Librarians and public interest organizations charge that the combination of A-130 and Congressional legislation passed at the urging of private information vendors makes it difficult for citizens to obtain access to much government information. However, Congress has prohibited the Commerce Department from offering on-line access to the database. Since most users do not have a CD-ROM disk drive, they are forced to turn to commercial vendors to receive the information. There are many other cases where the public is unable to obtain direct access to government data. The public's only direct access to the system will be through three reading rooms in Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago.
Private vendors are able to earn substantial profits on many government databases.
Given improvements in computer technology, the costs to vendors of providing services to end users is low. Nancy Kranich, chair of the American Library Association's Coalition on Government Information, points out that privatization of government information results in problems other than just high prices for individual users and unearned high profits for information companies. When information is placed in the private sector, it is no longer provided free to the Depository Library System, which Congress set up in the 19th century to ensure public access to government information in every congressional district. Furthermore, private vendors are interested in the money to be made off the information, not with the information itself. Despite the obvious costs to the public, the privatization of government information dissemination has continued during the Bush administration.