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Developing a federal policy on electronic collection and dissemination of information
Government Publications Review, Vol. 11, pp. 353-362, 1984 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
DEVELOPING
0277-9390184 $3.00 + .OO 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd
A FEDERAL POLICY ON ELECTRONIC COLLECTION DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION J. TIMOTHY
AND
SPREHE
Senior Statistician, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503
Abstract-Sprehe concentrates on emerging federal policy relating to electronic information resources and summarizes replies to a recent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announcement. Government agencies are rapidly moving toward electronic collection of data, but dissemination plans are not well developed. Information is seen as a valuable commodity; some of it should be given away as a public good, some of it should make a profit for the government. Sprehe also addresses the issues of user charges, quality control, monopoly, and the effective and economical use of government resources.
Before I launch into the main body of what I have to say as your friendly OMB (Office of Management and Budget) representative, I would like to establish a few bona fides on your side of the fence. In my background as a federal statistician I served for several years as chairman of the Interagency Committee on Data Access and Use, a committee made up of representatives from the major federal statistical agencies. While in that capacity, I was the author of an article entitled “A Federal Policy for Improving Data Access and User Services.” So I am on record in the Statistical Reporter, an obscure publication now defunct, as being very much in favor of increasing access to federal information resources [l]. I say that because the Paperwork Reduction Act, which is administered by the office that I represent, is frequently viewed as a legislative as well as an executive attempt to reduce the flow of information to the American public. In fact, I think what the Paperwork Reduction Act really does is attempt to decrease the flow of information into the government by reducing the information collection burden on the public, while at the same time facilitating an increase in the flow of information out of the government. That is, the legislative intent is to decrease the public’s information input to government, but to increase the public’s access to the information that the government does have. This is my own formulation, but I believe it is fundamentally sound. We published a notice in the Federal Register on September 12, 1983 advertising the fact that OMB was beginning the development of a policy circular on management of federal information resources [2]. We received a total of 53 comments from the public, running to some 300 pages. A good segment of the comments came from libraries and universities, approximately a third of the comments. We analyzed the comments and widely distributed our
Dr. Sprehe is senior statistician in the Information Policy Branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He is currently the director of the OMB project to develop a policy circular on information resources management. 353
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analysis. (For those who are interested, we can make available copies of our analysis of public comments, and the comments themselves are available in Washington.) In our Federal Register announcement we listed 16 issue areas to which we wanted to draw attention. The comments received from the public concentrated very much on three issue areas: general principles of information resources management, competition with the private sector, and user charges for information products and services. As a matter of fact, nonfederal commenters addressed themselves exclusively to those three issues. All the rest of the issues we listed were of interest only to federal agencies. Under general principles of information resources management, we tipped our hand a little bit by giving as an example, “Information is not a free good but a resource of substantial economic value and should be treated as such.” That statement drew strong reaction from the university and library community. Thirty-four percent of our responses on this issue came from this group and their comments carried the same thread- the fear that a policy emphasizing such a principle would restrict the free flow of information in this country. Respondents urged that additional principles be equally weighted. For example, that “the federal government is responsible for insuring equitable and open access by the public to information”; or that “information is valued beyond the economic; it is a natural resource for improving the quality of life of citizens; it is a public good.” The American Library Association endorses this basic philosophy and argues that technological changes, although altering the form and method of information dissemination and transfer, do not alter the government’s responsibility to make available the information or the public’s right to have access to it. Another library response pointed out that social services and free education are also resources of substantial economic value, but are due to the tax paying citizenry that maintains its government. As regards the issue of competition with the private sector, most commenters recognized the need to establish a balance between the public and private sectors in order to avoid unfair competition while insuring that society’s information needs are met. Fundamental to the balance is the need to determine the respective roles of government and the private sector in providing information services and products. A private sector opinion was offered by the Information Industry Association (IIA) which offered the following guidelines: First, the government should not develop and disseminate new information products or services or new formats that compete with those already available from, planned by, or which could be provided by, private sector sources. Second, when there is a genuine demonstrable need for new products or services the government should: first, encourage the private sector to meet the need; second, provide inducement through subsidies, loans, grants, or tax credits; third, contract out the needed product or service; and fourth, if all else fails, and the government does produce such a product, make it available in a way and at a price that diminishes potential competition with the private sector. As regards that issue of public sector/private sector competition, the library and university respondents cautioned that the private sector role should not be over-emphasized to the detriment of the public’s right to know. Nor did they believe that profit should be made by the private sector at the public’s expense. Comments from the Medical Libraries Association pointed out that if the profitability factor alone is used to determine when government information is to be produced, much will not be published. Comments from this group also referred frequently to the belief that information generated by the government has been paid for
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by the citizenry and should be made available to them as freely and for as little cost as possible. Let me briefly touch on the question of user charges for information products and services -this is a topic to which I will return. Much has been made in the present administration of the concept of user charges. In our announcement we raised the question as to whether or not special policy guidance was needed concerning the application of user charges to government information products and services. The thrust of comments from IIA and from individual firms was that the government generally ought not to offer information products and services in the marketplace, but if it does, it should set prices in a manner that diminishes competition with the private sector. The consensus of commenters other than the private information companies was that: (1) user charges for government information products and services should not be artificially inflated to market value; (2) they should include only those costs incurred by the government over and above the government’s own requirements such as reproduction costs; and (3) they should not include the creation costs incurred in fulfillment of an agency’s mission, particularly in the case of disseminating scientific and technical information. I offer this as a general introduction to the kind of enterprise that OMB is currently engaged in with an attempt to develop general government-wide policy guidance on the management of information resources. The Paperwork Reduction Act is a remarkable tool for the development of a consistent federal policy on information because it combines in one place, namely, the Office of Management and Budget, the functions of input of information to the government, processing of the information within the government, and disclosure of the information by the government. In fact, the Act does give to the director of OMB rather broad powers to define general information policy; and to handle automatic data processing and telecommunications policies, records management, Privacy Act matters, and the general question of dissemination of governmental information. The particular topic I would like to struggle with here is the question of developing an information policy for electronic collection and dissemination of information. We are all fairly familiar with the burgeoning forms of electronic dissemination of information. We have, for example, the National Library of Medicine with its MEDLARS system, for online access to biomedical indexing. You are familiar with the fact that the National Library of Medicine has been under fire for some years from the private sector on the grounds that it is competing unfairly, both in the United States and abroad. Quite recently the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued a request for proposals for a department-wide electronic dissemination of information contract. There will be a single contractual vehicle for dissemination of all USDA information that is electronically disseminated. It is likely to be a large vehicle, and it is certainly an experience that is being closely watched by other federal agencies because of its magnitude and the fact that USDA has had to address a lot of fundamental policy questions which so many other agencies will face. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now provides electronic access to its major press release data- the consumer price index, unemployment statistics, and so on. The Bureau of the Census is currently negotiating for an electronic publishing contract whereby the data that Census currently sells in a machine-readable data file could be made available online. NASA has recently announced the availability of an online data base. Almost daily federal agencies are announcing new plans for electronic dissemination.
