- Email: [email protected]
The message of the medium
Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 1 ± 20
The message of the medium The risks and opportunities of migrating pre-electronic government information products to the Internet$ Forest Woody Horton* National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Suite 820, 1110 Vermont Avenue, NorthWest, Washington, DC 20005-3552, USA Received 18 April 2000; received in revised form 27 May 2000; accepted 1 August 2000
Abstract During the mid-1997 to early 1999 period, a major study was undertaken by the United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), at the request of the Government Printing Office (GPO), entitled ``Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products.'' A contractor specializing in survey research, Westat, of Rockville, MD, was engaged to assist the government in the detailed data collection, interviewing, background research, and related tasks. The contractor delivered a final report to the government on March 30, 1999. On behalf of the government, NCLIS accepted the findings and recommendations, and delivered the report to all three branches of government. A limited number of $ The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of NCLIS on the matters investigated. The author is a consultant to the U.S. NCLIS, an official government agency that provides consultation and advice to the President and the Congress on the information needs of the nation and individual citizens. Horton is retired from the federal government, where he spent nearly 50 years in information resources management positions in several agencies, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for International Development, and on several staffs in the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of Management and Budget and the President's Special Trade Representative. He was Studies Director for the Commission on Federal Paperwork from 1977 to 1979. That Commission was the congressional body that first recommended the idea that government information should be considered a national resource, and an asset, with both values and costs to the taxpayer that should be balanced when government decides to collect information from the public. The underlying philosophical concept, called ``Information Resources Management'' or IRM, was institutionalized on a government-wide basis by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 and subsequent revisions (the latest reauthorization of which was enacted in 1995). * Tel.: +1-202-606-9200; fax: +1-202-606-9203. E-mail address: [email protected] (F.W. Horton).
1352-0237/01/$ ± see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 3 5 2 - 0 2 3 7 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 2 5 5 - 6
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hard copies are available from NCLIS. This article highlights the study's major findings, conclusions, and recommendations, their significance, and speculates on possible future actions the government could take. The major conclusion of the study was that there is a need to pinpoint overall responsibility for public information dissemination and electronic publishing at the top agency level. Presently authorities and responsibilities are unclear, uncoordinated, fragmented, and overlapping among many different agency line and staff units. D 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Government information; Electronic publishing; Permanent public access to government information
1. Introduction Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum ``the medium is the message'' has implications for present-day federal information and communications laws, policies, and regulations which that prescient observer would probably not find at all surprising were he still alive today. His oft-cited dictum is virtually a clicheÂ, especially as it applies to mass communications alternatives Ð the telephone, the radio, broadcast television, cable television, video cassettes, audio cassettes, DVD, e-mail, and surfing the World Wide Web. The broadcasting medium delivers the message one way. The daily newspaper medium delivers it in another format. Weekly and monthly magazines and journals deliver the message still a third way. And, of course, there are many other mediums1. The applicability of McLuhan's dictum in the context of data, document, and literature information storage and handling mediums, rather than in the context of mass communications mediums, is not so obvious. This author has ``reversed'' McLuhan's saying in order to stress that, indeed, the medium is the message not only in a mass communication sense, but there is also a clear message of (selecting) a particular medium in terms of unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy consequences, some of which may be irrevocable and irreversible.
2. Formats and mediums The increasing array of medium options for information storage and handling and the file formats that typically are selected with a particular medium, present both intended and unintended (unexpected) policy consequences, not just technological consequences. Some of those policy consequences may be irrevocable and irreversible, and relate to information use in the following areas:
searchability, retrievability, downloadability, archiving, preserving,
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3
authenticating, privacy and confidentiality, security and protection, how often to refresh technologies, permanent public accessibility, and compliance with standards and guidelines.
Here are just a few examples.
