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CENDI PRINCIPALS AND ALTERNATES MEETING |
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CENDI PRINCIPALS AND ALTERNATES MEETING |
Environmental Protection Agency
808 17th Street, NW, 4th Floor, Washington D.C.
June 6, 2001
WELCOME
Kent Smith, CENDI Chair and Deputy Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), opened the meeting at 9:00 am. He thanked EPA for hosting the meeting. Introductions were made. A special award was given to outgoing chair, Kurt Molholm (DTIC), for his numerous years of outstanding service to CENDI.
"E-Government Legislation: Bringing the Government Information to the Citizen"
Kevin Landy, Counsel, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
Mike Rawson, Policy Advisor for Communications, Senator Burns Congressional
Office
Senator Lieberman became interested in e-government about 18 months ago. He realized that there were important new issues related to e-government to which Congress had not given attention despite agency initiatives in e-government. Therefore, Sen. Lieberman’s staff talked to industry, libraries, and other stakeholder groups about where legislation would help and where it would not. The Thompson-Lieberman Web site was initiated. As issues arose, they were posted on the Web site, feedback was solicited, and responses were posted to the Web. The Web site was an important way to educate, to get educated, and to learn first-hand how the Internet can support and encourage citizen-government communication on issues.
Senator Burns has been involved in these areas for quite a while. Sen. Burns is Co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus. He is particularly interested in the transfer of best Information Technology (IT) practices from business to government. In 1996, he was involved in a Cybercast on encryption reform. The February 7, 2001, Tech-7 meeting dealt with a spectrum of technology issues, including ICAN governance, online privacy and spamming. Senator Burns is the former co-chair of the Communications Subcommittee, and is still a ranking member.
Senators Lieberman and Burns decided to introduce S. 803, the E-Government Act, realizing that it is not a perfect bill and there is still work to be done. There will be hearings, mark-up and amendments. Hearings are likely to be in July. Mr. Rawson thanked Sen. Lieberman and Mr. Landy for doing a lot of the "heavy lifting" on the bill. The two Senators were both in the Class of 1989. Senator Burns’ interests in IT began with his understanding of the opportunities IT brings to distance learning and telemedicine for his largely agricultural state of Montana. The distances in Montana are hard to understand if you haven’t experienced them. His interests in IT have grown to such areas as encryption reform and privacy interests in e-government. He wants to bring the "machinery" of government to citizens.
Mr. Landy and Mr. Rawson emphasized several aspects of the legislation of particular interest to CENDI. These included the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) position, central online portal, an online national library, the Research and Development (R&D) Advisory Board, and digital preservation.
The CIO concept is at the heart of the bill. The Act would create a Federal CIO position within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reporting to the OMB Director. S/he would run a newly created Office of Information Policy. The IT staff within OMB is too small and does not have enough clout. Historically, the head of OMB has not been hired for his/her IT background. An expert in IT at a senior level is needed. The bill introduced in the House during the last session by Representatives Davis and Turner would have moved the responsibility for IT into a new CIO Czar office as a Cabinet-level office. The Lieberman/Burns bill does not.
A central online portal is key to the e-government legislation. The goal is to better integrate web sites across agencies. In addition to providing a single point of access to federal government information, it must go across the various levels of government -- federal, state and local -- because people often do not know what level has responsibility for their area of interest. Such a portal must be organized by function, subject matter, and citizen needs, rather than by the government organizational structure. FirstGov is an important first step, and the assumption is that the Federal CIO would start with FirstGov and then improve it. Currently, there are limited resources to address holes in the portal development. However, within the e-government initiative there could be $200M in FY02, with a large portion slated for interagency projects. Another key part of the portal effort is the development of a taxonomy for categorizing government information. This scheme is likely be developed by federal librarians.
An online national library is also included in the E-Government Act. While such an online library would not be exclusively science and technology (S&T), S&T would be an important part of any such library. The objective is not to develop new content, but, instead, to organize what is already available. Creating new content would be too expensive. The site should be open enough to support the addition of agency initiatives and to allow coordination with libraries and archives outside the federal government. An online library should bring existing content together like a portal; it should rally agencies; and it should be done in coordination with libraries and archives, both in and outside of government. The Bill emphasizes coordination amongst Federal, non-profit, and state organizations.
