ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 11, Number 98 December 4, 2002 In This Issue: URGENT! Comments Needed by December 13th on OMB's Proposed Amendments to the FAR That Threaten Public Access and the Federal Depository Library Program. BACKGROUND: Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Memorandum No. M-02-07 entitled "Procurement of Printing and Duplicating through the Government Printing Office" (GPO) on May 3, 2002. The memorandum calls for amendments to the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) that will allow agencies to procure their printing outside of GPO. The proposed amendments were published in the Federal Register, Vol. 67, No. 219, November 13, 2002, 68914-8. The deadline for comments is Friday, December 13, 2002. Accessible government information is an essential principle of a democratic society and a valuable public good created at taxpayer expense. ALA believes that government should provide for equitable, effective, no-fee, efficient and dependable access to and dissemination of government information in permanent and readily accessible formats. ALA further believes that a strong, centralized, coordinated and managed federal information dissemination and access program, such as the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), is necessary to achieve this important goal. CURRENT CRISIS: OMB's efforts to have agencies procure printing outside of GPO are not new. Congress, demonstrating full support of public access and the FDLP, successfully thwarted efforts in 1987 and 1994. Recently, Members of the 107th Congress, on a bicameral and bipartisan basis, included provisions to prevent agencies from using any appropriated funds to procure publications outside of GPO in their continuing resolutions that fund government operations (most recently, in H.J.Res. 124). These provisions indicate Congress' strong opposition to OMB's proposed amendments to the FAR. The following talking points will be useful in your comments on the proposed FAR: 1) The proposed amendments, which authorize agencies to procure their printing outside of GPO, are a clear violation of 44 U.S.C. §501. 2) In addition to violating 44 U.S.C. §501 (which OMB and a Department of Justice memo have claimed is unconstitutional), the proposed changes to the FAR violate other Title 44 provisions that neither OMB nor the Department of Justice have ever challenged as unconstitutional: · §1903 that requires agencies who procure outside of GPO to bear the costs of printing and binding the necessary copies for depository libraries. The FAR proposal that the Superintendent of Documents (SuDocs) would bear these costs is contrary to current law. · §1710 that requires agencies to supply a copy of all publications to the SuDocs for cataloging purposes. The specifics of how this might be achieved on a comprehensive and cost-effective basis under the proposed FAR change are very unclear. 3) While attempting to solve the fugitive documents problem, agency responsibilities in the proposed FAR change are left so vague that the result will be more fugitive publications, not fewer. Today, the SuDocs, working with its professional library personnel, provides a strong, centralized, coordinated and managed Federal information dissemination and access program through the FDLP. 4) A strong system of coordination, including an effective and transparent system to bring Government publications into the FDLP, is as necessary in the electronic environment as it is in the print world to ensure that agency publications in all formats are permanently accessible by the public. The FAR amendment does not create such a system, choosing instead to leave a void in the place of the current effective structure. 5) The proposed FAR does not take into account the need for an effective enforcement mechanism, with Congressional oversight, to ensure that agencies meet their legal obligations to provide tangible and electronic publications to the SuDocs. This change will negatively impact the FDLP and the public's ability to locate, use, and have permanent access to agency publications in all formats. 6) Today, the SuDocs is able to ride agency procurement orders to obtain publications for the FDLP and the Sales Program at low cost. Libraries and members of the public depend on GPO's Sales Program to acquire print Government publications. The proposed FAR does not adequately provide for a continued cost effective Sales Program. ACTION NEEDED: Please submit electronic comments on the proposed FAR to farcase.2002-011@gsa.gov by Friday, December 13th, citing "FAR Case 2002-011" in the subject line and the text. Base your comments on a few of the talking points above, and be sure to talk about the needs of your patrons to have timely, comprehensive and permanent access to Federal government information in print and electronic formats. Please also fax a copy of your comments to your Senators and Representative at their Capitol Hill and local offices with a brief note of explanation. Go to http://capwiz.com/ala/dbq/officials/ for a link to fax numbers for your Members. (Fax is preferable to e-mail because it provides staff with a tangible version of your comments.) If you have a newly elected representative, this is a good time to introduce yourself while explaining the negative impact of OMB's action on public access. We are in a crisis situation! Members of ALA have been very instrumental in helping to ward off previous efforts that would harm the FDLP and diminish the public's right to access Government information. We would also appreciate it very much if you would send a copy of your comments along to us via e-mail at: mailto:pmcdermott@alawash.org . Thanks to Mary Alice Baish (AALL) for her work on this alert. ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. 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, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.