If an information producer or disseminator selects microfiche because it has a product that requires little access and the application emphasis is primarily archival, one may have difficulty converting the information to electronic formats, especially if a facility's equipment is older and it cannot be interconnected with a computer; If an information producer or disseminator selects ink-on-paper because information is basically metadata, and is of a historical, retrospective nature, requiring very little reference and access, and facilities cannot afford expensive equipment to store and handle it, one may be able to get along just fine until there is a need to take emergency backup measures because of fires, natural disasters, and other destructive scenarios; If an information producer or disseminator selects CD-ROM because the product involves flat, text files, and a facility does not have the space to store hard copy, you may function reasonably well until there is a need to buy expensive, specialized equipment because of legal, proprietary, or content refreshing requirements; If an information producer or disseminator selects a tagged markup product such as HTML because it is cost effective, problems may occur when a facility faces authentication demands that are far more rigorous than initially anticipated, and there will be regret in not using an image format such as PDF at the outset; and If an information producer or disseminator selects HTML because it is today frequently considered a common de facto standard, especially in government information handling, but regrets will be evident over time when the costs required of transposing the information from one information life cycle stage to the next make it publishable, one may wish one had used XML in the beginning.
Of course, the above examples underscoring some of the policy trade-offs implicit in the decision to select an optimal medium and format only scratch the surface. When one considers the trade-offs in user interfaces supported, web design approaches, audio information, video information, database platforms, spreadsheet platforms, word processing platforms, and so on, the trade-offs become very numerous and complex. 3. Preservation using electronic formats Presently federal archivists and records administrators, librarians, historians, journalists, researchers of all hues, and many other groups are loudly arguing that all information created,
4
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regardless of medium or format, paper or electronic, must be preserved forever. At the same time these groups point with alarm to information being posted to the web one day and disappearing just as fast the next day. This, again, is an underestimated, unintended, or ignored policy challenge, depending on one's point of view. Reasons include:
the excitement and eagerness to experiment with the modern technologies (especially the World Wide Web and the Internet) and not risk stifling creativity with having to comply with too many rigid rules, poor leadership and management, and the loss of control attendant thereto, the absence of guidelines and standards that encourages haphazard rules development, the absence of workable policies because they are either too loose, too rigid, or nonexistent, and failure to enforce existing laws and policies that may be perfectly adequate but are ignored.
These unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy challenges collectively can be termed the message of the medium. The creation, organization, storing, searching, retrieving, disseminating, and archiving of information products in one medium and format, vs. another, carries with it far-reaching legal and policy consequences (not just technical and procedural consequences) that may be unforeseen and unintended. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, various U.S. congressional committees began to hold public hearings and solicit expert testimony on the problems being confronted by a very vocal group that might be called, collectively for our purposes, the ``free access to public information constituencies.'' This group includes historians, archivists, journalists, librarians, educators, and others. It is a formidable and powerful alliance and one to which the Congress usually listens carefully. One common thread throughout this testimony, admittedly stated here rather cryptically, was: Congress, you probably are only dimly aware that federal agencies that create external information for the public (which includes internal information of use to the public as well, whether or not it was expressly created for public consumption or not), using traditional inkon-paper and microform mediums, are rapidly moving all of that information to electronic mediums, especially the Internet. And, in the process of doing so, the problems of permanent public access, permanent records retention, preservation, and authentication, are being exacerbated to an alarming degree.
