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Online forum | Bruce James and Mike Wash

October 18, 2006 1:00 PM

Guest: Bruce James, Government Printing Office chief executive officer and public printer

Guest: Mike Wash, Government Printing Office chief technical officer

Moderated by Richard Walker, GCN Staff

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Q & A: 1
Moderator Richard W. Walker:

Good Afternoon everyone, and welcome to today's forum. Our guests are Bruce James, the Government Printing Office's chief executive officer, and Mike Wash, GPO's chief technical officer. Bruce and Mike will be available to answer your questions until 2 p.m. today.

We will make every effort to answer as many questions as we can, and questions are answered in the order they are received. So don't hesitate to fire away. Let's get started.



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Q & A: 2
Will, Washington, D.C.: Bruce, how does GPO’s IT shop fit into the executive structure at the agency? Who reports to whom and why? Mike, How has streamlining the executive structure helped IT operations at GPO?

Bruce James:

Good afternoon. It is nice to be here.

IT, managed here by Reynold Schweickhardt (CIO), is responsible for infrastructure and day-to-day operations.

Mike Wash, chief technical officer, is responsible for technology and future system development.

Reynold reports to the chief operating officer.

Mike reports to the chief executive officer.



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Q & A: 3
Daniel Cornwall, Juneau, Alaska: For Mr. Wash: Can you imagine any use for digital rights management technologies in government information products and, if so, what would those be?

Mike Wash:

We plan on using an authentication scheme for content authors while content is being developed. This authentication process will allow authorized users to have access to information before the “ready to publish” decision.



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Q & A: 4
Daniel Cornwall, Juneau Alaska: For either Mr. James or Mr. Wash: How will millions of mostly rural and senior citizens be able to obtain government information in a digital environment when they are either offline (30%) or on dialup connections (28%)?

Mike Wash: The Future Digital Content System (FDSys) needs to be capable of supporting the digital connection requirements of the market; therefore, properly sized publications that match dial up connections need to be an option for these markets when possible. For the non-connected market, the library system will be their source of access as it is today, providing either tangible products or support to gain access to the digital information.

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Q & A: 5
Dave Martin, College Park GA: I've noticed Bruce James referred to as the "U.S. public printer." What exactly does that mean?

Bruce James: The Public Printer of the United States (isn't that a wonderful title?) is the CEO of the U.S. Government Printing Office, which is headquarted in Washington, with offices in 14 cities around the country. Our main building in D.C. is the largest printing and digital information processing facility in the world.

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Q & A: 6
Walter - Needham MA: Which agencies or branches of government pose the greatest demands for a digital publishing/print solution?

Bruce James: It's hard to say whether one is larger or more important than another. The government responds to how users wish to receive and use information. Last year, 92 percent of all U.S.government documents were posted to the Web, whether or not printed.

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Q & A: 7
Debbie, Fairfax, VA: What technologies helped you the most in moving to a digital solution?

Mike Wash: There are number of enabling technologies. For the information management system, one of the key technologies is XML encoding schemes.

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Q & A: 8
Charles Morrell, Washington, D.C.: Will any of the data be provided for sale in XML formats? For example, the Congressional Record or public bills.

Mike Wash: Our mission is to make information permanently available. It is likely that some requests for information will be to provide data in XML format.

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Q & A: 9
Rick, Washington, D.C.: Microcomp is extraordinarily sophisticated. Many of us are sorry you want to get rid of it. What timeframe do you envision, and can you promise that the replacement will have equal power?

Mike Wash: We agree that Microcomp is very sophisticated and very useful. We also recognize that the underlying technology is becoming obsolete and therefore, in order to maintain the capability of Microcomp, we need to replace it with modern technology and a more powerful tool. We are currently developing the requirements for a replacement and do not have a firm date yet for when the replacement will be available.

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Q & A: 10
Fairfax, VA: Has the Government Printing Office made the transition to all-digital (e.g., file to plate) printing for oversize materials such as 28 by 36-inch maps? If so, what information is available about the requirements for submitting digital files?

Bruce James: Our plant is all digital-to-plate at this point. The largest-format Web presses take 45 1/16- by 50 1/4-inch plates, which are made from digital files.

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Q & A: 11
George Alber, Reston, Virginia:

Hello,

For either Mr. James or Mr. Wash,

I am particularly interested in two of you new initiatives: Digital Media Services and GPO Express. Can you give us a brief update on those two initiatives, including the initial benefits to GPO, your employees and your customers?

Thanks, George



Bruce James:

George,

Glad you asked. These are two great services for our government customers.

Digital Services include such capabilities as sophisticated security document design, annual reports, scanning of documents in volume, animation, Web site design and management, disaster recovery, etc. Nearly 100 agencies use some or all of these new GPO services.

GPOExpress is a partnership with FedEx Kinko's that allows agencies to cut red tape and expenses by taking their work directly to Kinko's — either walk-in or electronic submission — and receive deeply discounted prices. For instance, FEMA estimates that the program will save millions of taxpayer dollars during their response and recovery efforts following a national incident.



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Q & A: 12
Walter, Needham: For Mike Walsh, how would you allign the priorities and milestones for FDSys? What are the primary deliverables and when do you expect to see them implemented?

Mike Wash:

Thank you for the question. FDsys is to be a world-class information management system that will contain all published government documents. Your questions are addressed on our Web site. At this link, you will be able to see priorities, milestones and deliverables and the progress of the program.

For the initial release of FDsys, we are planning to have the first public release of the system in the second half of 2007.



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Q & A: 13
Charles Morrell, Washington, D.C.:

Will legislative data, or for that matter any congressionally produced data online at GPO Access in the new FDSys, be offered to the public as it is currently on GPOACCESS or will this change?

Thank you.



Mike Wash:

All information on GPOAccess will be migrated into FDsys. Additionally, we plan to add retrospective documents dating back to the founding of the nation.

FDsys is being developed to accommodate documents as well as audio and video information, realizing that this type of content will be required in the future.



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Q & A: 14
Walter - Needham, MA: Does the GPO influence the adoption of data standards (XML) among government agencies? And, as a follow-on, does the GPO see itself as a central repository for digital content associated with all that it prints?

Mike Wash: GPO has historically developed guidelines that the government and the industry at large have adopted to reduce waste and taxpayer expense. For digital information, GPO intends to do the same by providing guidelines for digital information "packaging" that will help automate the flow of information into FDsys and between government agencies and service providers.

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Q & A: 15
Martha, Baltimore MD: Are there still plans to relocate GPO's headquarters?

Bruce James:

If you've ever visited our headquarters in DC, you would recognize that the buildings were constructed for a completely different era — they are at once too big and too expensive to operate in the digital world of today and tomorrow.

We've given Congress a plan that would allow us to use the residual value in our existing facilities to construct and equip a modern digital operation at no cost to taxpayers.



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