Computerized Files Stir Access Disputes : Records: As knowledge on paper turns into profitable data on disks, the price becomes a sore point.

It was a simple enough request. Back in 1989, the Dayton Daily News wanted copies of the computer tapes holding Ohio’s motor vehicle records. State officials initially balked, then agreed to sell them.

For $21 million.

“So a delegation of us editors . . . went up to Columbus and had a negotiating session with the Department of Motor Vehicles,” recalled Max Jennings, the newspaper’s editor. The state agreed to lower the price to something closer to the records’ actual cost.

Just $400.

Stories like that abound in newsrooms around the country. With government agencies storing ever increasing amounts of data in computers, news organizations and other information peddlers have found themselves fighting for access to information once routinely available on paper.

On the other side, government officials, from city halls to the White House, have found themselves struggling to create policies--and prices--for an Electronic Age still in its infancy.

What these skirmishes have created is a welter of law, policy and practice that differs from one city or state to the next, and from one federal agency to the next. They have raised issues that will take years to resolve:

* Does the public have the same right to computer data as it does to paper documents? If the answer is yes, how should the information be given out, on computer tapes or disks, or via paper printouts?

* If the information is on tapes or disks, must the government provide programs that make it more easily usable? If it’s too usable, does that endanger citizens’ privacy?

* What is a reasonable price for computerized information? Should the government sell it for a profit? If private companies repackage and sell government information, should they pay a premium price for it?

These aren’t easy questions, and with each leap forward in technology, more arise.

“We don’t even have the vocabulary for half the problems we’re going to be facing,” said Costis Toregas, the president of Public Technology Inc., a research organization that serves city governments.

No one knows how much government information is now stored electronically. By one estimate, the federal government will conduct 75% of its transactions electronically by 2000. Already, the federal government is said to maintain close to 10,000 computerized databases, about 50 of which it offers directly to the public. Many local governments are way ahead of Washington in their conversion from type to bytes.

No one knows how much the information is worth, but estimates of the sales value of computerized information--much of which is recycled government information--range from $1.5 billion to $50 billion.

Therein lies the crux of many conflicts.

When Max Jennings and the Dayton Daily News ran into the $21-million database, it was because Ohio was applying antiquated standards--the cost of paper records--to computer tapes holding millions of records. But in many cases, government agencies base the price of information on another standard: profit.

“We do sell our records,” said Bill Madison, a spokesman for the California Department of Motor Vehicles. “And we try to sell those records . . . so that the state of California--the residents--benefit from that sale.”

This argument infuriates many people, none more than Rebecca Daugherty of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an association based in Washington.

“We just look on that as sin,” she said. “The idea that you can sell to the public the advantages that you’ve used the public’s money to get in assessing public information--that just shouldn’t happen. . . . That’s the issue that we see coming up a lot.”

Newspapers and librarians have been vocal in advocating free--or very cheap--access to computerized information. So, too, have groups such as the Information Industry Assn., which represents hundreds of companies that sell computerized data.

“We would agree that it is a very dangerous and worrisome trend for government to be looking at information as a revenue source,” said Steven Metalitz, the IIA’s vice president and general counsel.

One reason it worries the IIA is that government profits cut into profits of the group’s members. And these profits may be handsome indeed.

Companies may take, for instance, Census Bureau statistics and manipulate them to create expensive, regional demographic profiles for businesses. Or they might take records of motor vehicle violations and offer them to insurance companies.

Some people resent seeing private companies make a fortune off inexpensive government information, and some states have tried establishing a two-tiered price structure for computerized information: one price for the public and press, another for information vendors.

But the lines can get fuzzy. The Dayton Daily News, for instance, created a database of patent information to use in news stories and now is considering marketing the database.

“I think we’re going to get more aggressive about using the information in other ways than just using it in the pages of our newspaper,” Jennings said.

So how would they be charged under a two-tiered system? It’s a question that Jennings, and many others, would rather not have to answer. Information, these people argue, should be open and free--it’s something taxpayers pay for.

“I think the only guarantee we have of good government is open government, and the only guarantee we have of open government is open records,” Jennings said.