These groups freely admit that the problems of permanent public access to government information, permanent retention of government records, authentication of official government information, and the preservation of government information materials, have always been present Ð even decades ago in the exclusively hard copy worlds of papyrus, parchment, and paper Ð ask any Egyptologist. They say, however, that in an Internet-crazed world, management and control over government information products in the form of ``disappearing electrons'' is infinitely more difficult. One of the premier public information dissemination programs of the United States government is the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Under this program,
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government information in both conventional and electronic formats is made available by the Government Printing Office (GPO), which oversees the program, to more than 1350 participating libraries nationwide for the free use of the public. In 1998, GPO distributed 14.4 million copies of approximately 39,000 tangible products in print, microform, and CDROM formats to depository libraries. The numbers are increasing daily. Depository librarians around the country are in the front line trenches to guard against this disappearance of government information. Congress listened carefully to their outcries, and directed the GPO to study federal agency plans and practices with respect to the migration of ink-on-paper and microform mediums and associated formats to electronic mediums and formats. GPO commissioned the United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) to undertake the study, and NCLIS, in turn, solicited the assistance of a survey research firm, Westat, based in Rockville, MD. The NCLIS final report was released on March 30, 19992, and the GPO, NCLIS, the Federal Depository Library Council, and various other interested groups, both public and private, are still evaluating the findings and recommendations. This article addresses the study's major findings and recommendations, and speculates on possible future actions and decisions the federal government could take to deal with the many complex policy, procedural and technical levels of problems. Because of substantial time and resource constraints (the study had to be completed within 9 months and limited funds, not to be exceeded, were made available for its conduct), the study surveyed a rather small cross-section sample of only 328 government information products. Despite the fact that these constraints precluded undertaking a truly scientific and random sample of products (there are over 30,000 product titles flowing from the federal government into the Federal Depository Library system), a rich and diverse cross-section of surveyed federal agencies and products was targeted. A questionnaire was designed and pre-tested (see Fig. 1) and the survey forms were sent out to 24 federal agencies at the end of September 1998 (see Fig. 2). Former NCLIS Chairperson Jeanne Hurley Simon pointed out in her March 30, 1999 NCLIS Press Release that ``the survey enjoyed the active support and participation of all three branches of government. Twenty-four different Federal entities participated, including the Supreme Court, several committees of the Congress, one regulatory commission, and 19 Executive Branch agencies, including most of the Cabinet departments.'' What was truly surprising is that an impressive 74% of the survey forms (242 out of 328 sent to the agencies) were returned completed. NCLIS interpreted this extraordinary return to a desire on the part of the federal agencies to establish a planning baseline, and they saw in the survey an opportunity to show their support by trying their best to cooperate with survey sponsors and managers. 4. Survey findings The major, overall finding was that there is a lack of policy guiding electronic publishing, dissemination of information to the public, permanent public access, and information life cycle management, especially as that policy ties into agency missions, functions, and
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programs. Also, it was documented that there is a lack of overall coordination of these initiatives in each of the three branches, and at the internal agency level. The survey went on to document that responsibility for electronic publishing within agencies is decentralized, diffused, and unclear. ``Some agencies either could not identify or had difficulty identifying the proper respondent within their own agency, or even the person who was responsible for the product.''
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On the other hand, the survey found that some government agencies have already or are moving to establish guidelines and/or best practices for presenting and organizing government information products on the web, although full compliance with guidelines is a goal that has not yet been achieved. Agencies are also exploring a wide range of innovative formats and web design approaches for products. Clearly, agencies are responding to the opportunities
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being presented by the new electronic information technologies to improve public access to the vast reservoir of available government information. Briefly, the other key findings of the survey were:
There is a lack of specific planning for product development and technological migration;
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There is a lack of planning for, or consideration of, web design approaches that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act; The concept of permanent public access is not well understood. Respondents had difficulty also distinguishing between permanent public access for electronic products and archiving electronic federal records with the National Archives and Records Administration; Metadata and its importance to public access are not well understood, particularly as they may affect permanent public access. Only 27% of respondents reported having a metadata record for the products surveyed;
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For some products, permanent public access results from the agencies' use of a host disseminator such as GPO Access; There is a lack of understanding of what ensuring authenticity entails, and a lack of planning for or consideration of ensuring authenticity of electronic government information products; Fifteen percent of the products surveyed are not in the public domain, for all or part of the product; in addition, user fees are charged for 30% of the products; The most prevalent types of mediums are the web, paper, CD-ROM, and bulletin board systems; the most prevalent formats are HTML, PDF, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and ASCII;
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The most prevalent types of data contained in the products surveyed are textual, numerical, bibliographic, and graphical; There is a lack of standardization for producing government information products on CD-ROM (e.g., installation instructions, user documentation);
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The most prevalent medium and format standards identified in the survey are common agency practices rather than agency-mandated; Some government agencies have established guidelines or best practices for presenting and organizing government information products on the web, although full compliance with the guidelines is a goal that has not yet been achieved; and Some government agencies are exploring a range of innovative formats and web design approaches for electronic government information products.
