This paper addresses the very timely issue of national information policy, particularly in view of the pending second White House Conference on Libraries and Information Services in July 1991. Information policy is examined from economic, political, and social points of view and the national government is urged to address the challenging task of information policy development. The geopolitics of information, the economics of information, the nature of intellectual property in an electronic age, citizen access to government information, the extent of public responsibility for identifying and responding to citizen information needs, the attendant costs of meeting those needs, and the impact of regulation on the broadcast media are identified as complex policy issues that merit further debate and research among government officials, the information industry, and the non-government, not-for-profit sectors of the information community. Ways are suggested to reconcile the debate over the issues of public information policy which should be formulated by the duly elected representatives of the citizenry. (12 references) (MAB)