ABSTRACT
Agencies of the United States Government produce thousands of reports in a year and many of these reports are made available to non-government enquirers. Reports for the United Kingdom and other governments do not equal these in number but reports are produced and some of them are available on request. Internal documents which come under the broad heading of reports can have several names; they can be called notes, memoranda, progress reports, project notes or reports, to instance merely a few names. They originate from almost any department within the company; production, research and development, marketing, sales, advertising, finance and planning. They can contain information on current work, analysis of future trends, outlines of future plans. Committees are empowered to, and often do, call for special reports which may be considered to be outside the project planning system. Reports from collaborative or sponsored work or received as a result of licences are particular types of external reports.