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Some of the online systems are not devoted simply to disseminating information that is of general interest to the public. For example, the Department of Defense (DOD) is now piloting an online system whereby a prime federal contractor who wants to discover whether or not a small business subcontractor has filed certain certifications or representations with the government can do so by executing a single query to a DOD computer where the small business will have filed its annual certifications and representations. This relieves the prime contractor of having to collect the information from the small business itself and, in effect, relieves a secondary collection burden that government procurement regulations have imposed. These examples go on and on, and it appears quite clear that electronic dissemination is moving at an extremely rapid pace. What is also moving rapidly, but is perhaps less visible, is the electronic collection of information by the government. The General Accounting Office published a report [3] within the last year or so in which it urged the application of information technology to information collection to a far greater extent than currently exists. When you think of you or me as individuals filling out a government form, it does not immediately appear that electronic collection is viable. But when you think of the kinds of information collection the government does when it asks the same kind of information repeatedly over time from business firms, then the potential for electronic collection becomes much more evident. For example, the Shippers Export Declaration is the primary form that must be filed by anybody who is exporting something from the United States. Large shippers find it far easier, rather than sending the Bureau of the Census huge stacks of forms, to simply send them a computer tape, and the Census Bureau finds it far easier to process the information in that form. Large hospitals with Medicare and Medicaid claims can report much easier in electronic form than they can by shipping off stacks of forms to the Health Care Financing Administration which would simply have to reenter them in their computers anyway. So it is widely perceived that there are substantial savings to the public and to the government from the use of electronic media for information collection. Recently in the Congressional Record Congressman English inserted an item on electronic filing of documents with the government [4]. By electronic filing, he means electronic information collection. He noted that advances in computer and telecommunications technologies and decreases in their costs offer federal agencies opportunities to improve the flow and management of information, and then he cited three new cases of electronic collection. The Patent and Trademark Office is moving to an automated system that will involve electronic collection of information on patents and trademarks as well as electronic dissemination. Secondly, the Securities and Exchange Commission is pilot testing a program for the 10-K form, the basic form that must be filed by any publicly held company. The pilot test is for electronic filing, retrieval, and dissemination of the form. Finally, the Federal Maritime Commission is investigating a proposal for electronic collection of tariff information. In summary, it appears likely that, in cases where government agencies are going to collect the same kind of information repeatedly over time from the same respondents, and those respondents are known to possess the electronic technology, then electronic collection of information will burgeon as quickly as electronic dissemination. So, this phenomenon is upon us, and we at OMB are wrestling with the question of what kinds of policy considerations should be issued to advise government agencies on how to deal with these matters. OMB is motivated to develop this policy in part because it is OMB’s responsibility to do so under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and in part because Congress and the General Accounting Office are holding OMB accountable. As regards our policy stance for electronic collection and dissemination, we are generally pro-technology. We believe that there are substantial savings to the public and to the govern-
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ment; that the government can operate more efficiently and more effectively by moving to electronic media; and that there will ultimately be less burden on the public, ultimately less cost to the public, by moving toward electronic media. In addition, information which is available electronically becomes more accessible, so the public is better served for the information that it has paid to collect. And it is more accessible in a higher yield form; that is, the information is far more manipulatable by the end user, it can be more tailored to the needs of the end user. But we have to bear in mind the safeguards that must be applied to information collection and dissemination in its traditional forms. The safeguards must carry over into the electronic forms. In particular, when we move into electronic collection and dissemination, it is necessary to assure that statutory provisions for privacy continue to be guaranteed; provisions for freedom of information continue to be guaranteed; and that a move toward electronic media does not diminish in any way the right of public access to information. Security of information becomes a new kind of concern. Not only physical security, not only national security, but also the integrity of information-integrity in the sense of quality- to make sure that the information is as good as it can be and that there are safeguards erected against errors must be guaranteed. And finally, in the safeguards area, there is the whole question of records maintenance, the archival function, which is a matter of law. In that regard, I might read you some of the questions which were posed by Congressman English: Is there a need for the establishment of some government-wide standards for electronic filing systems before different systems are developed independently by some several agencies? What computer security problems are presented by the establishment of electronic filing systems designed for remote telephonic access by multiple users? Will contractual arrangements for electronic filing curtail the ability of the public to have access to government documents now routinely made available in public document rooms or otherwise? 151
The manner in which the government makes information available electronically presents problems with respect to monopoly. It happens so often that the government is in a monopolistic position with respect to information resources. Nobody but the government takes a census of population, therefore the Bureau of the Census has a monopolistic control over census data. While the government would like to have marketplace forces operating with regard to the dissemination of those data, the government is in a monopolistic position and so there can be no competition in the supply of census data in the marketplace. The least that the government can do is to assure that when the information is disseminated, it is done so in a fair and equitable manner so that everyone in the marketplace has an equal chance at the information at the same time. We have to deal also with the problem which, for shorthand, can be called the A-76 problem. OMB Circular A-76 establishes that the government shall not compete unfairly with the private sector when the government procures goods and services for its own use. However, there is no enunciated policy that governs the government’s conduct when the government provides goods and services for the public’s use. That is, A-76 pertains only to getting things for the government’s use. But what if the government provides it for the public’s use? If a federal agency chooses to provide an information service that competes unfairly with existing services in the private sector, there is no government policy to say: “Thou shalt not do that.” It may seem obvious that there ought to be an extension of A-76 into the situation in which the government is providing the services to the public but at present we do not have such a policy.
