Established by Executive Order 12369 on June 30, 1982, the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PPSSCC) carried out its mandate through an executive committee of 161 high-level private sector executives. The committee set up a management office and 36 task forces with 1,300 members. The task forces were co-chaired by members of the executive committee. The PPSSCC was directed to go into the various departments and agencies and look at them as if they were considering a takeover or a merger. The project team found that key information that would be needed to make a decision on such actions was often not available, and when available, was frequently out of date, inaccurate, or incomplete. This information gap, a collapse in the communication or reception of knowledge, causes a lack of data translated into critical information, needed for accurate, timely, and perceptive decision making. Individual task forces made recommendations for the departments they investigated, and an overall program was recommended that would include: an agency-by-agency needs assessment; establishment of data collection standards; adoption of a systems approach to information processing; improved utilization of existing data; and implementation of a structure to facilitate the information management process. This preliminary report includes an executive summary, issue and recommendation summaries, and a summary list of recommendations and savings. A compendium of information gaps reported by the task forces and one page summaries of their findings are appended, as well as discussions of several selected issues. (DMC)