Online access to federal R&D is also a significant component of the E-Government Act. A Board made up of the agencies involved in R&D is proposed. They would assess resources that are available online, and suggest how to utilize government funding, staff, and publications to track projects. Communication of R&D among government agencies is needed to support the transfer of knowledge between researchers and between government and industry.
Section 215 of the bill focuses on preservation and permanent access. This creates an advisory board to deal with digital preservation and other areas, working along with the Federal CIO.
A major issue for preservation and other aspects of e-government is the implementation of standards. However, standards and IT change, so the process must allow for innovation. In the E-Government Act, the responsibility for IT standards moves from the Secretary of Commerce to the Federal CIO. Standards must continually be revisited, and so the drafters of the legislation tried to avoid using specific IT terms. The CIO would be empowered to recommend standards and to implement these standards after public comment. The legislation directs the Federal CIO to inform Congress when changes in IT or other standards make the law obsolete. For this current draft, no specific standards are addressed, since other stakeholders need to be involved in standards discussions.
One of the major issues is the lack of IT implementation within Congress itself. While there have been significant changes over the last several years, Congress is still behind the other branches in its implementation of IT. A Government Accounting Office (GAO) report on the use of information technology in Congress was recently completed, and a provision for improving IT in Congress may be added to the bill.
There are now 12 Senate co-sponsors and there is a current search for more. There is no companion bill in the House at this time. While Mr. Landy and Mr. Rawson have met with OMB, an Administration response will be slowed by the fact that no Deputy Director for Management has been confirmed. Senator Burns will make the contacts with the Administration.
What are the next steps? The first step is to get the legislation out of the Government Affairs Committee. They want to get instructive comments and increase the support and sponsorship. They are also interested in hearing from stakeholders such as CENDI members in order to improve the bill. The bill is an initial best effort, so comments are welcome now and throughout the process.
Discussion
Mr. Rawson and Mr. Landy were asked about the Bill’s situation in the House. Mr. Landy noted that if something can be worked out with the Administration on the CIO Czar, it will be easier. In further discussion of the placement of the CIO, Mr. Landy indicated that they were waiting for a response from the Administration to the Bill. It was noted that OMB had some concerns for their institutional needs vis a vis the CIO placement and this was an issue. A question was asked about the impact of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) report. They both indicated that it was a very comprehensive job. "Pearls of wisdom" were contained in the report. Discussions on the future of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) are likely to continue. They acknowledged that the new structure (the Public Information Agency) suggested in the report would be very difficult to bring about politically.
Issues of the digital divide were discussed. The legislation addresses the digital divide in a few ways. The bill requires that no e-government initiative result in inferior service to constituents. It requires the CIO and agencies to implement the Internet and other technologies as alternatives where appropriate. Community technology centers are promoted as a best practice.
Senator McClusky is spearheading a bill that commissions a study of negative impacts from e-government initiatives, such as an increased digital divide. It is believed that e-government can actually create incentives for people to improve their personal access to IT. There are other related bills that should provide incentives for making the necessary technologies more pervasive, such as a tax credit bill for rural Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and a bill that would relieve smaller telecoms from burdensome reporting.
The RADIUS R&D system developed by RAND Corporation was discussed. Mr. Landy indicated that they investigated this product as a source of information on government projects, but found that not many people were aware of it.
It was noted that addressing issues across the branches of government is always difficult, because it is such a complicated framework. However, it is necessary to make sure that others are part of the process. Mr. Landy indicated that the Government Printing Office (GPO), Library of Congress (LoC), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and others would have places on the Advisory Board that is mentioned in the legislation.
Mr. Landy was asked about the issues surrounding private/public sector roles. He indicated that there are information and information products that are vital to the government that involve the sharing of information with the public. There is a core set of information, for example regulations and transactions. Once the basic information is made available, private sector firms should have access in order to add value; for example, search functionality and incorporation into other databases. They can cater to individual user needs while the government must be much broader. Mr. Landy doesn’t think that the public and private sectors are mutually exclusive.
The issue of FirstGov funding was raised. FirstGov currently has $3M from the CIO Council. The legislation calls for $15M per year for portal development. Portal development will need a guaranteed funding stream in order to succeed.
"Policy Issues and Priorities for the Research Library Community"
Prue Adler and Mary Case, Association of Research Libraries (ARL)
Ms. Adler gave a brief introduction to ARL. It has 123 institutional members in North America. The mission is to shape the future of scholarly communication. Their members serve 2.9M students and faculty. The total annual budget of member institutions is $2.35B. NAL, NLM and LoC are members.