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Finally, there is the question of how the government ought to price its information products and whether it ought to price its information products- the question of user charges. The concept of user charges is an old one. In 1952 Congress passed a law called the User Charges Statute. It says basically this: When identifiable recipients derive special benefits from government goods and services, these recipients should pay a reasonable fee. An example is agricultural grain inspection. USDA grain inspectors protect the public health and therefore, further a public good when they carry out grain inspection. But they also provide a service to the person who owns the grain and the point of view of the user charges philosophy is that the person who owns the grain ought to pay a reasonable charge for the service. The concept is also applied to such things as the nation’s waterways, deep water ports, and federal aviation facilities. In the report on user charges of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, the biggest item is foreign military sales. There is little argument with the concept of user charges when it is applied to real property. It seems eminently reasonable that if you get a special benefit from some kind of governmental action, you should pay a fee. How should user charges be applied to information products and services? A number of factors condition our answer. One is the nature of the information. Clearly there are some kinds of information which the government ought to give away free. There are other kinds of information for which the government ought to charge to the hilt. Information concerning what an agency does, how to apply for benefits, how to comply with laws administered by an agency- that kind of information, clearly, ought to be given away free. There are situations, provided for in statutes, in which private concerns come to the government, request the government to collect information for them, and the government does so. For example, the Bureau of Census, in its Current Industrial Reports program, has been conducting surveys, paid for totally by industry, since the early 1920s. While the Census Bureau collects the data, retains the data, and issues the publications, the industry group in question pays every nickel of the cost of designing the study, interviewing, data processing, all of the publication-the industry pays from A to Z. Nobody questions that, because from the outset the Census Bureau would not have undertaken the information collection except for the fact that industry came along and said, we will pay you to do it. So, those are two ends of the user charges spectrum. Another question which must be addressed is the mission of the agency. There is no question, for example, that general purpose statistical agencies have as their mission the collection and dissemination of information, and to the extent that increased user charges would diminish the dissemination of their information, increased user charges may detract from the performance of the mission. Where the problem arises is in the situation where an agency, under its legislatively mandated program, and with funds appropriated by Congress, collects information intended for the use of the agency in its internal operations, and it happens that that information is of commercial value. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a regulatory agency; it regulates the communications industry. As part of its regulatory activity, it requires broadcast stations to submit certain kinds of information on a routine basis. The FCC compiles those data, and the communications industry would like to have them. The FCC puts the data on machine-readable data files and sells them to the communications industry through the National Technical Information Service in the Department of Commerce. People who are interested in the communications industry would like to have more access, and easier access, to FCC’s data, but the trouble is that the FCC is not in the business of servicing data users. General purpose statistical functions are not their mission, not in their legislation. This is occurring increasingly throughout the government, that the government has information which turns out to be valuable to the private sector, but
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the agency in question has no mandate for getting into the information dissemination business. We do not yet have good answers as to how to handle this problem. At present it appears that the general stance of federal agencies is that agencies would like to disseminate their information electronically, at best, at no cost to the government. The sentiment within OMB is that they ought to go a little farther- that they ought not only to disseminate the information if possible at no cost to the government, but that they ought also, if possible, to recover some of the costs of originally generating the information and, if possible, make a profit on it. There are those who are horrified at the idea of the government making a profit on information that the tax payer has paid to collect. I am at a loss to understand why we should be horrified at that. The government made a profit on its bail-out of the Chrysler Corporation, and no one has objected to that. The government makes a profit on foreign military sales, and nobody objects to that. If the taxpayer has paid to collect information, and if through its electronic dissemination a private firm is going to be able to take that information and go out and make millions, why should the taxpayer give that information away to that firm virtually for free? Why shouldn’t the taxpayer recoup some of the cost that went into creating the information and beyond that, recoup all of the costs and make a profit-the profits, of course, to go into the Treasury. This seems to me to be a generally reasonable point of view. It also seems to be one that will be resisted, not only by many at this conference, but also by my colleagues in many executive agencies of the government. It is difficult for us to draw the line. We are struggling with this considerably- how do we increase the effective use of the vast resources of the government: enormous amounts of information that nobody wants access to, that people could care less about, but also tremendous resources which are of great value to the individual citizen, of great value to the economy? How do we increase the public’s access to that information, the public’s use of that information, and at the same time administer the government economically and recover as much of the economic value of the information as we can? I leave you with that question because we do not yet have the answer. DISCUSSION
