Dear Mr. Horton,

Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to include my comments in your report. I commend NCLIS for undertaking this ambitious task and appreciate the hard work you are doing for the betterment of information dissemination.

NewsBank has been providing world information for over 30 years to libraries throughout the world. NewsBank is a small, privately held company with offices in Chester, Vermont; Naples, Florida; and New Canaan, Connecticut. As a business owner in the private sector, I never expected that one day a major competitor would be an agency of the U.S. Government. However, such is the case with NTIS and their World News Connection (WNC) product directly competing with NewsBank's Global NewsBank product and in exactly the same markets.

While I feel it is important that your report address the elimination of duplicate efforts by consolidating departments with like responsibilities under one organization, I feel it is equally, if not more, important that your report and legislation also focus heavily on the government’s competition with the private sector. While several points in Section 18 of your November 30, 2000 draft address this issue, I feel it very important to make my position clear on this issue to help drive forward movement on eliminating government competition.

Government agencies should provide only government information to the public. Non-government information should be left to the private sector to provide. This is not the case with NTIS.

NTIS sells World News Connection (WNC), a database which includes NO government information. Furthermore, they compete with NewsBank by selling into the same markets that my company does. NewsBank has maintained since the inception of WNC that NTIS should not be disseminating this information for the following reasons:

1. WNC does not contain government information.
2. It is outside the NTIS mandate to only disseminate Current News Information. The NTIS mandate is for scientific and technical information,
3. NTIS is competing directly with NewsBank, a private business, which sells Global NewsBank, a product with very similar to the content in WNC. In fact, WNC is so much the same as the Global NewsBank product that 75% of the current news sources NTIS list in the product are also included in NewsBank's product.
4. NTIS as a government agency, does not have all the expenses as a private business (e.g. Taxes)so they are able to price WNC at a competitive advantage.

This situation is not a new issue. WNC began in 1996 and immediately impacted on NewsBank's sales and ability to maintain and grow our business and our employment.

In the Department of Commerce Inspector General's Semiannual Report to Congress of September 1998 this same concern was raised. This report states "...NTIS is seeking business opportunities on the perimeter of its statutory mission, where it risks competing against privately financed businesses."

Other government agencies are also aggressively moving into information dissemination that competes with private sector companies, and it must be stopped before it goes any further. There needs to be better coordination and cooperation between the public sector and private sector for information dissemination.

These points have also been supported in the June, 2000 GAO report “NTIS’ Financial Position Provides an Opportunity to Reassess Its Mission” that stated, “WNC’s service may have a detrimental impact on private sector firms that offer similar electronic news services because NTIS does not pay to obtain or translate the foreign news, or pay taxes as private firms do.”

Further recognition of this serious issue was raised in the June 2000 report “The Role of Government In a Digital Age”, released by the CCIA where they expressed their concern about the government entering into competition with the private sector.

There is an increasing initiative on the part of various government agencies to create products that compete directly with the private sector. I urge NCLIS to include strong language in this report about this issue and work toward an equitable resolution.

NewsBank employees and business are being damaged by continued competition from NTIS publishing World News Connection which contains no government information and competes in the same markets as our Global NewsBank.

Sincerely,

Daniel S. Jones
President
NewsBank, inc.