As it was brought at the last Data Bank Technical Advisory Committee meeting on April 7th, the Appropriations Committee is concerned about recovering costs for the production of electronic databases including DEMs and DOQs recently completed by NRC.

Per statutes, the Data Bank information should be made available to all government agencies and the general public in a cost effective, timely and user-friendly manner. The goal of the Data Bank is to provide data as much as possible in an electronic format and in a form that meet their needs. Towards that goal, the Data Bank puts all its data over the Internet for public access 24 hours a day.

The Advisory Committee at the last meeting recommended that until other options are carried out, the NRC would continue to charge for DEM and DOQ databases as per existing Data Bank Fee schedule. Currently, there is no charge for downloading information from NRC website over the Internet, and only a nominal cost is charged by the NRC Data Bank for copying data onto CD-ROMs.

There is a need to determine the simplest and most effective way to collect fees from data users, and the NRC must report back to the Appropriations Committee in the upcoming session about this cost recovery system. This matter is also under consideration of the NITC, and the Secretary of State's Office.