Question: You didn’t mention the depository distribution program, as it relates to the dissemination of the electronic data. How do you see the depository libraries getting access to new information that they currently may or may not have in printed format now? Dr. Sprehe: Let me give an example. Suppose that agencies begin to sell online information services. Then the question becomes, how do you price online information services from a federal agency to the federal depository library system? My answer to that is that a differential pricing structure may be necessary under which higher prices would be charged to for-profit entities, lesser prices charged to non-profit entities, and no prices charged to others. So, if there was a policy determination that the federal depository library system should receive the online services without cost, this of itself would not be bothersome. But, if the depository libraries were to redisseminate at no cost and demonstrably erode a private sector information industry, real troubles would arise. The National Library of Medicine is only now considering the question of a differential pricing structure. Within the past month they held an open meeting of their Board of Regents at which they discussed the advisability of one pricing
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structure for for-profit users and a separate pricing structure for non-profit users. If the depository libraries are going to redisseminate at no cost and have an adverse impact on the marketplace, that would be a fundamental policy concern. I think I would probably oppose dissemination at no cost to the depository library system if those conditions were present. Question: If I understand what you’re suggesting, you would be putting the libraries in a position of querying the type of use made of resources and judging whether or not pricing would have to be applied? For instance, right now if people come to the Penn State Computation Center that has census files, and if they turn that into a profitable series of publications or secondary products, then we have contributed to eroding the commercial sector. Any suggestions, or has there been discussion with OMB or other sectors, as to how this might be managed, because we don’t at present ask every client what they are going to use the information for? As a matter of fact, that entertains the professional concerns for librarians as to how far you go with a reference interview before the patron’s privacy begins to be violated. Dr. Sprehe: There is very little you can do about secondary distribution. You can’t really set up an enforcement mechanism. So, it seems to me it would be fairly absurd for the government to require a library to require its users to make certain certifications. That not only is unworkable administratively and practically, but it probably would never stand up in court either. So my hunch, then, is that if there was a demonstrable fear that the secondary distribution was going to produce a situation of unfair competitive advantage within the marketplace, then one would probably be better advised not to do differential pricing in the first place. Charge everybody the same thing. And therefore, you might end up with a price which was a little higher than the non-profits would like, and a little lower than the for-profits can bear. I should stress that we are all fumbling in this area partly because the new technology is changing the environment so rapidly. Question: The implication is that electronic transmission of information is centered in Washington, or at the agency. Right now, with printed media, depository libraries provide dispersed access. In substituting electronic data bases for printed media, are you not, in essence, withdrawing all access back to the Washington Central base, where anyone who wants information must contact the agency that produces it in its data format. Are you going to be able to handle all that? Dr. Sprehe: Why can’t the user download the entire data base to his own facility? Question: What if a hundred students call up and say “I’m downloading into my little Macintosh Apple because I really need the information that only Washington collects, even though I’m only going to use it for my one lousy term paper, and you are going to charge me on top of that!“?
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Dr. Sprehe:
No, but why couldn’t the University of Notre Dame access Washington once, download the whole thing to a University of Notre Dame computer, and redistribute it to the students there. I would certainly anticipate that that would be done. It seems to me that one of the whole points of electronic access is that initially it issues from one source, but after that everybody’s got it. Question: Are you going to download it to all of the depository libraries? Dr. Sprehe:
That is a policy decision which I haven’t gotten into, and probably won’t get into. We’re trying to deal with it at a much more general level.
Putting the previous question in other words, how committed is OMB to preserving the distribution of information through the depository library program, thus assuring free public access to it even though the information is in an electronic format?
Dr. Sprehe:
I don’t really know that I am prepared to speak to that. What I would say is that any new policy OMB develops should not alter our present commitment, whatever that may be.
Question: Do you see any problems with public access to government documents, especially with the Freedom of Information Act, as these electronic filing systems are turned over to private contractors?
Dr. Sprehe:
It is one of the questions raised by Congressman English and I think that the answer is that the problem is handled by the terms of the contract. In some cases the agency can choose to retain the primary document. In some cases the agency, I presume within the boundaries of procurement law, could contract in such a way that the responsibilities of the contractor are identical to those of the government.
Question:
Will it then be up to the contractor to either deny or provide access under the Freedom of Information Act to what is government information? Who will make those decisions then?
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Dr. Sprehe: Again, I think it would be a matter of the contract. The responsibility would fall on the federal agency to build those kinds of safeguards into the contractual arrangement. Question: Assume that maybe 10 years down the road the federal agencies that produce enormous numeric data bases - BLS, Census, etc. - are going to be publishing in electronic format only. What kind of uniformity is there going to be in accessing these databases? Dr. Sprehe: There is no question that the standards problem and the compatibility problems are looming on the horizon. It exists today, for example, in federal-state information systems. The electronic interface problem may be costing the federal government millions of dollars daily because there is no standard for interface. The current position of the federal government is to emphasize voluntary standards and, therefore, not to impose mandatory standards. Let standards evolve from industry. That may cost the government money. If mandatory standards could be imposed, they might save money, but as a matter of policy it has been decided that the federal government would rather not regulate by imposing mandatory standards. REFERENCES 1. Sprehe, J. Timothy. “A Federal Policy for Improving Data Access and User Services,” Statistical Reporter, 81 (March 1981), pp. 323-344. 2. Federal Register, 48 (12 September 1983), 40964-40965. 3. General Accounting Office, “Better Use of Information Technology Can Reduce the Burden of Federal Paperwork,” Report No. GAO/GGD-83-89 (11 April 1983). 4. Congressional Record, 130 (14 March 1984), H1614-H1615. 5. Congressional Record, 130 (14 March 1984), H1615.
