then just a merger of NTIS and SOD. 

Several of the Panel members felt it should not be considered, not because it lacks 

merit but because of the colossal hurdles it would face to gain acceptance and concern 

that its proposal would detract from the other recommendations of the Panel. Again, 

the Panel did not have the time or resources to conduct a thorough study of the 

detailed pros and cons of such a merger of many organizations. However, NCLIS 

itself in its further review of this matter may want to pursue this further. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

1. The proposal of the Department of Commerce to close NTIS and transfer its archive to the 

Library of Congress should be rejected. 

2. NTIS performs a necessary function of providing ongoing public access to government 

information—even in the Internet age—and should continue to operate as an agency of the 

Department of Commerce. 

3. The NTIS business model should include a mix of appropriated funds, sales income and 

reimbursements from other agencies for services provided. 

4. NTIS should receive appropriated funds to cover its "public good" operations and should not 

be required to recover these costs from sales income. These "public good" operations include 

the functions that make NTIS reports accessible to the public. 

5. The scope of the NTIS collection should continue to be guided by 15 CFR 1180 to include 

information that bears on business and industry. 

6. NTIS should not charge royalties for products or services provided. Charges should be based 

solely on the incremental cost of providing the product or service. 

7. 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 on the 

Internet to full electronic scanning which permits full text searching across documents and has 

lower storage and bandwidth requirements. 

8. NTIS should obtain full text electronic files of reports from other agencies whenever possible 

to avoid scanning costs. 

9. NTIS should provide its users with access to reports made available by other agencies on the 

other agency's Web sites by pointing from the NTIS database to the appropriate location on 

the other agency's site. 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-89 

10. NTIS should develop a Persistent Uniform Resources Locator (PURL) system and track NTIS 

reports available on other agency Web sites so that NTIS users can find reports on other 

agency sites when they are moved from site to site. 

11. Reports not available for free on agency sites should be made available without charge on an 

NTIS Web site 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. 

12. Permanent access to NTIS reports should be ensured by NTIS. The technology used to 

maintain accessibility of older less frequently used reports should be selected so as to 

minimize storage and handling costs. NTIS should be able to charge for access to these older 

reports based on the incremental costs of providing copies or access. 

13. NTIS should continue to sell report copies in paper, microfiche and electronic media formats 

as long as the demand for the format justifies continuing its use. Charges should be based on 

the incremental cost of providing the copies. 

14. The Department of Commerce should lift the hiring freeze currently on NTIS to permit the 

hiring of the information technology experts needed to implement these recommendations and 

provide NTIS the flexibility to reduce staff as necessary as, over time, the implementation of 

these recommendations results in lower staff requirements. 

15. Consideration should be given by NCLIS and the Congress to the possibility of combining the 

Superintendent of Documents with NTIS—and possibly with other information activities of 

the Federal Government—to create a more effective central information service that reduces 

duplication of effort and simplifies public access to Government information. In addition, 

NTIS should be encouraged to explore new ways of joining with SOD in cooperative 

programs that will render public access to Government information less duplicative and more 

seamless. 

PANEL 1, APPENDIX A: MEMBERS OF PANEL 1 

Peter F. Urbach, Panel 1 Chairman, Retired Publishing Industry Executive, Former Deputy Director, 

NTIS 

Kenneth Allen, Exec. VP & CEO National Newspaper Association, Chair, NTIS Advisory Panel, 

Former President, Information Industry Association, Formerly with OMB 

Stephen Arnold, President, Arnold Information Technology, Former Member, NTIS Advisory Panel 

Ernest G. Baldwin, Director, Library Programs Service, [Superintendent of Documents (SOD), 

Government Printing Office (GPO)] 

Mel Day, Retired, Former Director NTIS, Former Deputy Director [National Library of Medicine 

(NLM)] 

Mike Majcher, Retired, Former Manager, Technical Information Center, Xerox Corporation 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

3-90 

Steve Needle, Assistant to the Director, NTIS 

Kent Smith, Deputy Director, [National Library of Medicine (NLM)] 

Tim Sprehe, Sprehe Information Management Associates 

Kenneth Wiggin, State Librarian, Connecticut State Library 

Jay Young, Retired, Former Director, Documents Sales Service and Former Director, Library 

Programs Service [Superintendent of Documents (SOD), Government Printing Office (GPO)] 

PANEL 1, APPENDIX B: NTIS ESTIMATES FOR APPROPRIATED FUNDS FOR "PUBLIC 

GOOD" FUNCTIONS28

Organization and Preservation

 ($ in thousands) 

 FY 2002 

 

 Estimated Costs

Acquisitions $540 

Input Processing 2,790 

Scanning & Storage 970 

Physical Archive 200

Total Organization and Preservation $4,500 

Mounting Full Text Reports on NTIS Web Site for Free Public Access

($ in thousands) 

 

 Year 1 Costs Recurring Costs 

Nearline Storage $80 $50 

Servers 500 

Telecomm. Hardware 50 

Telecomm. Access 50 60 * 

Programming 240 

Hardware & Software Maintenance 100 120 * 

Support Labor 200 200 

Software 500 

Total $1,720 $430 

Assumptions: 

1. Nearline storage includes average growth of 1 Terabyte per year 

 

28 These amounts have not been reviewed or approved by the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information 

Science. The estimates were provided to the panel by NTIS. 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-91 

This includes storage of: (1) all currently scanned documents, (2) all new documents scanned 

and (3) back file documents scanned as ordered. 

2. Total equipment replacement every 4 or 5 years not included in recurring costs. 

3. Equipment and Telecommunications. Startup costs are additions to current infrastructure 

4. Programming calculated @ 4 FTE for 6 months (average $120k per year) 

5. Maintenance calculated @ 2 FTE for 1 year (average $96k per year) 

* Increases 20% each year with increasing file size and increasing usage