Bloomberg Plans a Data Service on the Business of Government

Bloomberg is taking its entrepreneurial ethos and making an aggressive push into the Washington media terrain long dominated by trade publications and news outlets like Congressional Quarterly and National Journal, which charge high subscription fees to provide lobbyists and Capitol Hill insiders with information on the nuts-and-bolts of lawmaking and government regulation.

In the same way that Bloomberg terminals have become a ubiquitous presence on the desks of Wall Street traders, Bloomberg executives aim to make their new service an indispensable tool for lobbyists, Capitol Hill staff members and government contractors. The service, called Bloomberg Government, is based on the same guiding principle that spawned the original Bloomberg financial data machine: people need an aggregator and filter for information, and they will pay a lot of money for that convenience. Bloomberg Government is an information behemoth — a news aggregator, government contract database, Congressional staff directory and source for policy research and analysis all in one Web site. Unlike the Bloomberg financial information service, Bloomberg Government will not require separate hardware to operate. For $5,700 a year for each user (a discount will be available for government users), subscribers will be able to gain access to the system through their personal computers.