DEVELOPING
0277-9390184 $3.00 + .OO 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd
A FEDERAL POLICY ON ELECTRONIC COLLECTION DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION J. TIMOTHY
AND
SPREHE
Senior Statistician, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503
Abstract-Sprehe concentrates on emerging federal policy relating to electronic information resources and summarizes replies to a recent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announcement. Government agencies are rapidly moving toward electronic collection of data, but dissemination plans are not well developed. Information is seen as a valuable commodity; some of it should be given away as a public good, some of it should make a profit for the government. Sprehe also addresses the issues of user charges, quality control, monopoly, and the effective and economical use of government resources.
Before I launch into the main body of what I have to say as your friendly OMB (Office of Management and Budget) representative, I would like to establish a few bona fides on your side of the fence. In my background as a federal statistician I served for several years as chairman of the Interagency Committee on Data Access and Use, a committee made up of representatives from the major federal statistical agencies. While in that capacity, I was the author of an article entitled “A Federal Policy for Improving Data Access and User Services.” So I am on record in the Statistical Reporter, an obscure publication now defunct, as being very much in favor of increasing access to federal information resources [l]. I say that because the Paperwork Reduction Act, which is administered by the office that I represent, is frequently viewed as a legislative as well as an executive attempt to reduce the flow of information to the American public. In fact, I think what the Paperwork Reduction Act really does is attempt to decrease the flow of information into the government by reducing the information collection burden on the public, while at the same time facilitating an increase in the flow of information out of the government. That is, the legislative intent is to decrease the public’s information input to government, but to increase the public’s access to the information that the government does have. This is my own formulation, but I believe it is fundamentally sound. We published a notice in the Federal Register on September 12, 1983 advertising the fact that OMB was beginning the development of a policy circular on management of federal information resources [2]. We received a total of 53 comments from the public, running to some 300 pages. A good segment of the comments came from libraries and universities, approximately a third of the comments. We analyzed the comments and widely distributed our
Dr. Sprehe is senior statistician in the Information Policy Branch of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He is currently the director of the OMB project to develop a policy circular on information resources management. 353
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analysis. (For those who are interested, we can make available copies of our analysis of public comments, and the comments themselves are available in Washington.) In our Federal Register announcement we listed 16 issue areas to which we wanted to draw attention. The comments received from the public concentrated very much on three issue areas: general principles of information resources management, competition with the private sector, and user charges for information products and services. As a matter of fact, nonfederal commenters addressed themselves exclusively to those three issues. All the rest of the issues we listed were of interest only to federal agencies. Under general principles of information resources management, we tipped our hand a little bit by giving as an example, “Information is not a free good but a resource of substantial economic value and should be treated as such.” That statement drew strong reaction from the university and library community. Thirty-four percent of our responses on this issue came from this group and their comments carried the same thread- the fear that a policy emphasizing such a principle would restrict the free flow of information in this country. Respondents urged that additional principles be equally weighted. For example, that “the federal government is responsible for insuring equitable and open access by the public to information”; or that “information is valued beyond the economic; it is a natural resource for improving the quality of life of citizens; it is a public good.” The American Library Association endorses this basic philosophy and argues that technological changes, although altering the form and method of information dissemination and transfer, do not alter the government’s responsibility to make available the information or the public’s right to have access to it. Another library response pointed out that social services and free education are also resources of substantial economic value, but are due to the tax paying citizenry that maintains its government. As regards the issue of competition with the private sector, most commenters recognized the need to establish a balance between the public and private sectors in order to avoid unfair competition while insuring that society’s information needs are met. Fundamental to the balance is the need to determine the respective roles of government and the private sector in providing information services and products. A private sector opinion was offered by the Information Industry Association (IIA) which offered the following guidelines: First, the government should not develop and disseminate new information products or services or new formats that compete with those already available from, planned by, or which could be provided by, private sector sources. Second, when there is a genuine demonstrable need for new products or services the government should: first, encourage the private sector to meet the need; second, provide inducement through subsidies, loans, grants, or tax credits; third, contract out the needed product or service; and fourth, if all else fails, and the government does produce such a product, make it available in a way and at a price that diminishes potential competition with the private sector. As regards that issue of public sector/private sector competition, the library and university respondents cautioned that the private sector role should not be over-emphasized to the detriment of the public’s right to know. Nor did they believe that profit should be made by the private sector at the public’s expense. Comments from the Medical Libraries Association pointed out that if the profitability factor alone is used to determine when government information is to be produced, much will not be published. Comments from this group also referred frequently to the belief that information generated by the government has been paid for
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by the citizenry and should be made available to them as freely and for as little cost as possible. Let me briefly touch on the question of user charges for information products and services -this is a topic to which I will return. Much has been made in the present administration of the concept of user charges. In our announcement we raised the question as to whether or not special policy guidance was needed concerning the application of user charges to government information products and services. The thrust of comments from IIA and from individual firms was that the government generally ought not to offer information products and services in the marketplace, but if it does, it should set prices in a manner that diminishes competition with the private sector. The consensus of commenters other than the private information companies was that: (1) user charges for government information products and services should not be artificially inflated to market value; (2) they should include only those costs incurred by the government over and above the government’s own requirements such as reproduction costs; and (3) they should not include the creation costs incurred in fulfillment of an agency’s mission, particularly in the case of disseminating scientific and technical information. I offer this as a general introduction to the kind of enterprise that OMB is currently engaged in with an attempt to develop general government-wide policy guidance on the management of information resources. The Paperwork Reduction Act is a remarkable tool for the development of a consistent federal policy on information because it combines in one place, namely, the Office of Management and Budget, the functions of input of information to the government, processing of the information within the government, and disclosure of the information by the government. In fact, the Act does give to the director of OMB rather broad powers to define general information policy; and to handle automatic data processing and telecommunications policies, records management, Privacy Act matters, and the general question of dissemination of governmental information. The particular topic I would like to struggle with here is the question of developing an information policy for electronic collection and dissemination of information. We are all fairly familiar with the burgeoning forms of electronic dissemination of information. We have, for example, the National Library of Medicine with its MEDLARS system, for online access to biomedical indexing. You are familiar with the fact that the National Library of Medicine has been under fire for some years from the private sector on the grounds that it is competing unfairly, both in the United States and abroad. Quite recently the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued a request for proposals for a department-wide electronic dissemination of information contract. There will be a single contractual vehicle for dissemination of all USDA information that is electronically disseminated. It is likely to be a large vehicle, and it is certainly an experience that is being closely watched by other federal agencies because of its magnitude and the fact that USDA has had to address a lot of fundamental policy questions which so many other agencies will face. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now provides electronic access to its major press release data- the consumer price index, unemployment statistics, and so on. The Bureau of the Census is currently negotiating for an electronic publishing contract whereby the data that Census currently sells in a machine-readable data file could be made available online. NASA has recently announced the availability of an online data base. Almost daily federal agencies are announcing new plans for electronic dissemination.
