from The New York Times
U.S. to Offer Search Service That Links Its Online Sites
By JERI CLAUSING
The Federal Government plans to put a World Wide Web service into operation Monday that is designed as a quick and easy way to find Government documents and resources online. But the service will not be free, stirring criticism that the Clinton Administration has forgotten its promise to make the Internet and Government data more accessible to everyone.
The new service, usgovsearch.com, will link together thousands of previously discrete Federal Web sites and provide cross-references for more than 3.8 million individual Government and military Web pages. For the first time, it will be possible to perform searches for topics as general as "missile technology" or "judicial branch" and compile results from any or all of the discrete data bases.
The intended benefits include a new, easier way to search through the voluminous materials in the Commerce Department's National Technical Information Service, a trove that is generally considered one of the world's most valuable collections of scientific, engineering, technical and business reports.
Until now, individual Federal Web sites have been freely accessible. That will not change. But people reaching and using those sites via the new search service will need to pay a $30 monthly subscription fee or $15 for a one-day pass. And those amounts do not include any additional fees -- with or without the new service -- that the Government charges for some documents.
But Gary Bachula, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology, defended the fees for use of usgovsearch.com as necessary to insure that the service pays for itself. "Govsearch is a breakthrough in the reinvention of government that Vice President Gore is continually trying to achieve," Bachula said.
As to criticism that the Government is charging new fees for access to documents that already have been assembled at the taxpayers' expense, he noted that any material that is currently free on individual Web sites will continue to be so.
"People still have the choice to get the information without this service," Bachula said. "But we believe a number of professionals, individuals, librarians, are going to find this to be invaluable. It helps you find what you need for a fee that's fair."
Still, some public advocacy groups, who contend that even many existing fees for Government documents are too high, say that the Administration's information policy is heading in the wrong direction.
"Does this mean Government is moving increasingly to a model of a pay service on the Internet for Government documents?" asked Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project. The nonprofit group has been pushing to make court decisions and working drafts of Government documents like legislative amendments available more quickly and freely online so that the public can be more informed about the government process.
"You hear Clinton and Gore speechify until the cows come home about the Internet," Ruskin said. "But they do almost nothing to harness the Internet to serve democracy and help ordinary citizens to carry out their civic responsibility."
Usgovsearch.com was developed by the Commerce Department's National Technical Information Service, or N.T.I.S., in partnership with a Cambridge, Mass., company, Northern Light Technology, which already operates a data base service that compiles 5,400 magazines, journals and news services. These Northern Light offerings will also be accessible through usgovsearch.com.
James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, derided the new service as "corporate welfare," calling it a "typical example of all these problems in N.T.I.S. that have never been solved by the Clinton Administration."
During the Reagan Administration, the information service -- valued then and now as a crown-jewel information depository -- was revamped to become a self-financing resource. As a result, the agency charges fees for access to most of its research. Some materials are available for a nominal fee, like the "1998 Tax Products CD-ROM, IRS Publication 1796," for $13 plus a $5 handling fee. But others, like the "Davis-Bacon Wage Determination Database" are priced at thousands of dollars.
In addition to reports, the agency offers resources like the World News Connection, an online news service that summarizes, in English, stories from local newspapers around the world and can cost $12,000 a year.
"This is a wonderful national treasure," Love said of the N.T.I.S. "But who gets access? Do you think students get access to this?"
Bachula, the Commerce Under Secretary, said the service was merely doing its federally mandated job and trying to make its services more valuable to those paying for them.
Susan Stearns, director of enterprise marketing for Northern Light, said the new service was intended to enable individuals and others to find more easily the information they need on the Internet and in Government data bases without having to hire a professional researcher.
"Traditionally, it has been very difficult to easily gain access to Government Web pages and information," Ms. Stearns said.
"It's not that it doesn't exist or is completely inaccessible, but because it's difficult to locate using traditional search engines," she said, adding that Government Web pages are usually not linked to other sites on the Web. "They're kind of hanging out there on their own."