OMB and the Federal Maritime Commission's Electronic Dissemination.

This article looks at the role that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has played in the Federal Maritime Commission's process of automating its data to shed some light on government policy concerning dissemination of electronic data. The OMB created the policy directive that agencies must follow pursuant to The Paperwork Reduction Act, passed in 1980. At that time, U.S. President Jimmy Carter was concerned about bureaucratic red tape that demanded paper work from state and local governments and industries. As a consequence, the law was passed to control the collection of information by federal agencies and to improve the management of other government information activities. The Act also had a secondary purpose--to maximize the usefulness of the information collected by the federal government.