But Reagan Administration officials reply that in the cases cited by the report, restrictions are needed to cut down on the amount of red tape or protect national security.
"It's the type of issue that does not generate a lot of response unless there is a pressure point," says Richard G. Leahy, the associate dean of the faculty for research and allied institutions. "The report could be that pressure point."
"Harvard's report gives us more force to our arguments against the Administration," says Robert L. Park, executive Washington director of the American Physical Society and a scientist. "The report's emphasis on the economy and national security and the Harvard name will make nonacademic people aware."
Action on government information policy has been quiet since last spring, when Congress forced Reagan to rescind what has come to be known as "the Poindexter memorandum." The memorandum, drafted by former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor and regulate almost all commerical and academic information stored electronically in the country.
"It's an important issue, but there hasn't been as much attention given it since the Poindexter memorandum," says Spence. But higher education officials hope the report will attract enough interest in the White House's policies to force their removal.
Although Congress has not received the report, aides there remain receptive to what the report has to say. "Hopefully it strikes a middle ground between complete openness and heavy restrictions, and if so, it will be of use," says Steven Ryan, counsel to the Senate committee on government operations which oversees federal information policy.
However, Ryan says it is difficult to get Congress moving on secrecy because it is "an issue by issue thing." "There is no widespread public interest in information policy, except from academics, because it is unglamorous and piecemeal," says Ryan.
Thus the report could provide the basis for action precisely because it links all the pieces into a coherent interpretation of the Reagan Administration's drive for secrecy, higher education officials and scientists say.
The American Association of Universities has agreed to publish the report and distribute it to its members, which include 54 America's premier research universities. The report is in the production stages and is expected out soon, says Robert M. Rosenzweig. The MIT journal, "Technology Review," is also considering publishing the report.
The report, entitled "Changing Government Information Policy: Implications for Scholarship, Science and Technology," expands on a similar study Shattuck wrote two years ago. That 1985 report, "Federal Restrictions on the Free Flow of Academic Information," received national attention and prompted university and Congressional opposition to the Administration's policies.
Shattuck and Spence enlarged the scope of the 1985 report to chart the actions of different federal bodies using a variety of dissimilar laws as part of a government-wide trend toward more secrecy. Agencies ranging from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to the Department of Defense (DOD) to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have used legislation as different as the Paperwork Reduction Act and the Export Control Act to restrict the flow of information, the authors say.
One particular villian of the report, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), used paperwork reduction laws to "conduct a broad and ongoing review of agency judgements about what information should be gathered and made available to the public," Shattuck and Spence charge.
OIRA officials ceased or reduced publication of important government statistics and restricted the availability of certain federal information which did not support Administration goals and viewpoints--all on the grounds of cost-cutting efforts--the report says.
National security interests combine with budgetary concerns to further limit the free flow of information. For the last seven years, the Defense Department and the intelligence services have broadened the classification system, expanded the controls on the publication of scientific research, and limited the exchange of knowledge with scholars overseas, the report says.
In April, 1982, President Reagan issued an executive order which increased his ability to classify certain research "sensitive" to the nation's security. Administration officials have also used the Export Control Act, which authorizes restrictions on the export of "technological data" to bar foreign scientists and scholars, particularly those from Communist-bloc countries, from participating in scientific conferences and from being exposed to certain information.
According to Leahy, the Defense Department attempted just that last year when its officials tried to block foreign scholars' access to a supercomputer partly-owned by Harvard. After a sharp protest from the University and other schools, the Defense Department agreed to allow Eastern bloc researchers from overseas to work at the computer facility--located in Princeton--except those with links to intelligence services.
"Since then the issue has been quiet," says Leahy. "But [secrecy] is always an issue and it may come up again at any time."
The report lists more examples of conferences and courses where the Pentagon forced scientists to withhold research results because of the presence of foreign scholars. This has forced several professional societies, such as the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, to close their conferences to foreigners rather than risk inviting Pentagon interference.