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5. Survey conclusions What are the conclusions, interpretations, and consequences one might fairly draw from the report's major findings? Are there unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy challenges? First, the two key findings are quintessentially policy in their nature, not technical and relate to overall government information dissemination to the public, and electronic publishing
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Fig. 1. Questionnaire.
policies, both for internal use and for the public's use. In the author's view, major improvements in the FDLP in terms of the increasing the availability of government information for that program ultimately are conditioned on reforms in those two key policy areas. Despite the much-heralded major reforms in federal information policy embodied in the Paper Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1995 and implemented in further detail in OMB Circular A-130, ``Management of Federal Information Resources,'' federal agencies still tend to plan, manage, and control their internal information resources (including systems, networks, databases, hardware, software, etc.) and their external information resources (including public information products, library and information center government document holdings, etc.) separately at worst, or in a very disjointed connected way, at best. One consequence of this is that ``when push comes to shove'' the internal information resources usually get the lion's share of the attention because the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of the agencies are far more sensitive to internal criticisms from agency program managers than they are to ``external'' criticisms from the public, the agency's public affairs office, the media, historians, etc. This is regrettable in many ways. In the context of this paper, it is regrettable because in the end, internal and external agency information resources are simply two sides of the same coin. Oftentimes, for example, an information product that an agency creates or produces for what it initially presumes is going to be for exclusive internal use proves to be highly valuable to many audiences outside the agency. The U.S. Navy's Diving Manual is one example of a product that the Department of the Navy first thought would only be valuable to the Seabees and a few other groups; the Manual became widely sought after by scuba divers and related professional and amateur water recreational groups around the world3. Second, one must move to put in place improved mechanisms for sharing guidance and best practices both internally within an agency, and across agency and branch lines. Of course
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there already are a number of interagency and unofficial groups striving to exchange ideas and experiences, but much more could and should be done. The NCLIS survey found in meetings with agency representatives that too often the agency's left hand did not know what its right hand was doing.
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Third, consciousness raising or awareness raising as to just what the concepts of permanent public access, permanent records retention, preservation, authentication, metadata tools, and related key information resources management tools and concepts are all about needs nurturing. Moreover, many agency officials did not even know what the FDLP was or what it was supposed to do. This cries out for a series of carefully crafted consciousness raising (education and training) workshops at the policymaking level, at the program (product management) level and at the product firing line level (the people who actually are directly responsible for a given product). It seems to be that the Public Printer at GPO, the FDLC, and the federal CIO Council, perhaps with NCLIS participating, could usefully come together and plan, help implement, and evaluate such a series of workshops. Fourth, OMB/OIRA should review OMB Circular A-130 with a view to strengthening those provisions relating to public information availability policy. While there are some
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provisions in that regulation now in this area, they are either outdated, not enforced, or ignored. OIRA needs to work with the federal CIO Council to put some teeth in the regulation and make sure agency CIOs fully understand what their authorities and responsibilities are. Accessibility is not the key, availability is. Fifth, the NCLIS survey established a baseline in the area of documenting agency IT formats and mediums, and related information policy questions, for the first time. What a waste it would be if that baseline were lost. The findings provide a benchmark against which one can measure future progress and problems. The survey should be periodically repeated (not necessarily annually), perhaps with appropriate format and content changes to strengthen its utility and ensure its timeliness.
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Fig. 2. Federal agencies.
6. Summary The NCLIS study of electronic government information formats and mediums is an extremely timely and valuable inquiry into a fast-moving area that many despaired would never be systematically examined. The federal government should build on that inquiry and mine the findings carefully to separate the precious metal from the rest of the ore. There is no more important challenge to a free democratic society than ensuring that government information is made readily available to the nation's libraries and through those libraries to the public. Some of the policy challenges involved may be unintended. Many are probably underestimated. Perhaps a few are being deliberately ignored. Notes 1. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964), 318. 2. U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Report on the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products, prepared under contract by Westat, Rockville, MD, commissioned by the U.S. Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, March 30, 1999. Available via GPO Access at hwww.nclis.gov/news/info/finalb.pdfi. A limited number of hard copies are available from NCLIS. 3. U.S. Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command, U.S. Navy Diving Manual, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985 (vol. 1), 1987 (vol. 2).
