MICHAEL F. DiMARIO

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1998

9:30 A.M.

ROOM 305, RUSSELL SENATE OFFICE BUILDING

Mr. Chairman, Senator Ford, and Members of the Committee on Rules and Administration, thank you for inviting me here this morning to discuss my views on S. 2288, the Wendell H. Ford Government Publications Reform Act of 1998.

Mr. Chairman, I commend you for holding these hearings. S. 2288 is the first bill to propose a comprehensive revision of the public printing and documents statutes of Title 44 in more than a generation, and these statutes clearly are in need of revision. The constitutional issues regarding the execution of GPO's statutory mission need to be laid to rest. To serve the taxpayers and Government information users, GPO's authority as the central point for Government printing, procurement, and dissemination must be maintained. In this age of the Internet, it's time to clarify that the statutory jurisdiction of GPO's depository library program includes information in electronic formats. To protect public access, we must reduce the incidence of "fugitive documents," and as Government information increases in its value and utility to the public, we must provide for an effective system of permanent public access to Government information products. These are actions that have long been recommended by many, including GPO, as necessary to maintain and expand public access in the coming years.

Under your leadership, Mr. Chairman, the Rules and Administration Committee over the past two years has held hearings that systematically exposed the problems confronting Title 44 today. Your bill goes a long way toward making the needed changes. We look forward to continuing to work with you and Senator Ford in this critically important effort.

Senator Ford, you have been a champion of GPO's operations for many years, and under your guidance you have moved GPO in directions that have greatly benefited the taxpayers and the public. Perhaps most lasting, under your leadership Congress enacted and President Clinton signed into law the GPO Access Act, P.L. 103-40, making electronic dissemination a mainstay of our operations and providing the public with a new and convenient way to access Federal Government information. Today, more than 12 million documents are retrieved by the public every month from this service. In an independent study of GPO, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., recently called this one of the Federal Government's most heavily used web-sites, and GPO Access was recently praised by the Vice President and Government Executive magazine as one of the Government's best web sites out of the more than 4,300 such sites identified by the GAO last year.

Moreover, Senator Ford, you have continued to support a centrally-managed printing, procurement, and dissemination authority in GPO when others advocated less cost-effective alternatives, and the taxpayers have benefited from your support. The GPO saves millions for the taxpayers every year through its programs, as study after study has shown, and the public has access to a comprehensive range of Government publications simply, and effectively, through GPO's programs.

The need for change to Title 44 has never been more apparent. I testified before this Committee about the challenges confronting Title 44 and GPO in July 1996, April 1997, and March 1998. I have also addressed these issues in testimony before the House and Senate Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittees and the Joint Committee on Printing. We have asked for a legislative resolution to these problems. As an outcome of our Study to Identify Measures Necessary for a Successful Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program (in which staff from this Committee participated), in August 1996 we recommended statutory changes to chapter 19 of Title 44 to accommodate and facilitate the growing use of electronic information technologies to provide public access to Government information. In May 1997, we submitted a comprehensive legislative proposal to modernize the depository library program, transfer JCP administrative responsibilities to the Public Printer, and update our procurement and sales authorities. Many of the proposals we recommended are included in S. 2288.

During the development of S. 2288, we had frequent discussions with representatives of the library community, including the Inter-Association Working Group on Government Information Policy (IAWG). The library community and GPO have a shared outlook on the need for improvements to chapter 19 of Title 44 to promote and protect public access to Government information in the electronic era. Such improvements are consistent with the legislative intent and the history of the depository library program, which dates to 1813 and is indeed America's first "freedom of information" program. While we think there is still room for some technical adjustments to Title IV of S. 2288 for the sake of clarification and to ensure administrative workability--and we are working with your staff on these adjustments--the modernization of the depository library program envisioned by Title IV is clearly needed.

We also have no problems with Title I of the bill, which provides for a transfer of functions of the Joint Committee on Printing. We have long advocated the transfer of administrative functions of the JCP to the Public Printer, who can exercise them as a Presidential appointee and therefore avoid any question of constitutional impropriety. As to the future of the JCP and its discharge of other functions, that is Congress's decision to make.

The provisions of Titles II and III of S. 2288 are designed to strengthen and equip the GPO to serve as the centrally-managed producer/procurer of printing and information products for the Government, aiding in our mission to provide comprehensive, equitable public access to Government information. We think this is the appropriate and historically correct way to cast GPO's role in Government as the agency whose mission is to keep the Nation informed, and S. 2288 makes this mission clear.

The conceptual framework of S. 2288 is well settled. Our concern at this point is to ensure that there is sufficient clarity and workability in its details so that GPO personnel have the tools they need to carry S. 2288 fully into action as effectively and economically as possible. To this end, we have had a number of discussions with your staff, but there remain some features that we believe need further adjustment. These include clearly establishing GPO's status as an independent agency within the Federal Government, adjusting the mechanism for determining the future of agency inplant operations to provide for an effective system of oversight and compliance, and ensuring that the definition of "Government publication" in the bill is applied in an appropriate manner to production and procurement functions as well as dissemination. We are pleased that a system has been devised for providing the Administrator with prudent guidelines for the issuance of delegations of procurement authority to the agencies, and we are continuing to discuss the level of discretion that may be exercised by the Administrator in observing those guidelines. We look forward to working with your staff to iron out these and related issues.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Ford, and Members of the Committee, once again we believe S. 2288 is an important step forward in updating and modernizing the ability of the public to gain access to Government information. The need for the kind of changes proposed by the bill has never been clearer, and these changes will endow GPO with the capabilities we need to carry out GPO's informing mission into the next century. While we believe there are still adjustments that need to be made in the bill, we are confident we can work constructively and productively with your staff to craft the necessary language, and we look forward to this task.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement, and I would be pleased to respond to any questions that you or the Members of the Committee may have.

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