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Some of the online systems are not devoted simply to disseminating information that is of general interest to the public. For example, the Department of Defense (DOD) is now piloting an online system whereby a prime federal contractor who wants to discover whether or not a small business subcontractor has filed certain certifications or representations with the government can do so by executing a single query to a DOD computer where the small business will have filed its annual certifications and representations. This relieves the prime contractor of having to collect the information from the small business itself and, in effect, relieves a secondary collection burden that government procurement regulations have imposed. These examples go on and on, and it appears quite clear that electronic dissemination is moving at an extremely rapid pace. What is also moving rapidly, but is perhaps less visible, is the electronic collection of information by the government. The General Accounting Office published a report [3] within the last year or so in which it urged the application of information technology to information collection to a far greater extent than currently exists. When you think of you or me as individuals filling out a government form, it does not immediately appear that electronic collection is viable. But when you think of the kinds of information collection the government does when it asks the same kind of information repeatedly over time from business firms, then the potential for electronic collection becomes much more evident. For example, the Shippers Export Declaration is the primary form that must be filed by anybody who is exporting something from the United States. Large shippers find it far easier, rather than sending the Bureau of the Census huge stacks of forms, to simply send them a computer tape, and the Census Bureau finds it far easier to process the information in that form. Large hospitals with Medicare and Medicaid claims can report much easier in electronic form than they can by shipping off stacks of forms to the Health Care Financing Administration which would simply have to reenter them in their computers anyway. So it is widely perceived that there are substantial savings to the public and to the government from the use of electronic media for information collection. Recently in the Congressional Record Congressman English inserted an item on electronic filing of documents with the government [4]. By electronic filing, he means electronic information collection. He noted that advances in computer and telecommunications technologies and decreases in their costs offer federal agencies opportunities to improve the flow and management of information, and then he cited three new cases of electronic collection. The Patent and Trademark Office is moving to an automated system that will involve electronic collection of information on patents and trademarks as well as electronic dissemination. Secondly, the Securities and Exchange Commission is pilot testing a program for the 10-K form, the basic form that must be filed by any publicly held company. The pilot test is for electronic filing, retrieval, and dissemination of the form. Finally, the Federal Maritime Commission is investigating a proposal for electronic collection of tariff information. In summary, it appears likely that, in cases where government agencies are going to collect the same kind of information repeatedly over time from the same respondents, and those respondents are known to possess the electronic technology, then electronic collection of information will burgeon as quickly as electronic dissemination. So, this phenomenon is upon us, and we at OMB are wrestling with the question of what kinds of policy considerations should be issued to advise government agencies on how to deal with these matters. OMB is motivated to develop this policy in part because it is OMB’s responsibility to do so under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and in part because Congress and the General Accounting Office are holding OMB accountable. As regards our policy stance for electronic collection and dissemination, we are generally pro-technology. We believe that there are substantial savings to the public and to the govern-
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ment; that the government can operate more efficiently and more effectively by moving to electronic media; and that there will ultimately be less burden on the public, ultimately less cost to the public, by moving toward electronic media. In addition, information which is available electronically becomes more accessible, so the public is better served for the information that it has paid to collect. And it is more accessible in a higher yield form; that is, the information is far more manipulatable by the end user, it can be more tailored to the needs of the end user. But we have to bear in mind the safeguards that must be applied to information collection and dissemination in its traditional forms. The safeguards must carry over into the electronic forms. In particular, when we move into electronic collection and dissemination, it is necessary to assure that statutory provisions for privacy continue to be guaranteed; provisions for freedom of information continue to be guaranteed; and that a move toward electronic media does not diminish in any way the right of public access to information. Security of information becomes a new kind of concern. Not only physical security, not only national security, but also the integrity of information-integrity in the sense of quality- to make sure that the information is as good as it can be and that there are safeguards erected against errors must be guaranteed. And finally, in the safeguards area, there is the whole question of records maintenance, the archival function, which is a matter of law. In that regard, I might read you some of the questions which were posed by Congressman English: Is there a need for the establishment of some government-wide standards for electronic filing systems before different systems are developed independently by some several agencies? What computer security problems are presented by the establishment of electronic filing systems designed for remote telephonic access by multiple users? Will contractual arrangements for electronic filing curtail the ability of the public to have access to government documents now routinely made available in public document rooms or otherwise? 151
The manner in which the government makes information available electronically presents problems with respect to monopoly. It happens so often that the government is in a monopolistic position with respect to information resources. Nobody but the government takes a census of population, therefore the Bureau of the Census has a monopolistic control over census data. While the government would like to have marketplace forces operating with regard to the dissemination of those data, the government is in a monopolistic position and so there can be no competition in the supply of census data in the marketplace. The least that the government can do is to assure that when the information is disseminated, it is done so in a fair and equitable manner so that everyone in the marketplace has an equal chance at the information at the same time. We have to deal also with the problem which, for shorthand, can be called the A-76 problem. OMB Circular A-76 establishes that the government shall not compete unfairly with the private sector when the government procures goods and services for its own use. However, there is no enunciated policy that governs the government’s conduct when the government provides goods and services for the public’s use. That is, A-76 pertains only to getting things for the government’s use. But what if the government provides it for the public’s use? If a federal agency chooses to provide an information service that competes unfairly with existing services in the private sector, there is no government policy to say: “Thou shalt not do that.” It may seem obvious that there ought to be an extension of A-76 into the situation in which the government is providing the services to the public but at present we do not have such a policy.