ARL works through a variety of coalitions. For example the Shared Legal Capability coalition deals with intellectual property, copyright, etc. Other alliances include the Higher Education Alliance on IT (they have just done a new Web site for which Ms. Adler will provide the URL), the Coalition for Networked Information, and the Science Coalition. They are also a member of a group that is discussing UCITA, the state-based legislation for click/shrink-wrapped licenses. These coalitions allow the community to present with one voice and educate through teleconferences. They are reaching a broad and diverse group. Major programs include preservation, distance education, membership and leadership development, statistics, and policy.
ARL has several priorities for 2001, including the development of new approaches for metrics and evaluation. There is a suite of programs looking specifically at this issue, since ARL realizes that many of the statistics and metrics currently in use come from the paper-based world. Information about cost per unit/citation or use data in the digital environment are almost non-existent. The University of Wisconsin at Madison is conducting research in these areas.
There have been a number of changes in information policy that have raised concerns at ARL and among its members. Beginning in the early 1990’s, content owners began an aggressive campaign on intellectual property (IP). This has been greatly impacted by the push for harmonization with other countries through World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the European Union (EU), and, of course, the impact of technology is global. There has been a shift toward secure distribution of content rather than an understanding of the social benefits of information. In this environment education of the ARL community is extremely important in order to maintain the balance between owners’ rights and users’ rights.
With regard to government information, ARL members are interested in keeping as much information in the public domain as possible, so that there is no need to worry about intellectual property and copyright issues. Public domain information reduces the need for permissions, and therefore the cost, for research libraries. They take issue with members of the private sector who believes that anything valuable on the Web is from the private sector. ARL does not believe that the newest technology should dictate products and services.
Several key bills are being followed. The 1996 Database Protection legislation passed in the EU has resulted in several attempts to pass similar legislation in the US. This has been extremely contentious and seems to be getting more so as each year goes by. The attempt is to recreate the "sweat of the brow" criteria. There is concern that legislation would protect government information that is in private databases and would allow for the copyrighting of facts.
A group of concerned and vocal parties is meeting weekly on Intellectual Property issues. This group is being encouraged by the staff of the Congressional committees concerned with database protection. Previous discussions have focused on transformative uses of digital information, sole source anti-trust issues, etc. There is actually homework after each session. Following the final session, Congressional staff will begin to draft legislation. Based on her attendance, Ms. Adler does not see a clear compromise. Clearly there are political issues between the Commerce and Judiciary approaches to the legislation.
Distance learning is also a major legislative issue for ARL. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act follow-up by the Copyright Office indicated that there is an impact on distance learning. Senators Leahy and Hatch introduced the recommended legislative changes based on the Copyright Office analysis. Compromise language has been developed. The report has recently been filed and should come to the Senate floor soon. The legislation covers the scope of digital materials that are involved, technical protection measures that are needed for the exemptions, and who is eligible. The legislation is likely to be very detailed and extensive, requiring explanation in order to implement.
The Copyright Office is also studying the first sale doctrine in the digital environment. The report is imminent.
ARL is watching the Tasini versus the New York Times judicial issue. ARL supplied an amicus brief in support of the writers in order to express to the Court that publishers are not necessarily in the role of preservationists.
Licensing of software under Uniform Computer Information Technology Act (UCITA) is also of great interest to ARL. There are implications for agency procurement and for vendors who sell to government.
In addition to the EU Database Protection and Copyright acts, there are other international issues of interest. The Hague Convention could subject the US to foreign intellectual property laws. The Yahoo Case in France has implications for US companies. The CyberCrime Treaty would make ISPs liable for copyright infringement. This is at odds with current US law.
In the US, ARL is interested in an update to Title 44 and sees the E-government Bill as a means to begin conversation about this. ARL has met with OMB on the rewrite of A-130. Other issues include how to get more targeted focus for information policy within the CIO Council. OMB has agreed to bring up preservation and access issues to the Council.
Mary Case reported on the SPARC project, which seeks to provide alternatives to journals at lower prices. The project began in 1998 through a partnership with the American Chemical Society. They continue to look at high-priced titles for which competition might be introduced. To-date, they have found that prices have at least leveled off in those areas where competition has been introduced. Also, pages per article in Tetrahedron have increased.
