What is Government Information?

Now that we’ve stated the "problem" about which PEGI Project is concerned, we should back up a second and define what exactly is government information. The executive branch has long acknowledged that “Federal information is both a strategic asset and a valuable national resource.” [OMB Circular A-130]. However, the work of the PEGI Project has confirmed what government information specialists discover in practice: there are many descriptions and interpretations of what constitutes government information, whether in print or digital form. There are equally many words used to describe some or all of this content, including documents, records, data, and reports.

In the December 2018 PEGI Project National Forum, we explored some of the challenges around shared terminology in use among librarians, archivists, researchers, and public service professionals. We recorded these findings in our National Forum report.

So what is government information, broadly speaking? The US Code states "’Government publication’… means informational matter which is published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law” [44 U.S.C. § 1901]. Chris Brown, in his book Mastering United States Government Information, explores terms that are more familiar to a government information librarian, suggesting that government documents denotes “Government publications issued by an official government agency for public distribution,” which is a broader definition that does not restrict its use to U.S. federal government information. Brown goes on to suggest that government information can be used to refer to “freely available government issuances, whether in print, microformat (microfiche, microfilm, or micro-opaque), online website or PDF file, or database format.” Still, this definition and others like it are tricky to interpret with respect to both common and legal usages.

To help tease out some of the nuances for our own broad use of this term, we’ve created a handy table that points to various legal definitions. 

Word	Source	Definition	What’s in	What’s out
Publications	Government Publishing Office 44 USC §1901	“‘Government publication’ … means informational matter which is published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law.” Note: GPO has one scope for Cataloging and Indexing, and a different scope for the FDLP. Further, in the FDLP, distribution is sometimes limited by depository or document type.	Things that look like “documents,” as described in this scope note from GPO.	• Publications of entities that do not receive Congressional appropriations and whose employees are not U.S. government employees, such as the Federal Reserve Bank system • Records (as defined by NARA) • Datasets / GIS data • For official use / classified
Information resources	Office of Management and Budget OMB Circular A-130	“The requirements of this Circular apply to the information resources management activities of all agencies of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. The requirements of this Circular apply to management activities concerning all information resources in any medium (unless otherwise noted), including paper and electronic information.”	Agencies’ public Information resources regardless of format (electronic or print)	National security information and systems otherwise governed
Work of the U.S. Government, or Government work	Copyright Office 17 USC §105	A “work of the United States Government” is an otherwise copyrightable work (defined in 17 USC §102), prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties.	Works created by government employees at work	Information not produced by government employees or subject to other IP protection (e.g. contracted technical reports, patents, trademarks, databases). Potentially this same information outside of the U.S.
Records	National Archives and Records Administration  44 USC § 3301	Records are defined as  “all recorded information, regardless of form or characteristics, made or received by a Federal agency under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the United States Government or because of the informational value of data in them.”	Records properly scheduled by an agency, or explicitly covered by legislation, e.g., Presidential Records Act, or materials voluntarily deposited, Center for Legislative Archives. Records released via Freedom of Information Act request	•  Only 1-3% of what are considered “records” are scheduled for permanent retention •  Does not include “library and museum material made or acquired and preserved solely for reference or exhibition purposes.”
Datasets	Data.gov DCAT-US Schema v1.1, based on Project Open Data Metadata Schema	“A dataset is an identifiable collection of structured data objects unified by some criteria” and available in machine-readable format.	Federal agencies are required to post government datasets and APIs.  The Open Data Points of Contact (POC) for each agency determines what should be included in its Data Inventory. Some documents are included that would not be considered typical datasets.
Documents	¯\_(ツ)_/¯	🤔	Varies by local policy.	Varies by local policy.

In the library world, we generally understand government information as information that has been produced by the government for public access. But most people do not know or distinguish between a government document and a government record. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) deals primarily with internal records of federal agencies. Internal records are not typically created for public view or use, but NARA’s stated definition acknowledges that most publications are records, but not all records are publications, and not all publications are scheduled for retention. And to confuse things even more, the public can use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to request agencies’ internal records, and many of those records provided in response to FOIA requests are then placed in digital FOIA “reading rooms” for public access! We recommend Lisa deLuca’s article, “Where do FOIA responses live? Electronic Reading Rooms and web sources,” for more on this topic.

To use an example relevant to the PEGI Project team, research libraries usually hold publications, rather than records or other broader categories, from many levels of government, and complement these publications with information, tools, and publications that are produced by private vendors instead of official entities. Datasets, especially those produced by governments, are also increasingly included in this view of government information and services supporting its use. Libraries are critical to the public’s understanding of government functions because they provide both access to the primary materials as well as context – in the form of books, journals, databases, special collections etc. – to a wide swath of information from all levels of government.

In conclusion, the answer to “what is government information?” depends on what definition you look at and what agency’s information is under consideration. Furthermore, libraries building collections must also consider the relevant practices and expectations of the research communities they serve. As you see in the table, most regulatory definitions include all kinds of gray and out-of-scope areas for government information. But we see among all of these materials important “government information” that is in need of curation and preservation.

Do you have comments, or want to share a definition we’ve missed? Let us know at info@pegiproject.org