Sec. 2. Findings

416 words·~2 min read·/bill/114/s/787/is/section-2

A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.

Congress finds the following: The National Technical Information Service (referred to in this Act as NTIS ), the National Archives and Records Administration, the Government Accountability Office (referred to in this Act as GAO ), and the Library of Congress all collect, categorize, and distribute government information. NTIS was established in 1950, more than 40 years before the creation of the Internet. NTIS is tasked with collecting and distributing government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information and reports.

GAO found that NTIS sold only 8 percent of the 2,500,000 reports in its collection between 1995 and 2000. A November 2012 GAO review of NTIS made the following conclusions: Of the reports added to NTIS’s repository during fiscal years 1990 through 2011, GAO estimates that approximately 74 percent were readily available from other public sources. . These reports were often available either from the issuing organization’s website, the Federal Internet portal (http://www.USA.gov) or from another source located through a web search. .

The source that most often had the report [GAO] was searching for was another website located through http://www.Google.com. . 95 percent of the reports available from sources other than NTIS were available free of charge. . No Federal agency should use taxpayer dollars to purchase a report from the National Technical Information Service that is available through the Internet for free. In 1999, Secretary of Commerce William Daley— admitted that the National Technical Information Service would eventually outlive its usefulness and be unable to sustain its revenue-losing profit model; explained that declining sales revenues soon would not be sufficient to recover all of NTIS’ operating costs ; and attributed this decline to other agencies’ practice of making their research results available to the public for free through the Web .

According to the November 2012 GAO report referred to in paragraph (5)— NTIS product expenditures exceeded revenues for 10 out of the past 11 fiscal years. ; The agency lost, on average, about $1.3 million over the last 11 years on its products. ; and The decline in revenue for its products continues to call into question whether NTIS’s basic statutory function of acting as a self-financing repository and disseminator of scientific and technical information is still viable. .

NTIS has compensated for its lost revenue by charging other Federal agencies for various services that are not associated with NTIS’s primary mission. Future technological advances will ensure that the services offered by NTIS are even more superfluous for essential government functions than they are today.