The Honorable William M. Daley
Secretary of Commerce
Department of Commerce
14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20230

Dear Bill,

I noted with great interest the recent press release announcing your intention to close the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), and transfer the vast holdings now maintained by NTIS to the Library of Congress. As you indicate, action to accomplish this proposal requires legislation, which you plan to present to Congress for its consideration next month.

Certainly I applaud your personal interest, as well as President Clinton's and Vice President Gore's impressive list of initiatives undertaken during this Administration, to make more and more Government information cost-effectively available. Ordinary citizens, students, job seekers, businesses, lower levels of government, and other segments of society will all profit by using the new electronic mediums such as the World Wide Web to access this information. The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), which I chair, sees the increasing migration of traditional ink-on-paper and microform public information products to electronic mediums and formats as both inexorable and desirable.

However, I want to bring to your attention several very important and relevant findings which have emerged from a just concluded, nine-month NCLIS study entitled "Assessment of Electronic Government Information Products." This study was commissioned by the Congress, with the active support of the Administration (former OMB/OIRA Administrator Sally Katzen, now back at OMB, was involved in its planning). The study was implemented with the assistance of a contractor, Westat, Inc. of Rockville, Maryland.

Among the study's major findings from a detailed survey of 24 Federal agencies in all three branches covering over 300 specific government information products was that Federal agencies are confused as to just what is meant by "permanent public access," even though they concur in the need for the Government to hold certain documents for extensive periods of time. Moreover, we found there is confusion between "permanent records retention" as that concept is embodied in Federal records legislation, and "permanent public access" and "preservation," as two closely related ideas that are emerging in the library, historian, archival, journalism, educational, public interest, and related fields.

All of these public information retention requirements tie in with the historical mission of the NTIS to collect, organize, preserve, and make available permanently government reports and documents. This mission must not be lost in the organizational changes you are proposing. Additionally, there are other important findings in the aforementioned study that touch upon government information dissemination to the public, and your NTIS plans, in which I believe your Department would be very interested.

In short, because of our Commission's recent endeavors in this field, and in the light of your planned legislative initiative, I wanted to offer our assistance to you and the Congress as your proposal moves forward. You may wish to direct your staff's attention to the aforementioned study final report. The Executive Summary appears at http://www.nclis.gov/news/nclisexecsum.pdf and the full report is at http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/nclisassessment/report.html. I am enclosing a hard copy of the report herewith.

Congratulations, again, for taking these steps, and please let our Commission's Executive Director, Robert S. Willard, or me know if we can be helpful to you.

Sincerely yours,

Jeanne Hurley Simon
Chairperson

Enclosure