The SPARC Committee will be "strategizing" about its future. They have proven the concept but only 12 new titles have been developed in three years. They are considering if there are better strategies that are scalable. They are interested in the Open Archives Initiative as a way to create new titles faster by mining OAI metadata and databases. Several other initiatives include the Create Change web site and Declaring Independence. The latter focuses on editorial boards and has had an impact among faculty editors.
BioOne is supported by ARL. It is an aggregated full text database supported by the American Institute for Biological Sciences (AIBS) with input from the library community. It launched in April 2001 with 40 titles from 32 publishers. The concept is based on a revenue sharing plan. The pricing model is subscription based on FTEs. This aggregation model might work in other subject areas as well.
The Public Library of Science is a small group of PubMed Central researchers who are asking publishers to make information free six months after publication. ARL is discussing how it should address this effort.
ARL has also submitted its concerns to the Department of Justice about publisher mergers and acquisitions. They were disappointed to learn that the Elsevier and Harcourt merger was approved without requiring any divestiture.
As part of its education program, ARL is working on a joint copyright brochure for university administrators with the Copyright Clearance Center, the American Association of University Presses, and the Association of American Publishers. Licensing-related issues are also covered through workshops for librarians.
The Scholars Portal provides web-based tools and services to direct people to scholarly resources. The portal first looks at the Web pages of the ARL libraries, in order to create a "vetted digital library". It provides access to both Web-based and locally mounted resources. ARL is talking to Northern Lights, Google, JISC, OCLC and others about partnering on search engine development that would specifically target scholarly material.
Discussion
Ms. Adler and Ms. Case were asked if publishers’ attitudes and models have changed. Models are still not clear. Despite other discussions and prototypes, the subscription model keeps coming back. A small number of publishers are looking at authors’ fees, but there is no wide acceptance of this model. Users want the information free on the Web, but there are still costs. While many non-traditional publishers have chosen to make information free on the Web, they are subsidizing this by trying to sell cumulative print versions to libraries for archival purposes. However, a survey just showed that most libraries won’t buy the print cumulations. ARL believes that their advocacy has made some difference in journal costs. Two years ago, Elsevier promised increases of no more than 10 percent per year. The limitation has been held to.
"Growing Pressures on the Public Domain in Scientific and Technical Data
and Information"
Paul Uhlir, National Research Council
Dr. Uhlir presented a follow-up to the October CENDI Meeting and to his proposal for an STI Roundtable. The overhead costs and the lack of an advisory function made the Roundtable an inappropriate approach. He has recommended a series of ad hoc studies or workshops, based on sponsor interest, as a more flexible and responsive approach to addressing research-related STI issues.
One important issue area that Mr. Uhlir has identified since last fall concerns the public domain in STI. More in-depth discussions are needed because of changes in the economic, legal, and technical environments, and the lack of understanding of public domain and its value.
First, it is important to define "public domain". There are several types of materials that come into the public domain in various ways, including government-sponsored works; material for which copyright has lapsed; presumptively protected material, such as the results of grants and contracts for which public domain must actively be created; and unprotectable subject matter, such as facts, ideas, concepts or principles. There are also fair use exceptions, which are especially important in STI. These fair use exceptions essentially treat protected material as if it were public domain in limited cases and for limited uses. Much of the most important STI, including the information published in journal literature that eventually ends up in the public domain, is protected in the beginning of its life cycle when it is of most value to other researchers.
Most economic analyses of the impact of information have focused on material that is protected; for example, patents and their impact on industry and technological innovation. However, the motivations of public and non-profit researchers may be completely different from their industry counterparts and are not fully understood.
The legal pressures on public domain include new laws that have severely limited the public domain, including the database protection and copyright laws from the EU member states and some affiliates. While the equivalent database protection legislation that was proposed in the US in 1996 was broadly regarded as being unconstitutional, attempts have been made since 1996 to pass equivalent US legislation and it is likely that database protection legislation will be proposed again in 2002. Even though the US legislation would be a less restrictive regime than in the EU countries, it would still put new limits on the public domain.
Recent Copyright Protection legislation, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that minimized fair use exceptions in the digital environment, and the Sonny Bono Copyright Act that further delays the entry of protected information into the public domain, have imposed additional legal limits on the public domain in information. The latter legislation has been challenged as unconstitutional. The extensive use of licensing information and databases has become perhaps the most important development in information law, overriding many established user rights by contract.
