INFORMATION INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I I am Gerald Yung, Vice President for Government Relations of Mead Data Central, headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. am pleased to be here today to testify on behalf of the Information Industry Association ("IIA"), as the Co-Chairman of its Government Information Policy Committee. Accompanying me is Kenneth B. Allen, IIA Senior Vice President for Government Relations. Our focus is on the information dissemination provisions of S. 1742, the Federal Information Resources Management Act. IIA is pleased to support this important' principles for application throughout the Federal government. We commend Senator Bingaman for taking the initiative in moving Congress, after years of debate, closer toward writing these principles into law; and we thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings and inviting the private sector information industry to respond to this legislative proposal. THE INFORMATION INDUSTRY The Information Industry Association represents 850 leading companies pursuing business opportunities associated with the creation, distribution, and use of information. The IIA's membership encompasses the entire spectrum of the information industry, including traditional and electronic publishers, data base providers, financial information vendors, interactive electronic services, computer manufacturers, and telecommunications providers. America's first information companies were newspapers and publishers. Thanks to the introduction and evolution of new information technologies and communications systems, the information industry has dramatically changed and expanded. Today the information industry encompasses hundreds of companies offering innovative information products and services never For example, through the services of IIA member companies, librarians, students, and researchers are able to gain immediate access to the knowledge contained in hundreds of data bases; our legal community obtains accurate and timely access to judicial decisions and statutory information; industry and government decisionmakers get economic reports and forecasts; inventors gain fast and efficient access to information on patents; the world financial community obtains information upon which it makes investment decisions involving billions of dollars annually; citizens have excellent access to nearly two hundred years of Congressional hearings, reports, and related information; and finally, many of us in this room track the status of Federal legislation. These products and services contribute substantially to our nation's economic growth, making the United States a net exporter of information services of the bright spots in our overall trade picture. - one The most important benefit of the private sector information industry, though, is the role it plays in fostering the free flow of ideas and the right of citizens to create, acquire, and use information without fear of government intervention or control. Self-government and self-actualization can only exist and thrive in a society which is not dependent upon government as its source of information. A diversity of information sources, anchored by a healthy private sector information industry is the best safeguard against such dependence. It is important to remember that the ultimate value of the information industry and the emerging information age is not in any one medium or any one provider. information The value is in the sources. MEAD DATA CENTRAL'S SERVICES Our Mead Data Central ("MDC") is one of the leading companies in the emerging information industry. MDC delivers computer-assisted information retrieval services worldwide. services contain information data bases comprised of over 75 million documents. These data bases grow by more than 50,000 documents each week. We have nearly 2,000 separate data bases online, with an active customer base of over 230,000 individual users who typically perform about 77,000 search requests a day and print out over 2 million pages of information from our data bases each month. Federal governmental bodies using MDC services include the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Federal judiciary, the Department of Justice, the Patent and Trademark Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the White House. We also serve the legal, financial, medical, media, and accounting professions, including virtually all medium to large law firms and an We serve the major accounting firms, T.V. networks, trade associations, the press, consultants, and libraries. MDC's information services are arranged into subject groupings. These include LEXIS®, a computer-assisted legal research service providing access to Federal, state, and local as well as foreign legal sources; NEXIS®, a computer-assisted news, business, marketing and general information retrieval service; the LEXIS Financial Information Service containing broker reports, financial news and regulatory filings; MEDIS®, a medical information service of clinical journals and reference data bases; LEXPATO, a full-text collection of all U.S. patents since 1975; the National Automated Accounting Research System, a collection of annual reports and proxy information produced in cooperation with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants; LEXIS Country InformationTM Service, which provides news analysis and facts on countries around the world; and the LEXIS® Private Database ServiceTM, which provides a secure, private library for any client, both public and private sector. Although best known for our legal and media information services, MDC has added a variety of other services as well. Our Dataline subsidiary provides financial information including real-time stock quotes. Our Micromedex subsidiary offers innovative medical services including emergency antidotes and |