GAO *did* sell exclusive access to legislative history to Thomson West
Submitted by jrjacobs on Tue, 2008-04-15 21:48.
A few weeks ago, Daniel had a great post, "GAO/Thomson-West Contract Raises Questions" in which he expanded on a Boing Boing post "Did the US gov't sell exclusive access to its legislative history to Thomson West?" and analyzed the Thompson-West contract with the GAO for digitizing 20,597 legislative histories of most public laws from 1915-1995. Today, Carl Malamud got an answer to his FOIA request to the GAO seeking access to the digitized images of those legislative histories. I'll let Carl tell it in his own words:
Well, the answer is now a definitive yes, that data has been sold down the river and is out to sea.
Public.Resource.Org sent in a FOIA request to GAO on this topic seeking access to the scanned data. Today's letter answering our FOIA request spells out the bad news. Turns out the GAO doesn't even get the data, they simply are given an account on Thomson's service. The rest of the government doesn't get access to this data, and the public is invited to stop by the GAO headquarters and pay 20 cents per page to copy paper.This is one of those deals where the public domain got sold off ... GAO gets a bit of convenience by having their stuff scanned for them, but they gave up way more than they got in the deal, and the public (including government workers and public interest groups who need to consult this data) lost big-time.
Carl has put up his paper trail explaining the story. Here's the link to the Scribd group with the full paper trail on this issue, and here's the link to last week's response from the GAO.
This perfectly exemplifies the problems we see with government agencies entering into contracts with private companies to digitize public domain materials (see for example "NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent"). We have no problem with government agencies contracting with private companies to digitize government information. The problem as we see it is that so many agencies seem ignorant of the fact that privatizing access to said digitized public domain information actually limits access in the long run.
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GAO legislative histories
While I was still a staff member with the Joint Committee on Printing I tried to get GAO and GPO to provide these legislative histories to depository libraries. It did not happen. This is not the first time that a commercial firm has convinced a government agency to sell our birthright, public access to information generated by tax dollars. The library community needs to stop supporting these kind of projects without a guarantee that the information will remain in the public domain and will be available for the free use of the agency that generated the information. Do we know if GAO paid the firm to do the work or did they just do what many gov agencies and libraries do turn over public property to a for profit firm with no safeguards for their own agency, the govenrment or the public.
This is one good reason why we should be supporting GPO digitizing as many gov docs as possible, no matter what their age.
digitize and release
Hi Bernadine. We're very concerned about the privatization of govt information as well. No doubt that libraries should be supporting GPO in their digitization efforts, but who's to say that GPO wouldn't enter into a GAO-type contract for all the same reasons? We saw with the NARA discussion that ongoing infrastructure issues are a big concern for cash-strapped agencies including GPO.
Therefore, in my mind, support for GPO's digitization efforts isn't enough. Unless of course you mean that "support" would include not just moral support but technical expertise, space etc for hosting of digitized content in an open, non-commercial space where the content remains in the public domain. Libraries and other cultural institutions like the internet archive -- especially those currently building e-repositories -- should be working with GPO and other agencies on that very issue. With the help of libraries, federal agencies could digitize and release that content into one or more public domain repositories. Without that infrastructure, cash-strapped agencies will continue to enter into contracts where long-term public access is not assured.
Digitize and release
Hi, The GAO Legislative histories are just one example of an agency pulling together information they need to do their job. GAO and other agencies will continue to compile legislative histories since it is something they do every day to respond to the implementation and interpretation of legislation. While at JCP, I pulled together the legislative history of the depository library program. Along the way I had the help of the LC CRS, other staffers and Margaret Lane who had been compiling dep library legislation for years. Without having done all that work, I would not have been able to do my job and later include that legislative history in my book.
Agencies are spending millions of dollars of staff time pulling together all kinds of information to do their jobs. What they have not factored in is the cost of preserving that info, providing it to their successors and the public. We had hoped that GPO Access and the expanding role of GPO would provide support to agencies in their efforts to translate their daily work into permanent information.
Of course GPO and the publishing, preservation arms of agencies need more financial support and more importantly understanding that preserving their work is for the public good.
--Bernadine Abbott Hoduski
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