National security laws and policies also have put legal pressures on the public domain. For example, the new "sensitive unclassified technical information" category is problematic and questionable under the First Amendment. Also, late in the last session, Congress passed legislation similar to the UK’s "Official Secrets Act"; this was vetoed by President Clinton.
In addition to legal pressures, there are many economic pressures. These include the "productization" of information and government agencies obtaining data from the private sector instead of collecting it themselves as part of their core mission mandates. For example, there are efforts underway for large data collectors such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to purchase spatial data collection services from the private sector. In 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act was passed, which encourages the commercialization of IP and related institutional policies within universities. In addition, universities are imposing stricter fair use guidelines to avoid lawsuits.
Technological pressures include a range of rights management technologies, such as digital watermarks, trusted systems, and various anti-circumvention measures. These technologies can completely supersede the concept of fair use, and reduce the amount of information that can be accessed and used, whether it is in the public domain or not.
In addition to the pressures on the public domain in STI, it is important to identify the counter-pressures. Several projects, such as those mentioned by ARL, are underway on the part of researchers and librarians to develop new types of models and licenses that deposit materials in the public interest.
Dr. Uhlir’s plan is to follow-up by examining the pressures against the public domain in total. The goal is to hold not only a major symposium, but to discuss the situation broadly via an online discussion forum. Research would also be done off-line. The outcome is likely to be a proceedings document, including advice to the government and to the STI community about how the community can regain control of public domain information. Internal approval for such a study is probably six-months away.
Discussion
Several members of the CENDI group suggested that the presentation given by Dr. Uhlir was already an important piece of research. It was suggested that it might be valuable to publish this document as a means of restating the public domain principles and increasing awareness of the issues.
The upcoming NCLIS-sponsored meeting with members of the EU who are investigating public information policy as an outgrowth of the Green Paper was mentioned. Several members indicated that they will attend this meeting.
"EPA Portal Initiative: Opening the Door to Environmental Information"
Dr. Robert Shepanek, EPA/Office of Research and Development
In developing an information system, four major components are key – organization, policy, outreach, and systems. The focus of the presentation was on systems. A recent study conducted by the Conference Board showed that the American public lacks basic knowledge of science, even though it is increasingly important to their daily lives. There is a large gap between what they understand and don’t understand. Portals, Web-based systems that provide direct access to information on specific topics geared toward specific audiences, seem to be a way to bridge this gap. It avoids the one-size-fits all solution. Where an agency understands the needs of a group, a portal can lead that group to content organized in the right way for them.
A portal requires browsing and searching. The browsing adds value and intelligence, providing direct access to information and not just links to other sites. Searching provides a safeguard for user needs that are not anticipated by the browse structure. This approach is a step on the way to the idea of knowledge management.
Distributed information stewardship is also very difficult. Effort is required to co-opt people into being contributors. Agency activities have included the development of an agency metadata strategy, supporting metadata policies, and a metadata implementation architecture. In this line, EPA has created a managed inventory, or catalog, of environmental information objects. It has developed non-technology intensive ways to have contributors provide metadata to the catalog, realizing that researchers and project managers will not contribute if it is too difficult to do so.
EPA found that while it is not difficult to deliver information on the Web when it is text, there are problems with other objects. Relationships between different objects are critical; for example, linking the data sets to the project descriptions and the technical reports and the models. In the case of data, it is important to have solid metadata to describe the content and structure, since there is no text to search.
In order to open up the architecture, EPA is working on an open environment that allows the building of portals to EPA information both alone and in concert with other agencies. Several have already been developed, including the Children’s Environmental Health and Safety portal, the Enviro-science E-print Services (jointly developed by DOE’s Environmental Management Science Program and EPA/ORD, with contributions from DoD), and the Drinking Water Portal. Organizational portals are less beneficial, particularly to the public who doesn’t know the government organization structure.
Dr. Shepanek noted that because the Environmental Information Management System provides a common database structure and searching, the contributors can focus on the development of portal content instead of the infrastructure. The infrastructure supports the project life cycle. It includes projects, bibliographic records, data background, and integration of old research with new data (secondary use), models and tools, model results, documents and reports, and records management. Ultimately, such a system should allow the collection of e-records at the push of a button. A data call can also be instituted via a Web site, rather than a massive paper-based effort. Dr. Shepanek noted that with appropriate distributed searching and standards this type of initiative can go across agencies.
The major cost of the system has been establishing the data administration programs and the people. The technical aspects of providing an open environment are critical, but it still requires human support to develop portals with good content.