ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 11, Number 22
March 22, 2002

In this issue: COMMITTEE MARKS-UP REVISED VERSION OF S. 803, "THE 
E-GOVERNMENT ACT OF 2002.

On Thursday, March 21, the Senate Government Affairs Committee 
marked-up a revised version of S. 803, "The E-Government Act of 
2002."  The mark-up went smoothly and the Committee reported the 
bill favorably. The revised bill is not yet (as of this writing) 
up on the Committee site.

The revised version reflects the changes that have occurred in the 
bill since last year. These changes are the results of discussions 
between Senator Thompson's and Senator Lieberman's staff and 
officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  ALA, ARL, 
and AALL met with Senator Lieberman's staff over this period to 
hear about proposed changes and to offer alternatives and counter-
suggestions, some of which were accepted.

The bill creates an "Office of Electronic Government"(OEG) within 
OMB. The Administrator of this office would be appointed by the 
President, by, and with the advice and consent of the Senate. This 
serves to move information management (including access to, 
dissemination of, and preservation of government information), 
information security, privacy, and computer security out of the 
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Regulatory concerns 
have generally received more attention in OIRA than have 
information concerns.

The bill continues to represent a significant step forward for 
improved management and public access to government information. 
At this time of diminishing information about government and 
government information, the bill would required the 
"categorization" (e.g., inventorying, indexing, cataloging) of 
information and timetables for public access. At numerous points 
in the legislation, the OEG Administrator and other bodies are 
directed to consult with non-governmental groups, and libraries 
are specifically mentioned at some points. One of these bodies is 
an Interagency Committee on Government Information. The library 
community pushed hard for an Advisory Committee to include 
representatives from outside government, but that battle was lost. 
The Committee is, however, open to inclusion of representatives 
from the federal legislative and executive branches.

The bill codifies the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council. 
This may serve to make this body more open and accountable.

The Online National Library concept has been replaced by a section 
on promoting coordinated access to educational resources materials 
on the Internet. Most other aspects of the bill that are of 
interest or concern to libraries are largely unchanged in the 
revised bill.






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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, 
Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 
toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web 
site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily 
Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, 
Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, and Miriam 
Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, 
Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant. 
ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.