================================================================= ALAWON Volume 5, Number 51 ISSN 1069-7799 August 14, 1996 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (225 lines) GOVERNMENT INFORMATION UPDATE: pt. 1 of 2 FOUR SENATE HEARINGS CONDUCTED ON "PUBLIC ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT INFORMATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY" ________________________________________________________________ EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part report in ALAWON issues No. 14 and 15 on recent government information activities at the federal level. _________________________________________________________________ FOUR SENATE HEARINGS CONDUCTED ON "PUBLIC ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT INFORMATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY" The Senate Rules and Administration Committee conducted four hearings this summer on "Public Access to Government Information in the 21st Century." The hearings were chaired by Senator John Warner (R-VA) with the active participation of ranking minority Senator Wendell Ford (D-KY). Senator Warner said that the Committee has two goals: 1) to determine how government can use technological advances without sacrificing the public access, especially since only 10 percent of the public understand computers; 2) to bring Title 44 of the United States Code into the next century at the lowest cost to the taxpayers. June 18. ALA President Betty Turock, representing ALA, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Special Libraries Association, told the Senators that the associations recognized the importance of Congressional leadership and oversight in ensuring public access to government information. She said the program works extremely well that we have today in the legislative branch for getting government information to the public and that Congress has already established the framework for the 21st century in the Federal Depository Library Program. Turock warned of the need to know the costs and implications of changes before abandoning current systems and institutions. Her statement also pointed out that librarians have been in the forefront of using new technologies for decades and have long advocated electronic dissemination of government information. Turock also discussed the study for Congress that the Government Printing Office concluded in June and urged the Senators to adopt the five to seven year transition to a nearly all electronic depository library program, instead of the ambitious two-year transition proposed last year. Other members of the panel included Daniel O'Mahony, Government Documents Coordinator at Brown University and Christie Vernon of Yorktown, Virginia. O'Mahony described the daily challenges of documents librarians in helping the public use electronic information. Vernon, who searches for government documents for clients, said she fears that more documents will become unavailable as agencies publish more online or try to avoid printing costs by contracting with commercial publishers, thus taking the publications out of the depository program. Superintendent of Documents Wayne Kelley told the Committee: "We are going through a time of technological chaos. When we emerge, it is important that the American public still have equitable and free access to information about what its Government is doing. Clearly the new electronic information technologies have enabled new approaches toward getting government information published. However, in pursuing these new arrangements, agencies must not lose sight of the existing laws and regulations put into place to ensure broad and equitable public access, and to ensure that today's information is still accessible tomorrow. These are the concerns the Federal Depository Library Program has addressed for many years, and intends to pursue in the electronic future." He described how some federal agencies are acting as competitors to each other and to private enterprise, often using information as a source of revenue. Kelley said that to carry out the GPO's plan to transition to a more electronic depository library program, GPO will seek legislation that explicitly requires agencies to provide electronic documents without charge to depository libraries so that the public can use them. June 19. Dennis Galletta, professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said "there are still some difficulties that must be overcome before all of this country's valuable information becomes available only via the Internet." He said the Web is too slow and much too variable in its response time, and the unreliability of connections appears to be on the rise. He discussed the demographics of the Internet and concluded: A very small proportion of today's population can be described as Internet users. He also discussed the value of Internet access. William Wulf, professor from the University of Virginia said that it is absolutely certain that faster, bigger, cheaper, more capable computing and communications technology will cause continued, rapid change in the way we use the technology. What is absolutely unpredictable is the rate at which the technology will be deployed, precisely which of several competing technologies will be "the winner", and what the social implications will be. Jeanne Hurley Simon, chair of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, described recent research by NCLIS on library networking and the Internet. She said that NCLIS Commissioners believe that advances in electronic information and communications technologies can increase and improve public access to and use of government information. They also see a world where printed information and digital information co-exist for a long time to come, in