The message of the medium The risks and opportunities of migrating pre-electronic government information products to the Internet$ Forest Woody Horton* National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Suite 820, 1110 Vermont Avenue, NorthWest, Washington, DC 20005-3552, USA Received 18 April 2000; received in revised form 27 May 2000; accepted 1 August 2000
Abstract During the mid-1997 to early 1999 period, a major study was undertaken by the United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), at the request of the Government Printing Office (GPO), entitled ``Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products.'' A contractor specializing in survey research, Westat, of Rockville, MD, was engaged to assist the government in the detailed data collection, interviewing, background research, and related tasks. The contractor delivered a final report to the government on March 30, 1999. On behalf of the government, NCLIS accepted the findings and recommendations, and delivered the report to all three branches of government. A limited number of $ The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of NCLIS on the matters investigated. The author is a consultant to the U.S. NCLIS, an official government agency that provides consultation and advice to the President and the Congress on the information needs of the nation and individual citizens. Horton is retired from the federal government, where he spent nearly 50 years in information resources management positions in several agencies, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency for International Development, and on several staffs in the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of Management and Budget and the President's Special Trade Representative. He was Studies Director for the Commission on Federal Paperwork from 1977 to 1979. That Commission was the congressional body that first recommended the idea that government information should be considered a national resource, and an asset, with both values and costs to the taxpayer that should be balanced when government decides to collect information from the public. The underlying philosophical concept, called ``Information Resources Management'' or IRM, was institutionalized on a government-wide basis by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 and subsequent revisions (the latest reauthorization of which was enacted in 1995). * Tel.: +1-202-606-9200; fax: +1-202-606-9203. E-mail address: [email protected] (F.W. Horton).
1352-0237/01/$ ± see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 1 3 5 2 - 0 2 3 7 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 2 5 5 - 6
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hard copies are available from NCLIS. This article highlights the study's major findings, conclusions, and recommendations, their significance, and speculates on possible future actions the government could take. The major conclusion of the study was that there is a need to pinpoint overall responsibility for public information dissemination and electronic publishing at the top agency level. Presently authorities and responsibilities are unclear, uncoordinated, fragmented, and overlapping among many different agency line and staff units. D 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Government information; Electronic publishing; Permanent public access to government information
1. Introduction Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum ``the medium is the message'' has implications for present-day federal information and communications laws, policies, and regulations which that prescient observer would probably not find at all surprising were he still alive today. His oft-cited dictum is virtually a clicheÂ, especially as it applies to mass communications alternatives Ð the telephone, the radio, broadcast television, cable television, video cassettes, audio cassettes, DVD, e-mail, and surfing the World Wide Web. The broadcasting medium delivers the message one way. The daily newspaper medium delivers it in another format. Weekly and monthly magazines and journals deliver the message still a third way. And, of course, there are many other mediums1. The applicability of McLuhan's dictum in the context of data, document, and literature information storage and handling mediums, rather than in the context of mass communications mediums, is not so obvious. This author has ``reversed'' McLuhan's saying in order to stress that, indeed, the medium is the message not only in a mass communication sense, but there is also a clear message of (selecting) a particular medium in terms of unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy consequences, some of which may be irrevocable and irreversible.
2. Formats and mediums The increasing array of medium options for information storage and handling and the file formats that typically are selected with a particular medium, present both intended and unintended (unexpected) policy consequences, not just technological consequences. Some of those policy consequences may be irrevocable and irreversible, and relate to information use in the following areas:
searchability, retrievability, downloadability, archiving, preserving,
F.W. Horton / Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 1±20
3
authenticating, privacy and confidentiality, security and protection, how often to refresh technologies, permanent public accessibility, and compliance with standards and guidelines.
Here are just a few examples.
