F e d e r a l D e p o s i t o r y L i b r a r y P r o g r a m ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program [ PDF version ] [ Back Issues ] --------------------------------------------------------------------- April 15, 2001 GP 3.16/3-2:22/06 (Vol. 22, no. 06) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Public Printer Responds to Draft GAO Report on Transfer to Library of Congress [The GAO report will be distributed to depositories in paper and will also appear on GPO Access.] March 21, 2001 Mr. Joel C. Willemssen Managing Director Information Technology Issues U.S. General Accounting Office Washington, DC 20548 Dear Mr. Willemssen: This letter conveys the comments of the Government Printing Office (GPO) on the draft General Accounting Office (GAO) report Information Dissemination: Electronic Dissemination of Government Publications (GAO-01-428). The report was undertaken pursuant to the conference report on H.R. 4516, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 2001 (H. Rpt. 106-796), which requires GAO to conduct a "comprehensive study on the impact of providing documents to the public solely in electronic format," and to evaluate the feasibility of transferring GPO's Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to the Library of Congress (LC). The day is coming when Federal Government information may be made available to the public solely in electronic format, but that day is not here yet nor is it likely to appear in the foreseeable future. Apart from the fact that large amounts of Federal information are not digitized, significant issues concerning security, permanence, authentication, equity, and cost remain to be resolved before the American people can put their faith in an electronic dissemination system that will serve as one of the foundations of their social contract with the Government. Unfortunately, the draft report's attention to these and related issues is simply too cursory to resolve them. LC is a unique national institution of singular importance to Congress and the public. As a sister legislative branch agency, GPO has a longstanding relationship with LC that we value very highly; LC is a selective depository library, and we work together on many issues of importance in the field of Government information dissemination. With all due respect, however, LC is not an appropriate home for the FDLP. Its mission and operations are inconsistent with a large-scale publications/information dissemination program. Transferring the FDLP there will increase costs, impose additional burdens on LC, and not result in any improvement in the public's ability to access Government information. While GAO's analysts appear to have made an energetic attempt to develop a plan for the transfer, the resulting product contains a number of problems, based primarily on the assumption that the FDLP could be transferred to the LC without negative program impacts. In my view, these problems will minimize its usefulness to Congress. Impact of All-Electronic Dissemination. The draft report is unable to demonstrate how the problems of ensuring authenticity, security, and permanence will be resolved in an all-electronic Government information environment. GPO has made significant efforts to address these problems, such as convening a Government-wide working group on permanent public access, the procurement of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology, and continually upgrading security measures, and these efforts are ongoing. However, the report makes no contribution to addressing these issues beyond restating what GPO itself has pioneered, and does not discuss how LC would address or improve upon GPO's efforts. Moreover, it makes no reference to security issues, which are becoming increasingly important in an era when computer viruses can severely disable information systems worldwide in a matter of hours. Another problem is the minimal examination of the issues surrounding the impact of an all-electronic requirement on the FDLP's statutory mandate for equitable access. GAO's opinion that "electronic documents offer far greater functionality than traditional paper documents" is only true-if at all-when the user has the proper technology at hand and the skills to use it. The draft report itself notes that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently found that 60 percent of American households have no access to the Internet. By contrast, the only barriers to the use of printed documents are basic literacy and physical disability, and the U.S. literacy rate far exceeds the estimates of the number of people with access to and the skills to use digital technology. Moreover, with the changes in paper manufacturing in recent years, permanency of paper is now virtually assured. Although the FDLP serves a large number of libraries and users who are in a very sophisticated technological environment, the program is statutorily grounded in equity of access for all. During the transition to a more electronic FDLP-a transition planned and executed by GPO in partnership with Congress, Federal agencies, the judiciary, and the library and Government information communities-we have been showing due diligence in moving with all deliberate speed in making electronic dissemination the norm to the maximum extent that is appropriate. Nevertheless, the FDLP continues to distribute thousands of titles for which there are no electronic equivalents. Unless Congress is willing to appropriate the substantially increased funds to convert these publications to electronic formats, access to these titles will be lost in an all-electronic environment. The GAO draft report does not discuss how an entirely electronic program for Government information would be