roundtable: Gingrich's Public Access Initiative (fwd)

roundtable: Gingrich's Public Access Initiative (fwd)

Gingrich's Public Access Initiative (fwd)

James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Thu, 5 Jan 1995 21:10:26 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 21:10:26 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
Subject: Gingrich's Public Access Initiative (fwd)
To: government documents <govdoc-l%psuvm.BITNET@scs.slac.stanford.edu>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.85.9501052125.A16794-0100000@essential>


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TAXPAYER ASSETS PROJECT - INFORMATION POLICY NOTE
CROWN JEWELS CAMPAIGN - Congressional Information
January 4, 1995

      Update on Access to Congressional Information
      James Love (jamie@tap.org)
      January 3, 1995

In an earlier tap-info post, Gary Ruskin and myself circulated a
letter regarding the House republicans' plans for a new system
of providing citizen access to Congressional Information.  The
letter, which supported access far beyond the information
currently disseminated through the GPO Access program, was sent
to Representatives Newt Gingrich (georgia6@hr.house.gov) and
Vern Ehlers (congehlr@hr.house.gov) on December 21, with more
than 800 signatures.  This note is an update on this issue. 
Highlights:

-    House Leadership announces plans to use the Library of
     Congress (LOC) to provide a centralized gateway to a "vast
     array of information."  Plan raises questions about the
     future of the GPO Access program.

-    Initial product line for new Library of Congress gateway
     will be limited, consisting of many items that are
     currently available from GPO, the Library of Congress or
     the House of Representatives.  House republicans indicate
     that the product line will expand in the future.  Access to
     documents will be free.

-    Future of Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) in doubt.  All
     majority and professional staff are fired before Christmas. 
     Action is further indication that House republicans will
     support a reduced role for the Government Printing Office
     (GPO) in disseminating federal information, and suggests
     that GPO may be stripped of its role as central
     disseminater of many executive branch documents.

On December 20, 1994, Representative Jim Nussle (R-IA) of the
Republican Transition Team and Representative Bill Thomas (R-
CA), the "Chair-elect" of the Joint Committee on Printing, 
wrote letters to Public Printer Michael DiMario, who runs the
GPO, and Terry Nugent, the Director of the House Information
Systems (HIS), announcing that as part of the "GOP Open House"
reforms, "we envision the Library of Congress as the gateway to
make a vast array of information available to the country."  The
letters ask the two agencies to provide the Library of Congress
with the following documents:

     from GPO
       *  Bills and Resolutions for the 104th Congress
       *  Congressional Record
     from HIS
       *  the House Daily Calendar
       *  Daily Committee Meetings
       *  Summary of Floor Proceedings
       *  Bills Considered Today
       *  Summary of Floor Debate
       *  Vote summaries

The initial product line for the new LOC system fell short of
what Gingrich had promised, and several items are already
available to the public for free, although access is often
congested.  For example, the Bills and the Congressional Record
are already available for free from the GPO Access program,
through free dissemination programs run by a handful of federal
depository libraries, but not from GPO directly.  Other items on
the list, such as vote "summaries," which will show totals for
and against measures, fall short of the full voting records
which identify particular member votes (although House role call
reports are reported in the Congressional Record). 
Conspicuously missing from the list are such items as verbatim
hearing transcripts, House Reports and communications, Federal
Elections Commission (FEC) campaign contribution reports,
Congressional Research Service (CRS) issue briefs, financial
disclosure or lobbying reports, member fax and email addresses,
or other items of broad interest.  The modest initial product
line is understandable given the brief time, however, and some
House republicans leaders have indicated that the system will
grow over time.

As a cautionary note, it should be mentioned that Gingrich's
announcement about new dissemination programs have met stiff
resistance among some commercial data vendors and republicans
who have sought privatization of the dissemination of government
information.  For example, a November 22 report in the BNA
Washington Insider quoted one opponent of Gingrich's
announcement as saying "Excuse me, Mr. Private Sector Advocate,
but why should the government do this?"  There have been a
number of reports that the private vendors are lobbying the
republicans to tone down the dissemination project, or at least
limit it to Congressional information only.

The House republican's announcement that it would use the
Library of Congress rather than the Government Printing Office
(GPO) as a "gateway" for online access to government information
raises important questions about the future of the GPO, which
has been charged with providing the same service.  The GPO
Access program, which became operational in July 1994, was
earlier criticized by TAP and others for charging fees that
prevented most citizens from having access to the service (such
as $375 for access to the Congressional Record).  The GPO
decision to charge user fees was largely driven by House
republican opposition to government funding for the program. 
These republicans insisted that the program not cost the
taxpayers anything.  TAP asked GPO to provide a "free-after-six"
program (free access for off-peak use, from 6pm to 8am) to
expand access.