If an information producer or disseminator selects microfiche because it has a product that requires little access and the application emphasis is primarily archival, one may have difficulty converting the information to electronic formats, especially if a facility's equipment is older and it cannot be interconnected with a computer; If an information producer or disseminator selects ink-on-paper because information is basically metadata, and is of a historical, retrospective nature, requiring very little reference and access, and facilities cannot afford expensive equipment to store and handle it, one may be able to get along just fine until there is a need to take emergency backup measures because of fires, natural disasters, and other destructive scenarios; If an information producer or disseminator selects CD-ROM because the product involves flat, text files, and a facility does not have the space to store hard copy, you may function reasonably well until there is a need to buy expensive, specialized equipment because of legal, proprietary, or content refreshing requirements; If an information producer or disseminator selects a tagged markup product such as HTML because it is cost effective, problems may occur when a facility faces authentication demands that are far more rigorous than initially anticipated, and there will be regret in not using an image format such as PDF at the outset; and If an information producer or disseminator selects HTML because it is today frequently considered a common de facto standard, especially in government information handling, but regrets will be evident over time when the costs required of transposing the information from one information life cycle stage to the next make it publishable, one may wish one had used XML in the beginning.
Of course, the above examples underscoring some of the policy trade-offs implicit in the decision to select an optimal medium and format only scratch the surface. When one considers the trade-offs in user interfaces supported, web design approaches, audio information, video information, database platforms, spreadsheet platforms, word processing platforms, and so on, the trade-offs become very numerous and complex. 3. Preservation using electronic formats Presently federal archivists and records administrators, librarians, historians, journalists, researchers of all hues, and many other groups are loudly arguing that all information created,
4
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regardless of medium or format, paper or electronic, must be preserved forever. At the same time these groups point with alarm to information being posted to the web one day and disappearing just as fast the next day. This, again, is an underestimated, unintended, or ignored policy challenge, depending on one's point of view. Reasons include:
the excitement and eagerness to experiment with the modern technologies (especially the World Wide Web and the Internet) and not risk stifling creativity with having to comply with too many rigid rules, poor leadership and management, and the loss of control attendant thereto, the absence of guidelines and standards that encourages haphazard rules development, the absence of workable policies because they are either too loose, too rigid, or nonexistent, and failure to enforce existing laws and policies that may be perfectly adequate but are ignored.
These unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy challenges collectively can be termed the message of the medium. The creation, organization, storing, searching, retrieving, disseminating, and archiving of information products in one medium and format, vs. another, carries with it far-reaching legal and policy consequences (not just technical and procedural consequences) that may be unforeseen and unintended. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, various U.S. congressional committees began to hold public hearings and solicit expert testimony on the problems being confronted by a very vocal group that might be called, collectively for our purposes, the ``free access to public information constituencies.'' This group includes historians, archivists, journalists, librarians, educators, and others. It is a formidable and powerful alliance and one to which the Congress usually listens carefully. One common thread throughout this testimony, admittedly stated here rather cryptically, was: Congress, you probably are only dimly aware that federal agencies that create external information for the public (which includes internal information of use to the public as well, whether or not it was expressly created for public consumption or not), using traditional inkon-paper and microform mediums, are rapidly moving all of that information to electronic mediums, especially the Internet. And, in the process of doing so, the problems of permanent public access, permanent records retention, preservation, and authentication, are being exacerbated to an alarming degree.