feasible in view of the FDLP's statutory mandate, what limitations it would have for the estimated 9.5 million public users of the FDLP annually, or how it would be more achievable by LC. The draft report asserts that "electronic documents cost far less to store, maintain, and disseminate." It overlooks the fact that, because of the ease with which agencies are able to make publications available on the Web, the number of publications eligible for inclusion in the FDLP is increasing significantly. For FY 2001 to date, 16,525 titles have been added to the program, 61 percent in electronic format. The work involved in identifying, securing, archiving, and establishing bibliographic control of electronic publications-as well as the cost of supplying and maintaining the technology infrastructure for high-volume use-is growing significantly. In addition, continuous efforts are required to manage a digital archive to avoid deterioration of storage media and technological obsolescence of hardware and software. FDLP program managers have long recognized that these requirements will generate costs at or above current program levels. An electronic Government information environment is also generating substantial additional costs for users and depository libraries, yet the draft report pays only scant attention to these. Absent from the draft report is an economic analysis of the costs of an all-electronic Government information dissemination program, including an analysis of cost impacts on end users, on depository libraries and their equipment and staffing needs, and on LC for providing such a service. Transferring the FDLP to LC. Although required by H. Rpt. 106-796 to specify "how such a transfer might be accomplished," "when such a transfer might optimally occur," "the costs...of such a transfer," and "measures that are necessary to ensure the success of such a transfer," the draft report's findings are basically equivocal, citing both advantages and disadvantages to the transfer, and provide little specific information on how such a transfer might be accomplished beyond proposing the creation of a GPO/LC/library community task force to guide it. It is difficult to see how this part of the report will be of much assistance to Congress. Funda-mentally, the draft report does not address how public access to Government information would be improved by transferring the FDLP to LC. The draft report includes a statement once made by LC that its mission and the mission of the FDLP are "not inconsistent," yet at the same time the report cites testimony from the library community that the two missions "vary so significantly that the appropriateness of a transfer is questionable." LC, in its 1993 and 1994 evaluations of a possible assumption of GPO's Superintendent of Documents operations, questioned whether taking on those functions "might diffuse the Library's principal focus-service to Congress." One question that arises in this context is whether LC's assumption of the FDLP would change the future treatment of certain publications issued by units of LC, such as CRS issue briefs and related materials, which are not included in the FDLP today. In taking on the FDLP, LC would assume the added burden for ensuring the comprehensiveness of the FDLP collection. This burden would result from breaking the efficient link between production and dissemination that resides in GPO. To maintain the link, the draft report proposes leaving the FDLP physically in place at GPO but under LC management. In the absence of any demonstrated improvement to public access, that proposal seems to be nothing more than a solution in search of a problem. Both LC and GAO cite a similarity between LC's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS/BPH) and the FDLP as evidence of a consistency of missions. In fact, LC's 1994 study said "the depository program is somewhat similar to the NLS/BPH in that both have a mission to distribute materials to libraries" (emphasis added). Indeed, the similarities end there. The two programs are very different in terms of the amount of material distributed and the number of libraries and people served. According to its FY 2001 budget submission, the NLS/BPH distributes books and other materials of all kinds to 761,000 patrons and 138 network libraries. The FDLP by comparison disseminated last year 12.2 million copies of 29,000 Government titles to more than 1,300 libraries-including academic, research, law, public, and other libraries-utilized by an estimated 9.5 million persons (not counting the more than 200,000 titles made available via GPO Access and retrieved by the public at a rate of more than 26 million per month), and supported by the Government's cataloging and indexing authority for Government documents and a variety of other specialized services. In addition, under the FDLP the Government retains ownership of the distributed publications and the FDLP libraries are bound by statute to properly maintain the material and to provide access and service to the public. The fact is that a large-scale publications/information dissemination operation such as the FDLP (like other Superintendent of Documents programs) is not consistent with LC operations. LC itself has suggested this before, and to this day it continues to rely on GPO to manage the distribution component of the International Exchange Program, which LC administers. Observers will recall that LC also cautiously approached the assumption of the Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service operations when that transfer was proposed in 1999, in part presumably for the same reason. The draft report is silent regarding the specific legislative changes that would be necessary to effect the transfer. Transferring