libraries generally and within the federal government as well. The proportions will shift, and governments and libraries at all levels are getting ready to deal with the shifts, as shown in NCLIS projections that by next year more than 60 percent of the nation's public libraries could be connected to the Internet. July 16. Industry witnesses testified. Robert Claitor, President of Claitor's Law Books and Publishing Division, said that the Government Printing Office and Title 44 "are working just GREAT---let's not trade this combination for a pig-in-a-poke. There's plenty of work to be done on adapting the electronic media, and my suggestion is to concentrate on this with GPO, rather than the dismantling of GPO thru removal of Agencies' printing." Speaking on behalf of the Information Industry Association, Eric Massant urged that Congress require the legislative branch agencies to abide by the principles contained in the Paperwork Reduction Act passed in 1995. He also cautioned against "the notion that government information should be standardized and the FDLP should be the catalyst for this standardization." In his testimony, William Gindlesperger of ABC Advisors, Inc., urged that executive agencies be allowed to compete for print procurement. He said, "[T]o address any concerns that a decentralized print procurement system might raise with respect to so-called fugitive' documents or public access to printed documents procured or purchased directly by the executive agencies, Congress could further mandate that, as a condition of establishing direct non-GPO print procurement services, agencies must make all such documents available to the Superintendent of Documents and the depository libraries in electronic or printed format after a reasonable period has lapsed for the agency to promote and market its own publications." Although his testimony focused on printing issues, Benjamin Cooper of the Printing Industries of America recommended that an appropriation be made specifically to assure "the agency producing the information is not reluctant to provide material through the Superintendent of Documents because of cost considerations." July 24. Judge Royce Lamberth spoke for the Judicial Conference of the United States and argued that a migration toward publishing government information in electronic format will be successful if: 1) standards are developed for file formats, access, software functions, licensing agreements, and archiving;(2) a helpful, well-staffed central help desk with many phone lines is provided by GPO; 3) funding is provided for equipment, Internet access, and telephone lines for the participating libraries; 4) the need for staff training in FDLP libraries is recognized; and, 5) the electronic format is appropriate to the materials (with print continuing to be available for presentation of material with tables and charts). Sally Katzen, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, said that while OMB is prepared to maintain the short term status quo, "we cannot support GPO's continued control over Executive branch printing for the long-term." She said that GPO's recent study of the Federal Depository Library Program suggests visions of a funnel where government information pours in yet trickles out. "Rather than trying to devise ways of making the funnel work, we should question the use of the funnel at all, although we are committed to the preservation and indeed enhancement of the depository library program." Roy Francis, Chairman of the Interagency Council on Printing and Publications Services, testified that through the current centralized printing procurement system Congress has sought to ensure that government publications for public use are made available to the public. He said, "By decentralizing the printing procurement system, we face the real possibility that some publications will not be entered into the Depository Library system." Donald Johnson, Director of the National Technical Information Service, said that NTIS is "prepared to provide Depository Libraries with on-line access on demand to the electronic images of Federally funded scientific, technical and engineering publications in our collection at no charge, as often as needed, and without any time limitation in exchange for a simple agreement from each library not to release the electronic file outside the library." Christopher Schroeder, Acting Assistant Attorney General, discussed the memorandum opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel recently issued on the subject of GPO involvement in executive branch printing (see related story in this issue), concluding that GPO's "extensive control" over executive branch printing and duplicating violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers. As the final witness, Public Printer Michael DiMario said that he does not agree with the Department of Justice opinion: "I think it was wrongly decided, and I think it sends the wrong message to agencies and the public. GPO does not have extensive control' over executive branch printing. We perform an administrative function to ensure that Government printing is performed in the interests of the taxpayer and made available to the public on a comprehensive and equitable basis. By signaling that the Justice Department will not uphold the law, the message is being sent that there is no need for economy in public printing, and that providing effective public access is a secondary concern." _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname]" to . ALAWON archives gopher.ala.org; select Washington Office Newsline. Web page HTTP://www.ala.org/alawashington.html. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Contributors: Anne A. Heanue All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================