These groups freely admit that the problems of permanent public access to government information, permanent retention of government records, authentication of official government information, and the preservation of government information materials, have always been present Ð even decades ago in the exclusively hard copy worlds of papyrus, parchment, and paper Ð ask any Egyptologist. They say, however, that in an Internet-crazed world, management and control over government information products in the form of ``disappearing electrons'' is infinitely more difficult. One of the premier public information dissemination programs of the United States government is the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Under this program,
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government information in both conventional and electronic formats is made available by the Government Printing Office (GPO), which oversees the program, to more than 1350 participating libraries nationwide for the free use of the public. In 1998, GPO distributed 14.4 million copies of approximately 39,000 tangible products in print, microform, and CDROM formats to depository libraries. The numbers are increasing daily. Depository librarians around the country are in the front line trenches to guard against this disappearance of government information. Congress listened carefully to their outcries, and directed the GPO to study federal agency plans and practices with respect to the migration of ink-on-paper and microform mediums and associated formats to electronic mediums and formats. GPO commissioned the United States National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) to undertake the study, and NCLIS, in turn, solicited the assistance of a survey research firm, Westat, based in Rockville, MD. The NCLIS final report was released on March 30, 19992, and the GPO, NCLIS, the Federal Depository Library Council, and various other interested groups, both public and private, are still evaluating the findings and recommendations. This article addresses the study's major findings and recommendations, and speculates on possible future actions and decisions the federal government could take to deal with the many complex policy, procedural and technical levels of problems. Because of substantial time and resource constraints (the study had to be completed within 9 months and limited funds, not to be exceeded, were made available for its conduct), the study surveyed a rather small cross-section sample of only 328 government information products. Despite the fact that these constraints precluded undertaking a truly scientific and random sample of products (there are over 30,000 product titles flowing from the federal government into the Federal Depository Library system), a rich and diverse cross-section of surveyed federal agencies and products was targeted. A questionnaire was designed and pre-tested (see Fig. 1) and the survey forms were sent out to 24 federal agencies at the end of September 1998 (see Fig. 2). Former NCLIS Chairperson Jeanne Hurley Simon pointed out in her March 30, 1999 NCLIS Press Release that ``the survey enjoyed the active support and participation of all three branches of government. Twenty-four different Federal entities participated, including the Supreme Court, several committees of the Congress, one regulatory commission, and 19 Executive Branch agencies, including most of the Cabinet departments.'' What was truly surprising is that an impressive 74% of the survey forms (242 out of 328 sent to the agencies) were returned completed. NCLIS interpreted this extraordinary return to a desire on the part of the federal agencies to establish a planning baseline, and they saw in the survey an opportunity to show their support by trying their best to cooperate with survey sponsors and managers. 4. Survey findings The major, overall finding was that there is a lack of policy guiding electronic publishing, dissemination of information to the public, permanent public access, and information life cycle management, especially as that policy ties into agency missions, functions, and
6
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programs. Also, it was documented that there is a lack of overall coordination of these initiatives in each of the three branches, and at the internal agency level. The survey went on to document that responsibility for electronic publishing within agencies is decentralized, diffused, and unclear. ``Some agencies either could not identify or had difficulty identifying the proper respondent within their own agency, or even the person who was responsible for the product.''
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On the other hand, the survey found that some government agencies have already or are moving to establish guidelines and/or best practices for presenting and organizing government information products on the web, although full compliance with guidelines is a goal that has not yet been achieved. Agencies are also exploring a wide range of innovative formats and web design approaches for products. Clearly, agencies are responding to the opportunities
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being presented by the new electronic information technologies to improve public access to the vast reservoir of available government information. Briefly, the other key findings of the survey were:
There is a lack of specific planning for product development and technological migration;
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There is a lack of planning for, or consideration of, web design approaches that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act; The concept of permanent public access is not well understood. Respondents had difficulty also distinguishing between permanent public access for electronic products and archiving electronic federal records with the National Archives and Records Administration; Metadata and its importance to public access are not well understood, particularly as they may affect permanent public access. Only 27% of respondents reported having a metadata record for the products surveyed;
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For some products, permanent public access results from the agencies' use of a host disseminator such as GPO Access; There is a lack of understanding of what ensuring authenticity entails, and a lack of planning for or consideration of ensuring authenticity of electronic government information products; Fifteen percent of the products surveyed are not in the public domain, for all or part of the product; in addition, user fees are charged for 30% of the products; The most prevalent types of mediums are the web, paper, CD-ROM, and bulletin board systems; the most prevalent formats are HTML, PDF, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and ASCII;
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The most prevalent types of data contained in the products surveyed are textual, numerical, bibliographic, and graphical; There is a lack of standardization for producing government information products on CD-ROM (e.g., installation instructions, user documentation);
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The most prevalent medium and format standards identified in the survey are common agency practices rather than agency-mandated; Some government agencies have established guidelines or best practices for presenting and organizing government information products on the web, although full compliance with the guidelines is a goal that has not yet been achieved; and Some government agencies are exploring a range of innovative formats and web design approaches for electronic government information products.