the FDLP to LC would remove it from the oversight of the Joint Committee on Printing, could negatively impact the now-close relationship of the library community with FDLP program officials, and would call into question the future role of the Depository Library Council to the Public Printer. GAO contends that the separation of powers issue-which has never been adjudicated in a court of law with respect to the printing provisions of Title 44-is used by executive branch agencies to print without going through GPO, a situation viewed as a major factor in the "fugitive documents" problem. However, the draft does not address how aligning the FDLP with LC-another legislative branch agency-would improve this situation. There is only a brief indication in the report about the cost impact on other GPO operations as a result of the transfer. GPO is required by law to fully allocate overhead and is unique in the legislative branch in the extent to which this is done. Overhead costs are spread to all of GPO's programs and are funded indirectly by those programs. If the FDLP and related programs are transferred to LC, a large part of the $4.7 million for administrative services and $3.5 million for information services would remain with GPO indefinitely. The inability to spread and share these costs over a larger number of activities would have a negative impact on other GPO operations, including congressional printing and the annual appropriation used to fund it, unless there is a reduction to those costs, such as a Reduction-in-Force for other GPO personnel. The draft report is not clear about what level of organizational priorities the transferred FDLP would receive from LC. The report asserts that "a transfer...might also facilitate the depository library program and the Library working together to address the broad issues of acquiring, managing, and disseminating digital information..." However, it should be noted that LC's work in this area is heavily focussed in the area of copyright, intellectual property, and rights management, both because it is the administrator of the Nation's copyright mechanism, and because a preponderance of its collections in all formats are composed of works that are not in the public domain. This presents a huge technological challenge and a substantial commitment of funds and expertise. There is no analysis of the percentage of last year's $100 million special appropriation to LC to develop a National Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program that would be devoted to public access to Government information. Other questions remain unanswered. Assuming it is physically moved, where would the FDLP be placed organizationally within LC? Would it be kept together as a discrete unit, or would its functions be distributed among existing LC organizations? Would GPO's Cataloging and Indexing Program be organized within LC's cataloging effort or would it remain with the FDLP? In its 1994 study, LC observed that "the issue of fulfilling the depository libraries' needs while ensuring that overarching [LC] cataloging objectives are also met is one that must be resolved." What would happen to the rapid bibliographic support that GPO's Cataloging and Indexing program provides for depository librarians if it is transferred to LC? If the FDLP were to be divided among existing LC organizations, how would that impact its operations? What would be the effect of these changes on Government information users? The draft report indicates that there would be impacts on the transferred employees, but these impacts are not fully spelled out. The ability of the transferred employees to retain wage bargaining rights-currently provided by 44 U.S.C. 305-would be subject to legislation. Retaining such rights, however, would affect their relationship with other LC employees, who do not bargain for wages. Other impacts are not discussed. Would the transferred employees retain their present position classifications and grades? Would they be entitled to the same employee protections they currently have at GPO? Assuming the FDLP function is physically transferred, where would the transferred employees be housed-in the District or elsewhere? Is there space in the current LC buildings? Would there be an area match with current space allocated to the FDLP by GPO? GPO Access. Many of the electronic databases on GPO Access, such as the Congressional Record, the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, and others, are derived from the printing processes managed by GPO's Production Department. While the draft report briefly notes the role of the Production Department in managing the day-to-day operations of GPO Access, there is no discussion of how GPO Access might be separated from GPO's production operation and its mission to support Congress. In fact, such a transfer could lead to a duplication of effort and expenditures between GPO and LC if LC assumes the preparation of the electronic databases that it distributes. Authenticity and security could also be compromised by removing the locus for dissemination of the databases from GPO to another location. Additionally, the draft report misrepresents the function and role of the FDLP Electronic Collection (FDLP/EC) with respect to GPO Access. Occasionally the draft report refers to the FDLP/EC as a part of GPO Access, and in other places it is referred to as a Superintendent of Documents program. Neither characterization is correct, as the FDLP/EC extends beyond the boundaries of GPO Access into partner institutions and agencies and exists as an operation within the FDLP. The report does not deal with other aspects of GPO Access, including GPO's Online Bookstore, the Federal Web sites hosted on GPO Access (including the