GPO responded to the criticism of its prices with a program of
free 24 hour per day access to the entire GPO Access program,
provided indirectly by selected federal depository libraries. 
The free dissemination project appears to be working well,
although the small number of free nodes has resulted in
congestion at peak hours.  Moreover, because the public cannot
obtain free access directly from GPO, there appears to be
considerable confusion about the program, and many news reports
about government sponsored online services fail to mention GPO
Access.  [Such as Mike Christensen's (Cox News Service) recent
"Federal agencies hook on Internet" report.]

GPO is a agency which is confronted with criticism from a number
of fronts.  Commercial data vendors have tried for decades to
prevent GPO from making a transition from a print to an
electronic publisher.  The Information Industry Association
(IIA), a vendor trade association, first opposed GPO's use of
microfiche, and later opposed the agency's entry into electronic
publishing.  These data vendors have been particularly opposed
to GPO because it is the only federal agency with a mandate to
provide centralized access to documents from all three branches
of government, and many commercial CD-ROM and online products
exist in part because GPO has been slow to make the transition
to electronic publishing.

Vice-President Gore and the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) have also been foes of GPO, attaching the current legal
provisions that require federal agencies to use GPO to "print"
documents.  Vice-President Gore has attacked GPO as a monopoly
printer, a charge which is largely rhetorical since about 80
percent of GPO printing is done by the private sector through an
extremely competitive bidding system (which private printers do
not like, because it is too competitive).  Vice-President Gore
also wants to encourage agencies to use new Xerox printing on
demand machines, which can produce a book in press runs as small
as 1.  Many executive branch agencies resent having to work with
GPO on printing contracts, or want to "sell" information at
prices in excess of that allowed under GPO pricing rules.

Many key House republicans have long been sympathetic to the
vendor's interests, and have also been critical of GPO for its
use of a highly unionized work force for the 20 percent of the
printing which is done in-house.  (GPO has been accused of being
"infected" with unions).

GPO's only friends have been the library community, which is
concerned that a highly decentralized system of printing or
dissemination will lead to a plethora of problems, such as
failures to participate in the federal depository library
program (1,400 libraries which receive GPO publications for
free), failures to include publications in centralized catalogs
or indexes, pricing information products and services far above
cost, failures to archive data, and the privatization of
important public records.

In general, professional librarians have expressed concerns over
the federal government's failure to think systematically about
"collections" of data, pointers, indexes, and locators, archives
and other services, which cost money, and are key to the
professional management of public records.  [The American
Library Association (202/547-4440 for the Washington Office) and
other library groups monitor these issues.]

By choosing the Library of Congress (LOC) as the "gateway" to a
vast array of government information, the house republican
transition team has chosen an agency which has an excellent
reputation for records management, and is not encumbered by
disputes over its printing operations.  By announcing that
public access would be free and comprehensive, the House
republican leadership appears to have reversed decades of
support for privatization of information dissemination, and
taken a highly populist and popular position.  Among those
members who support the new populist initiative are
Representative Vern Ehlers (R-Mich, congehlr@hr.house.gov), a
physicist who reportedly pushed the Michigan legislature to put
its information online, and Representative Dick Zimmer (R-NJ,
dzimmer@hr.house.gov), who supported public access to the House
of Representatives LEGIS system in the last congress.  According
to documents released by the Republican transition team, the key
House staffer for the new dissemination initiative is Rich
Pournelle (202/225-8281), from the Committee on House Oversight. 
[One person who also likely deserves credit for the new
initiative is Jim Warren, the California based venture
capitalist, computer columnist, and online citizen activist who
has successfully undertaken and promoted high profile grass
roots campaigns for free internet access to state legislative
information.]

However, the House republicans are still largely talking in
terms of Congressional information, and there have been no
public statements regarding systems for obtaining public access
to information from the Executive and Judicial branches of
government.  Indeed, there are early unofficial reports that the
Gingrich initiative will purposely exclude federal court
decisions, which will help West Publishing continue its
monopolistic control over the official text and citations for
most federal case law.  Citizens are encouraged to contact
Gingrich (georgia6@hr.house.gov) or Rich Pournelle (202/225-
8281, rpournelle@bix.com) to remedy this important omission.

TAP intends to press for the new republican Congress to address
the issue of broader access to information all three branches of
government.  Specifically, TAP will encourage the Congress to
develop separate dissemination plans for the Executive 

james love (202/387-8030; jamie@tap.org)
TAP

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