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5. Survey conclusions What are the conclusions, interpretations, and consequences one might fairly draw from the report's major findings? Are there unintended, underestimated, or ignored policy challenges? First, the two key findings are quintessentially policy in their nature, not technical and relate to overall government information dissemination to the public, and electronic publishing
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Fig. 1. Questionnaire.
policies, both for internal use and for the public's use. In the author's view, major improvements in the FDLP in terms of the increasing the availability of government information for that program ultimately are conditioned on reforms in those two key policy areas. Despite the much-heralded major reforms in federal information policy embodied in the Paper Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1995 and implemented in further detail in OMB Circular A-130, ``Management of Federal Information Resources,'' federal agencies still tend to plan, manage, and control their internal information resources (including systems, networks, databases, hardware, software, etc.) and their external information resources (including public information products, library and information center government document holdings, etc.) separately at worst, or in a very disjointed connected way, at best. One consequence of this is that ``when push comes to shove'' the internal information resources usually get the lion's share of the attention because the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of the agencies are far more sensitive to internal criticisms from agency program managers than they are to ``external'' criticisms from the public, the agency's public affairs office, the media, historians, etc. This is regrettable in many ways. In the context of this paper, it is regrettable because in the end, internal and external agency information resources are simply two sides of the same coin. Oftentimes, for example, an information product that an agency creates or produces for what it initially presumes is going to be for exclusive internal use proves to be highly valuable to many audiences outside the agency. The U.S. Navy's Diving Manual is one example of a product that the Department of the Navy first thought would only be valuable to the Seabees and a few other groups; the Manual became widely sought after by scuba divers and related professional and amateur water recreational groups around the world3. Second, one must move to put in place improved mechanisms for sharing guidance and best practices both internally within an agency, and across agency and branch lines. Of course
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there already are a number of interagency and unofficial groups striving to exchange ideas and experiences, but much more could and should be done. The NCLIS survey found in meetings with agency representatives that too often the agency's left hand did not know what its right hand was doing.
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Third, consciousness raising or awareness raising as to just what the concepts of permanent public access, permanent records retention, preservation, authentication, metadata tools, and related key information resources management tools and concepts are all about needs nurturing. Moreover, many agency officials did not even know what the FDLP was or what it was supposed to do. This cries out for a series of carefully crafted consciousness raising (education and training) workshops at the policymaking level, at the program (product management) level and at the product firing line level (the people who actually are directly responsible for a given product). It seems to be that the Public Printer at GPO, the FDLC, and the federal CIO Council, perhaps with NCLIS participating, could usefully come together and plan, help implement, and evaluate such a series of workshops. Fourth, OMB/OIRA should review OMB Circular A-130 with a view to strengthening those provisions relating to public information availability policy. While there are some
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provisions in that regulation now in this area, they are either outdated, not enforced, or ignored. OIRA needs to work with the federal CIO Council to put some teeth in the regulation and make sure agency CIOs fully understand what their authorities and responsibilities are. Accessibility is not the key, availability is. Fifth, the NCLIS survey established a baseline in the area of documenting agency IT formats and mediums, and related information policy questions, for the first time. What a waste it would be if that baseline were lost. The findings provide a benchmark against which one can measure future progress and problems. The survey should be periodically repeated (not necessarily annually), perhaps with appropriate format and content changes to strengthen its utility and ensure its timeliness.
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Fig. 2. Federal agencies.
6. Summary The NCLIS study of electronic government information formats and mediums is an extremely timely and valuable inquiry into a fast-moving area that many despaired would never be systematically examined. The federal government should build on that inquiry and mine the findings carefully to separate the precious metal from the rest of the ore. There is no more important challenge to a free democratic society than ensuring that government information is made readily available to the nation's libraries and through those libraries to the public. Some of the policy challenges involved may be unintended. Many are probably underestimated. Perhaps a few are being deliberately ignored. Notes 1. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet, 1964), 318. 2. U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Report on the Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products, prepared under contract by Westat, Rockville, MD, commissioned by the U.S. Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, March 30, 1999. Available via GPO Access at hwww.nclis.gov/news/info/finalb.pdfi. A limited number of hard copies are available from NCLIS. 3. U.S. Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command, U.S. Navy Diving Manual, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1985 (vol. 1), 1987 (vol. 2).