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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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| Issue
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1 / 1990 |
2,603 Words |
| Author
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Diane Sherwood
Diane Sherwood is a free-lance writer covering public policy
issues in high technology, business, and the environment. |
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
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