Supreme Court's site), the Federal Bulletin Board, the FDLP Desktop program administrative information, and the popular Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government for Kids. The report is silent about whether these other components of GPO Access would be transferred to LC. Factual Inaccuracies and Misinterpretations. The report draft contains a number of factual inaccuracies (e.g., implying that the GPO bookstores are part of the FDLP, identifying the FDLP/EC as a discrete program, inaccurate descriptions of the responsibilities of various GPO offices and personnel, misinterpretation of statistical information, incorrect statements about the role of regional depositories, etc.). We also question the purpose of the many appendices concerning the Documents Sales Program, when that program is not subject to transfer in the charge to GAO by H. Rpt. 106-796. My staff is available to work with GAO's analysts to correct these errors before the report is finalized. Lack of Balance in Presentation. I strongly feel there is a lack of balance in the presentation of information from prior GAO audits. The GAO audit which claimed that GPO has a "monopoly-like" structure with respect to the acquisition of printing was conducted more than a decade ago, in 1989, and the recommendations it contained were officially closed out in a letter to us from GAO dated October 1993. The premise of that audit was faulty to begin with, since GPO utilizes thousands of private sector contractors on a highly competitive basis to acquire up to 75 percent of its production requirements. Indeed, Congress rejected a proposal, later contained in Vice President Al Gore's Reinventing Government project and based on that GAO audit, to remove the statutory requirement that all Federal agencies utilize GPO for their printing needs. Shortly afterward, Congress reaffirmed the existing Title 44 requirement for agencies to use GPO by incorporating "duplicating" into the statutory definition of printing found in the note to 44 U.S.C. 501. Most importantly, however, GPO's operations have changed a great deal since that 1989 study was conducted. Indeed, a management audit of GPO commissioned by Congress and conducted in 1998 by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc.-working under contract with GAO at the direction of the House Appropriations Committee-reached a number of very different conclusions. Booz-Allen found strong support in Congress for GPO's in-house production operations for congressional printing, stating that GPO's production area "effectively satisfies its priority congressional customers and meets the variable demands and outputs requested by Congress." Booz-Allen auditors found "universal support" among the agencies for our printing procurement program. The report says "these agencies viewed this service that GPO provides as an example of 'government at its best,' and none of them felt that they wanted or could do this function better than GPO." Finally, Booz-Allen noted strong support for GPO's dissemination programs, especially the FDLP, and offered highly favorable comments on GPO's electronic information dissemination efforts that were not present a decade ago. These more recent findings about GPO should be used in any review of GPO's statutory structure, not a study that was conducted more than a decade ago, before the advent of significant downsizing (GPO's workforce has been reduced by more than 30 percent in the past decade) and the introduction of electronic information technologies that have made all GPO operations considerably more efficient and cost-effective. The final word on GPO should come from the court of public opinion. In 1998, 1999, and 2000, GPO was named the top in-plant operation in the country by In-Plant Graphics magazine, a widely respected trade journal in the printing industry. Also in 1999, GPO was named by PC Week magazine as one of the top technology innovators in the Nation. In 1999, GPO Access was selected as one of the top 50 legal research Web sites for the year by Law Office Computing magazine, and was named best research site for laws and best Government site overall by the newsletter legal.online. It was chosen as the first recipient of the American Association of Law Libraries Public Access to Government Information Award. In 1998, GPO Access was named one of the 15 "Best Feds on the Web" by Government Executive magazine. Other awards have included a 1994 Technology Leadership Award and the prestigious 1995 James Madison Award from the Coalition on Government Information. Conclusion. Overall, the draft report does not provide the "comprehensive study on the impact of providing documents to the public solely in electronic format" ordered by H. Rpt. 106-796. Instead, major issues such as authenticity, permanent public access, security, equity of access, and cost considerations are only briefly noted as items that "should be addressed." The transfer of the FDLP and selected other Superintendent of Documents programs to LC may be "feasible," but is it desirable? Would it benefit public users of Government information? The report suggests that there may be significant disadvantages to such a transfer. Similarly, there is no discussion of how or if LC might improve dissemination to the libraries and the public over the services provided by GPO. Finally, there are errors of fact and bias in the presentation that we feel should be remedied. We are available to work with GAO personnel on these matters. To do so, please contact Mr. Francis J. Buckley, Jr., Superintendent of Documents, on 512-0571. Sincerely, MICHAEL F. DiMARIO Public Printer cc: The Honorable Mitch McConnell The Honorable Bob Ney The Honorable Christopher Dodd The Honorable Steny H. Hoyer