Introduced on April 3, 2014, a new legislation was proposed by senators Tom Coburn and Clair McCaskill. Known as the “Let me Google that for you” act, it aims to save taxpayers nearly 66 million dollars per year. The purpose of this act is to substitute the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) Agency with a Google search.
Since 1950, the NTIS has collected a number of government documents such as government funded scientific and technical paperwork. They then charge businesses, agencies, and individuals money to gain access to copies of the documents. Since its inception, the NTIS has functioned as a branch of the US federal Commerce Department staffing roughly 150 employees costing taxpayers 66 million dollars a year to run.
What’s funny is most of the documents distributed by the NTIS are readily available online by simply Googling them.
However, the opposition claims that the massive amount data being generated per day makes the NTIS still very much necessary. Coburn and McCaskill were quick to counter that argument stating that the purpose of this bill was to eliminate an agency that is wasting taxpayers’ dollars. No official hearing is scheduled to determine the results and updates will be soon to come.