Background
This plan is provided in response to the House Appropriations Committee's directive (from the fiscal year (FY) 1999 markup report) to detail Technical Information Management (TIM) program and funding requirements through FY 2002. Specifically, the report stated, "The Department is directed to reduce the redundancy currently found between its database and the National Technical Information Service database maintained by the Department of Commerce. The Committee supports the continued downsizing of this program and directs that the Department provide a program plan detailing the program and funding requirements anticipated through fiscal year 2002."
The Department appreciates the opportunity to outline its plan for this program and to express its support for the streamlined, cost-effective methods being used by the program to disseminate R&D information more broadly than ever – at a lower cost per person served. The Departmental response is provided in two parts: first, the issue of database "redundancy" is addressed, and, second, the program and funding requirements through FY 2002 are described.
Issue 1: Database "Redundancy"
One of the program's responsibilities is to collect technical information resulting from the Department's multi-billion dollar R&D investment. The producers of this information include National Laboratories and approximately 7,000 other research entities. This information, which is created in a variety of formats and media, requires analysis and organization to assemble and link it into a searchable and electronically-accessible collection, or database. Thanks to information technology advances, these value-added functions cost less and require less labor than they once did, and the program's multi-year funding and staffing trends reflect this reduction. However, the basic functions must remain for the information to be retrievable.
The Department's enabling legislation and later statutes require that its technical information be publicly available and maintained in a central collection, which allows the Department to effectively ensure that it receives the R&D results from its many contracts and grants and to provide an accessible base of knowledge to fulfill its science mission. Also by law (American Technology Pre-eminence Act and enabling legislation for the National Technical Information Service (NTIS)), the Department provides its collection of technical information to NTIS, as all other federal agencies that produce technical information (NASA, DOD, National Library of Medicine, etc.) are also required. NTIS then markets and sells this information to the U.S. public and industry. Analogous to the distribution of goods in the private sector, science agencies, like the Department, are the distributors of information, and NTIS is a retailer of this information. If NTIS did not receive the Department's information (organized, searchable, and retrievable) from TIM, it would not otherwise have this information in its database.
The "redundancy" is being reduced by the Department through Internet technology that enables information to be delivered directly to the public for free. Instead of TIM sending the Department's information directly to NTIS on magnetic tapes and in paper, NTIS can use TIM's recently-developed Internet product (Information Bridge at http://www.osti.gov/bridge) to acquire a large part of the collection, and by late FY 1999 all of it. With minimal incremental cost, the Information Bridge provides free public access to a growing collection of 27,000 full-text reports, 1.5 million pages of searchable and downloadable text. NTIS, like any other entity, can acquire the collection through the Internet, thereby fulfilling its statutory responsibility to collect and market government technical information.
In addition to following this plan of action for its cost-effectiveness and public service advantages, the program's role in assembling or linking together a comprehensive collection of the Department's R&D information also yields two other significant advantages. First, the information is used to fulfill U.S. obligations to two international information exchange agreements, from which domestic research communities gain access to 80,000 foreign research summaries per year – a collection of information that would not otherwise be available from any other source. Second, by having an organized, searchable collection of technical information, the Department is more accountable for its R&D investment and the results that investment yields.
Issue Two: Program and Funding Requirements through FY 2002
The Internet and associated information technology have enabled the Department to reach thousands more people with full-text, electronic information, lowering the cost per person served. Since 1995, TIM has worked with information suppliers to implement electronic exchange of information, thereby realizing the benefits of labor-saving technology. As the graphs below indicate, funding and staffing reductions since 1993 have been significant, with the sharpest declines occurring from 1996 to 1998 – a 40 percent reduction.
These reductions have been achieved through layoffs and attrition. The Committee's report indicated support for continued downsizing. The Department's recommendation is that additional, minor staffing reductions are possible through FY 2002, and funding should remain flat with the possible exception of a one-time technology investment in FY 2000 (pending final decisions by the Department and OMB). The program has been able to retain new hires (from 1995) and to re-train other employees in a successful effort to transition its skills mix from a paper-based to an electronic information environment. Through attrition and continuous skills upgrades, TIM will remain viable with a workforce of 85 federal employees by FY 2002, using the following year-by-year projections:
| FY 1998 | FY 1999 | FY 2000 | FY 2001 | FY 2002 | |
| FTEs | 99 | 97 | 93 | 90 | 85 |
A long-term staffing level of 85 includes information, computer, and physical scientists to coordinate policy and technical information standards across the Department; to collect, preserve and disseminate information resulting from the Department's R&D; to fulfill international and interagency obligations; and to administer the program. In addition to maintaining and expanding the Information Bridge, the Department is attempting to bring a true electronic, virtual library capability to the U.S. public and research communities. In FY 2000, this will involve building electronic linkages from the program's existing data collections to full-text electronic journal articles residing on publishers' web sites. This is a widely-expressed need of the U.S. physical sciences research community and would essentially result in the capability of a national library of energy science and technology. (This capability now exists in the life sciences and is provided by the National Library of Medicine.) Besides a minor potential investment requirement for this in FY 2000, the program will maintain a baseline of $9.1 million through FY 2002. While staffing declines each year, flat funding is needed to absorb inflation and to maintain the program's information technology infrastructure at a level to effectively serve the public and U.S. research community.