Summary of Electronic Public Information Newsletter
Index
Volume 4 Number 6 1994
Summary Of EPIN, Vol. 4, No. 6, March 25 1994
SA1250406
From: James McDonough
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SUMMARY OF ELECTRONIC PUBLIC INFORMATION NEWSLETTER
VOL. 4, NO. 6; March 25, 1994
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INDEX:
1. SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE PASSES NREN BILL
2. ROBERTS SAYS TITLE VI ASSURES THE `THIRD LANE'
3. ROSE PRAISES FEDWORLD, ACE, LC AND GPO ON INFO PROGRAMS
4. SENATE AND OMB BEGIN TALKS ON THE FUTURE OF GPO
1. SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE PASSES NREN BILL: The Senate Commerce,
Science and Transportation Committee on March 16 passed the
"National Competitiveness Act of 1994," whose Title VI deals with
the National Information Infrastructure and the next stage in the
development of the NREN. Athough Title VI differs somewhat from its
House counterpart (H.R. 1757, aka the Boucher bill), congressional
sources indicate that the House leadership has agreed to the Senate
changes and Title VI will pass the Congress as approved by the
Committee. Title VI, "Information Technology Applications Act of
1994," is largely based on legislation introduced by Vice President
Al Gore in 1992, when he was a senator, to require the White House
Office of Science and Technology to establish an information
infrastructure program to develop technologies to apply
high-performance computing and high speed networking to solving
problems in education, digital libraries, health care,
manufacturing, energy and other fields. Known at one time as Gore
II, Title VI authorizes the development of computer applications
and the creation of test bed telecommunications networks to push
high-performance computing and networking into areas of more
practical benefit for the average American. The bill also
authorizes a Connections Program to link, schools, libraries, state
and local government to each other and to other networks.
2. ROBERTS SAYS TITLE VI ASSURES THE `THIRD LANE': EDUCOM Vice
President Michael Roberts said last week the approval by the Senate
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee last week of the
"Information Technology Applications Act of 1994," (Title VI of
H.R. 820) assures the continued development of what he calls the
"three-lane" of the information superhighway. In an interview this
week, he said, "We are going to have a three-lane highway
consisting of an experimental lane (almost totally financed by the
government), a production or commercial lane and the middle lane
for applied development, research." Roberts said the third lane,
which will be financed by a combination of federal, state,
university and private sector funds, will be open to those
university and research institutions who want to participate in
experimental networking. He noted network innovation will go on
indefinitely "we are nowhere near the physical limits on bandwidth,
chip speeds, fully optical, and so on" so that universities have a
major mission and want to be on the leading edge of network
development and research.
3. ROSE PRAISES FEDWORLD, ACE, LC AND GPO ON INFO PROGRAMS: Rep.
Charlie Rose, D-NC, last week praised FedWorld, Library of
Congress' LOCIS and Marvel information retrieval systems, GPO
electronic access program and Americans Communicating
Electronically (ACE) as positive federal initiatives in area of
information dissemination. The congressman especially went out of
his way to single out the National Technical Information Services
(NTIS) noting that the agency had "transformed itself into a leader
to make government agency information available" to the public.
In a speech before the Annual FLICC Forum at the Library of
Congress, the Chairman of the House Administration Committee also
revealed that this month he ordered Internet access for all House
members, and took steps to make legislative information available
over the Internet via a gopher. (Rose said his Internet address is:
crose@hr.house.gov) The House gopher (gopher.house.gov) is to serve
the needs of the Capital Hill community and as a vehicle for the
dissemination of House information to the public.=
4. SENATE AND OMB BEGIN TALKS ON THE FUTURE OF GPO: The Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) and the Senate Rules and Administration
Committee have begun negotiations on the fate of the Government
Printing Office (GPO). Under discussion is Title XIV of H.R. 3400,
the bill to implement the recommendations of the National
Performance Review. These conversations have taken place after the
Committee concluded public hearings on the Title XIV last month.
"We have met with OMB on several occasions to talk about some of
the parameters," reported a member of the Committee staff. The
staffer added that the Committee will probably not get around to
concluding negotiations and marking up H.R. 3400 until after the
Easter break. When H.R. 3400 was introduced on behalf of the
Clinton administration, Title XIV recommended that the executive
branch handle all of its own printing, which currently is
controlled by GPO, and that OMB be made responsible for
establishing executive printing policy, now in the hands of the
Joint Committee on Printing. The House approved version of the bill
called for the transfer of the GPO to the executive branch, and
GPO's Superintendent of Documents division-with its responsibility
for the distribution of government information to the depository
libraries-to the Library of Congress (LC).
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Submitted by: BUBL Administrator (cijs27@vaxb.strathclyde.ac.uk)
Wed, 30 Mar 94 12:19 GMT