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Finally, there is the question of how the government ought to price its information products and whether it ought to price its information products- the question of user charges. The concept of user charges is an old one. In 1952 Congress passed a law called the User Charges Statute. It says basically this: When identifiable recipients derive special benefits from government goods and services, these recipients should pay a reasonable fee. An example is agricultural grain inspection. USDA grain inspectors protect the public health and therefore, further a public good when they carry out grain inspection. But they also provide a service to the person who owns the grain and the point of view of the user charges philosophy is that the person who owns the grain ought to pay a reasonable charge for the service. The concept is also applied to such things as the nation’s waterways, deep water ports, and federal aviation facilities. In the report on user charges of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, the biggest item is foreign military sales. There is little argument with the concept of user charges when it is applied to real property. It seems eminently reasonable that if you get a special benefit from some kind of governmental action, you should pay a fee. How should user charges be applied to information products and services? A number of factors condition our answer. One is the nature of the information. Clearly there are some kinds of information which the government ought to give away free. There are other kinds of information for which the government ought to charge to the hilt. Information concerning what an agency does, how to apply for benefits, how to comply with laws administered by an agency- that kind of information, clearly, ought to be given away free. There are situations, provided for in statutes, in which private concerns come to the government, request the government to collect information for them, and the government does so. For example, the Bureau of Census, in its Current Industrial Reports program, has been conducting surveys, paid for totally by industry, since the early 1920s. While the Census Bureau collects the data, retains the data, and issues the publications, the industry group in question pays every nickel of the cost of designing the study, interviewing, data processing, all of the publication-the industry pays from A to Z. Nobody questions that, because from the outset the Census Bureau would not have undertaken the information collection except for the fact that industry came along and said, we will pay you to do it. So, those are two ends of the user charges spectrum. Another question which must be addressed is the mission of the agency. There is no question, for example, that general purpose statistical agencies have as their mission the collection and dissemination of information, and to the extent that increased user charges would diminish the dissemination of their information, increased user charges may detract from the performance of the mission. Where the problem arises is in the situation where an agency, under its legislatively mandated program, and with funds appropriated by Congress, collects information intended for the use of the agency in its internal operations, and it happens that that information is of commercial value. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a regulatory agency; it regulates the communications industry. As part of its regulatory activity, it requires broadcast stations to submit certain kinds of information on a routine basis. The FCC compiles those data, and the communications industry would like to have them. The FCC puts the data on machine-readable data files and sells them to the communications industry through the National Technical Information Service in the Department of Commerce. People who are interested in the communications industry would like to have more access, and easier access, to FCC’s data, but the trouble is that the FCC is not in the business of servicing data users. General purpose statistical functions are not their mission, not in their legislation. This is occurring increasingly throughout the government, that the government has information which turns out to be valuable to the private sector, but
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the agency in question has no mandate for getting into the information dissemination business. We do not yet have good answers as to how to handle this problem. At present it appears that the general stance of federal agencies is that agencies would like to disseminate their information electronically, at best, at no cost to the government. The sentiment within OMB is that they ought to go a little farther- that they ought not only to disseminate the information if possible at no cost to the government, but that they ought also, if possible, to recover some of the costs of originally generating the information and, if possible, make a profit on it. There are those who are horrified at the idea of the government making a profit on information that the tax payer has paid to collect. I am at a loss to understand why we should be horrified at that. The government made a profit on its bail-out of the Chrysler Corporation, and no one has objected to that. The government makes a profit on foreign military sales, and nobody objects to that. If the taxpayer has paid to collect information, and if through its electronic dissemination a private firm is going to be able to take that information and go out and make millions, why should the taxpayer give that information away to that firm virtually for free? Why shouldn’t the taxpayer recoup some of the cost that went into creating the information and beyond that, recoup all of the costs and make a profit-the profits, of course, to go into the Treasury. This seems to me to be a generally reasonable point of view. It also seems to be one that will be resisted, not only by many at this conference, but also by my colleagues in many executive agencies of the government. It is difficult for us to draw the line. We are struggling with this considerably- how do we increase the effective use of the vast resources of the government: enormous amounts of information that nobody wants access to, that people could care less about, but also tremendous resources which are of great value to the individual citizen, of great value to the economy? How do we increase the public’s access to that information, the public’s use of that information, and at the same time administer the government economically and recover as much of the economic value of the information as we can? I leave you with that question because we do not yet have the answer. DISCUSSION
