1. Thank you
2. Self – Former VP/Govt. Relations, IIA; Govt. Affairs, SIIA
3. Member – Advisory Panel 4 (Public – Private Sector Partnerships
4. Long Interest in government information policies
5. Remarks today are my own – represent no client or interest in the matter before the Commission

II. GENERAL COMMENTS

1. Issues involving policies that govern access to and availability of government information must be addressed.
2. Draft report of Commission comprehensive and addresses many of the questions and problems that plague agencies and the public in establishing and maintaining policies that increase access to government information.
3. My comments today, however, will focus on the draft Public Information Resources Act of 2001, which indeed reflects many of the recommendations discussed among the various advisory panels.

III. PIRA – Positive Steps

1. PIRA is an ambitious and wide-ranging statute – as it must be to both identify and address the many problems with current federal government information policies, especially as they relate to delivery and storage of electronic information;
2. PIRA takes many important and necessary steps in order to achieve a consistent set of policies and priorities across all branches of government and agencies within those branches;
1. Establishing through statute proactive efforts to disseminate in a timely and equitable manner and to make permanently accessible public information sources;
2. Reviewing current resources and programs to reduce overlaps;
3. Updating and modernizing networks and services to assure their ability to handle the dissemination and accessibility of government information;
4. Creating centralized authority, the Public Information Resources Administration, within the Executive Branch to develop, promulgate and enforce regulations, rules, standards and guidelines necessary to implement its government-wide public information resources management. An important aspect of PIRA’s role is coordination with the newly created Congressional and Judicial Information Resources Offices, and PIRA’s work with advisory councils, including advisors from government information user groups;
5. Extending important provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Reauthorization Act of 1995 to the legislative and judicial branches; and
6. Establishing training and research programs to assist the public in identifying, accessing and using government information.

IV. PIRA – Areas of Concern/Clarification

1. Funding for New Activities Created Under the Act
   Although the Act anticipates that appropriations will be granted for establishing certain functions, it also foresees that a revolving fund to implement and maintain many of the important changes will come from sales of public information resources. It is questionable, especially as the government moves increasingly toward providing electronic information, whether such sales and revenues will continue to exist. It is also dangerous to establish a revolving fund not subject to annual appropriations review by Congress – a problem that has plagued adherence to current statutory mandates for dissemination and access functions of fee-funded agencies such as NTIS, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office.
2. Diversity of Sources for Government Information
   The Act, and the draft Commission Report on which the Act is based, make repeated reference to the responsibility of the government to assure a continued diversity of sources for government information. The ambitious and wide-ranging functions of the new Administrator will encourage agencies to create more sophisticated and comprehensive public information products and services that will inevitably compete with similar functions undertaken by other, non-government disseminators, thereby skewing the market even more toward no-fee public access and endangering the ability of non-government providers to gain necessary sales to continue financing their offering to the American public of alternative sources for public information. In particular, under Section 18(g) of the proposed Act, greater clarification should be made about the government’s “provid[ing] public information products or services in commerce,” particularly in terms of current and future public behavior and expectations in the e-commerce marketplace.

V. Conclusion

Thank you for the opportunity to present views. The work of the Commission and its staff under a truncated deadline is most impressive and the issues identified, as well as the solutions proposed, are precisely the ones that Congress must address, if our Nation is to continue in its long tradition of open access to and use of government information.

Answer questions.