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Federal Information: Who Should Get It, Who Shouldn't?
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17399 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1990 |
2,603 Words |
| Author
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Diane Sherwood
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American history can be viewed at the story of a people coming to grips with the value of their resources. The proper use of minerals from public lands, trees from public forests, and water from the country's streams, rivers, and ocean shores - all these questions were raised in federal debate from this country's beginnings. Early legislation also had to deal with the question of how to parcel out land in the new territories in the most efficacious and equitable way. Today, far more valuable than the railroads crisscrossing the country is the information stored - sometimes more carelessly than a Rembrandt left in the rain - within the great mainframe computers interacting like a giant nervous system throughout the federal government.
What is federal information worth? Who owns it? Who pays for it? Who wants it? By what means should it be disseminated? Questions like these may not come trippingly to the tongues of the general public, but the vendors of government-supplied information, librarians, educators, consumer activists and specialists, as well as federal information resource management (IRM) people, these fundamental public policy issues on the topic of federal dissemination of information are complex are of vital national importance.
The reason for this interest lies precisely in the value of the information. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) alone, without taking into account other federal information treasuries, is the largest data collection center in the world. "Federal information must be worth billions and billions of dollars," estimates Lee Edwards, vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on Libraries and Public Information.
Legislators are gradually becoming more aware of the value of federal information and the complex technical questions surrounding its dissemination. Congress is also waking up to the social and economic issues embedded within the use of new information technology. Gradually, it sees the necessity of giving public policy direction to agencies faced with the problems of determining which information to collect, how and in what form to collect it, what to disseminate, and in what form. And Congress must also wade into the question of who should pay for government-supplied information and at what cost.
This 101st Congress has seen the introduction to more than 100 bills on information questions, raised by the introduction of new technologies: telecommunications, optical storage, and more and more powerful computers, both mainframes and personal computers (PCs). Twenty-six of these bills deal specifically with questions of dissemination of federal information. On the broadest level, bills have been introduced articulating for the first time a public policy statement on electronic dissemination of information. At the other extreme, there is, for example, a bill that would enable producers of fresh mushrooms to carry out a nationally coordinated program for fresh mushroom promotion, research, and consumer information.
The government has always been in the information business, but until as recently as the 1950s little choice existed in the way the information was distributed. Invariably, it was a paper product of some sort-a book, pamphlet, or set of tables. The government gave away or charged a small fee for its printed paper products, and customers - private citizens or vendors - were free to take that material and reproduce it any way they wished and to
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