Question: You didn’t mention the depository distribution program, as it relates to the dissemination of the electronic data. How do you see the depository libraries getting access to new information that they currently may or may not have in printed format now? Dr. Sprehe: Let me give an example. Suppose that agencies begin to sell online information services. Then the question becomes, how do you price online information services from a federal agency to the federal depository library system? My answer to that is that a differential pricing structure may be necessary under which higher prices would be charged to for-profit entities, lesser prices charged to non-profit entities, and no prices charged to others. So, if there was a policy determination that the federal depository library system should receive the online services without cost, this of itself would not be bothersome. But, if the depository libraries were to redisseminate at no cost and demonstrably erode a private sector information industry, real troubles would arise. The National Library of Medicine is only now considering the question of a differential pricing structure. Within the past month they held an open meeting of their Board of Regents at which they discussed the advisability of one pricing
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structure for for-profit users and a separate pricing structure for non-profit users. If the depository libraries are going to redisseminate at no cost and have an adverse impact on the marketplace, that would be a fundamental policy concern. I think I would probably oppose dissemination at no cost to the depository library system if those conditions were present. Question: If I understand what you’re suggesting, you would be putting the libraries in a position of querying the type of use made of resources and judging whether or not pricing would have to be applied? For instance, right now if people come to the Penn State Computation Center that has census files, and if they turn that into a profitable series of publications or secondary products, then we have contributed to eroding the commercial sector. Any suggestions, or has there been discussion with OMB or other sectors, as to how this might be managed, because we don’t at present ask every client what they are going to use the information for? As a matter of fact, that entertains the professional concerns for librarians as to how far you go with a reference interview before the patron’s privacy begins to be violated. Dr. Sprehe: There is very little you can do about secondary distribution. You can’t really set up an enforcement mechanism. So, it seems to me it would be fairly absurd for the government to require a library to require its users to make certain certifications. That not only is unworkable administratively and practically, but it probably would never stand up in court either. So my hunch, then, is that if there was a demonstrable fear that the secondary distribution was going to produce a situation of unfair competitive advantage within the marketplace, then one would probably be better advised not to do differential pricing in the first place. Charge everybody the same thing. And therefore, you might end up with a price which was a little higher than the non-profits would like, and a little lower than the for-profits can bear. I should stress that we are all fumbling in this area partly because the new technology is changing the environment so rapidly. Question: The implication is that electronic transmission of information is centered in Washington, or at the agency. Right now, with printed media, depository libraries provide dispersed access. In substituting electronic data bases for printed media, are you not, in essence, withdrawing all access back to the Washington Central base, where anyone who wants information must contact the agency that produces it in its data format. Are you going to be able to handle all that? Dr. Sprehe: Why can’t the user download the entire data base to his own facility? Question: What if a hundred students call up and say “I’m downloading into my little Macintosh Apple because I really need the information that only Washington collects, even though I’m only going to use it for my one lousy term paper, and you are going to charge me on top of that!“?
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Dr. Sprehe:
No, but why couldn’t the University of Notre Dame access Washington once, download the whole thing to a University of Notre Dame computer, and redistribute it to the students there. I would certainly anticipate that that would be done. It seems to me that one of the whole points of electronic access is that initially it issues from one source, but after that everybody’s got it. Question: Are you going to download it to all of the depository libraries? Dr. Sprehe:
That is a policy decision which I haven’t gotten into, and probably won’t get into. We’re trying to deal with it at a much more general level.
Putting the previous question in other words, how committed is OMB to preserving the distribution of information through the depository library program, thus assuring free public access to it even though the information is in an electronic format?
Dr. Sprehe:
I don’t really know that I am prepared to speak to that. What I would say is that any new policy OMB develops should not alter our present commitment, whatever that may be.
Question: Do you see any problems with public access to government documents, especially with the Freedom of Information Act, as these electronic filing systems are turned over to private contractors?
Dr. Sprehe:
It is one of the questions raised by Congressman English and I think that the answer is that the problem is handled by the terms of the contract. In some cases the agency can choose to retain the primary document. In some cases the agency, I presume within the boundaries of procurement law, could contract in such a way that the responsibilities of the contractor are identical to those of the government.
Question:
Will it then be up to the contractor to either deny or provide access under the Freedom of Information Act to what is government information? Who will make those decisions then?
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Dr. Sprehe: Again, I think it would be a matter of the contract. The responsibility would fall on the federal agency to build those kinds of safeguards into the contractual arrangement. Question: Assume that maybe 10 years down the road the federal agencies that produce enormous numeric data bases - BLS, Census, etc. - are going to be publishing in electronic format only. What kind of uniformity is there going to be in accessing these databases? Dr. Sprehe: There is no question that the standards problem and the compatibility problems are looming on the horizon. It exists today, for example, in federal-state information systems. The electronic interface problem may be costing the federal government millions of dollars daily because there is no standard for interface. The current position of the federal government is to emphasize voluntary standards and, therefore, not to impose mandatory standards. Let standards evolve from industry. That may cost the government money. If mandatory standards could be imposed, they might save money, but as a matter of policy it has been decided that the federal government would rather not regulate by imposing mandatory standards. REFERENCES 1. Sprehe, J. Timothy. “A Federal Policy for Improving Data Access and User Services,” Statistical Reporter, 81 (March 1981), pp. 323-344. 2. Federal Register, 48 (12 September 1983), 40964-40965. 3. General Accounting Office, “Better Use of Information Technology Can Reduce the Burden of Federal Paperwork,” Report No. GAO/GGD-83-89 (11 April 1983). 4. Congressional Record, 130 (14 March 1984), H1614-H1615. 5. Congressional Record, 130 (14 March 1984), H1615.