Lawmakers want to Google that for you

Senate lawmakers on Wednesday will take aim at a small branch of the Commerce Department that critics contend wastes taxpayer dollars by keeping reports that can easily be found with a quick Google search.

A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee will hear from the head of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Bruce Borzino, who will be called to defend his office’s purpose from skeptical lawmakers.

Since 1950, the NTIS has stockpiled government reports on everything from land use to science policy, in what was originally meant as a one-stop-shop for government paper. The advent of the Internet, however, has changed all that. Now, 74 percent of the reports kept in NTIS’s database are easily found through a search on Google or another service, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a recent report. What’s more, NTIS charges for both electronic and paper versions of its analyses, but 95 percent of the reports the GAO found through other sites were free.

That’s led to calls for reform.

Earlier this year, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced the Let Me Google That For You Act, which would eliminate the agency and save as much as $50 million. That bill will be under discussion in Wednesday’s hearing in the Financial and Contracting Oversight subcommittee, which McCaskill chairs. “The hearing will examine NTIS’ statutory mission to maintain a clearinghouse of government-funded scientific, technological, engineering, and business-relations information, focusing on the need to maintain the clearinghouse and its current and future financial viability,” she wrote in a letter ahead of the hearing.

McCaskill told Borzino to expect a grilling about the agency’s funding and the range of publications it offers.