Government Computer News
GPO's permanent press
At GPO, inventor Mike Wash has a plan to care for content beyond print
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Brass at the Government Printing Office soon will get a first look at a draft plan for transforming the government’s document agency into a digital-content manager.
The plan’s author, inventor Michael L. Wash, came to GPO in June as chief technical officer and co-head of the Office of Innovation and New Technology. He holds 18 U.S. patents from his previous career at Eastman Kodak Co.
“The cornerstone of the plan is world-class content management,” Wash said. “We are expected to preserve federal publications whenever they are needed and at a level of authenticity that can be trusted. They should be available in perpetuity.”
Around Oct. 1, Wash and an in-house GPO team will present public printer Bruce James with a three-year plan for creating an enterprise capable of managing the government’s print legacy as well as current and future “born digital” content. Once the plan gains James’ approval, GPO will seek funding from Congress.
Meanwhile, GPO is preparing to redevelop the site of its century-old brick complex in Washington and move within the next two years to smaller headquarters.
A now-disused underground conveyor once carried reams of printed output from the agency’s presses to the old Washington Post Office for delivery. GPO itself operated in analog mode for most of the 20th century.
But the last decade forced changes. By last fall, GPO had shut down all its brick-and-mortar bookstores except the one at headquarters. About 2,500 employees remain of a workforce that once was twice that size. The chief human capital officer, Robert Carr, was named last year to retrain GPO workers for jobs that entail less paper-handling.
Nonetheless, GPO still is a big consumer of paper. In 1992, the agency bought about 79 million pounds of paper. Last year, it consumed 38 million pounds.
As creation of hard-copy documents has declined at GPO, online use of government documents has been on the rise. GPOaccess.gov currently lists more than 250,000 government titles, all downloadable for free.
But paper still matters. The agency has adopted a publish-on-demand strategy using different, specialized presses for long or short document runs with large or small page counts. Although it now contracts out many jobs, GPO still prints U.S. passport pages in Washington, and its officials do not foresee renaming the office to reflect the planned digital destiny.
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