The possibility that the White House policy may hobble the GPO's role in coordinating the archiving of government documents is what has librarians and e-government advocates most alarmed. When the GPO prints an agency publication, it also forwards electronic or hard copies of the document to the National Archives and to as many as 1,300 depository libraries nationwide.
Library groups said that this centralized dissemination process may falter -- along with the reliable availability of government information online -- when agencies get the freedom to take their printing jobs to a field of private vendors.
"This proposal is going to blow a huge hole in the distribution of government information, and limit the amount of information that's available to the public online," said Patrice McDermott, assistant director for government relations at the American Library Association.
Amy Call, spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), dismissed those concerns, saying agencies will be required to forward copies of all government documents to the GPO, regardless of who prints them.
"All we're saying is agencies should have the right to contract with whoever can get the best deal for the taxpayer," Call said in explaining the White House policy. "If the GPO can do it the cheapest, agencies will continue to use it."
The GPO is not necessarily the cheapest game in town. It charges agencies a 7 percent premium in addition to processing fees, and routinely retains discounts for prompt payment, practices that by the OMB's count cost taxpayers an extra $50 million to $70 million a year.
The GPO, however, said that taxpayers would pay an extra $100 million to $200 million every year if agencies have to start soliciting their own printers and electronic archivists. In addition, the GPO said that almost half of all government publications never even make it to the libraries or archives. The documents that the GPO never sees usually are publications agencies have printed in-house, which the office said demonstrates why it needs to retain its century-long hold on the printing process.
Other critics said the White House plan lacks guidance on which electronic formats agencies should use when forwarding documents to the GPO, a deficiency library groups say could force the printing office to wrestle with incompatible technologies.
The OMB and the printing office have convened informal discussions to resolve the dispute, but in the meantime the White House already has solicited private bids to publish its fiscal 2004 budget.
Another criticism levied by library and public access groups is the fear that cutting the GPO out of the picture is a dangerous precedent for replacing other government-sponsored indexes with commercial alternatives that may be less willing to distribute the information to libraries for free.
Something like this has already happened. The Energy Department last month alarmed researchers when it shuttered a popular Internet site that catalogued government and academic science research. The Washington Post reported that the free Web site was discontinued in response to corporate complaints that it competed with similar commercial services.
"This is about permanent public access to government information," said Karrie Peterson, government information librarian at the University of California, San Diego. "But these (commercial) services aren't about providing this information for good; they're more interested in staying in business until there are no more free services out there."
Industry advocates like the Software and Information Industry Association, a trade group that represents publishers and information aggregators, said the White House outsourcing effort won't undermine e-government.
"We've been very supportive of effective e-government," said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president of public policy at SIIA, whose clients include Thomson Corp., and Reed Elsevier, which runs Lexis-Nexis. "We simply want to make sure that as the positive aspects of e-government are promoted that it not lead to competition by the government for services that can or should be provided by the private sector."
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), one of the principal authors of the newly signed E-Government Act of 2002, said the law contains sufficient safeguards to preserve the sharing of government information -- no matter how the government decides manage its printing jobs.
The new e-government law calls for standards to help federal agencies put more public policy records online, and seeks to centralize information and services now scattered across various government agencies, making them searchable by subject.
It also requires chief information officers from the three branches of the federal government to devise standards that agencies will use to determine which online and electronic documents are worthy of preservation.
But library groups said the administration's policy threatens to undercut federal agencies' ability to take stock of the information they produce in electronic form or post on their Web sites.
Mary Alice Baish, spokeswoman for the American Association of Law Libraries, said the White House plan contradicts the E-Government Act's goals, including the requirement that agencies provide access to any Internet-based government information or service through a single online "portal," such as Firstgov.gov.
"On the one hand we have a bill whose purpose is to take advantage of the Internet and the newest technologies to make government information more accessible to the public. On the other you have OMB proposing to take away a chance for some real centralization and coordination of government information that is crucial to the ability of the public to hold government accountable," Baish said.
The SIIA's Bohannon said that the White House is only trying to keep a government monopoly from acting as a gatekeeper of public information.
"This is about respecting need for a diversity of private sector sources of information, otherwise we're going to have the government controlling what gets out to public," he said.
Baish disagreed, saying that the private sector would control access to important information and research, much of it created with public money.
"We really have some very troubling times ahead in terms of assuring that government information paid for by our tax dollars is something that we will continue to have access to at no cost," Baish said.
In one branch of the government, the e-government law will make no difference whatsoever. Congress has exempted itself from the law, dodging a chance to provide the ultimate accountability tool, such as a searchable index of individual member voting records, said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Quelle: Washington Post
