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GCN Home > 05/07/07 issue

GPO dives into digital future

Begins testing automated management system

By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff

The Government Printing Office is ready to test the ambitious Future Digital System, a content management system designed to handle the many documents GPO publishes and posts for the rest of government.

In August 2006, GPO awarded Harris Corp. a four-year, $29 million contract to build out the initial capabilities of FDSys. The company will put the first elements into operation this month for internal testing.

“The first version of this is really for detailed testing,” said Mike Wash, GPO’s chief technical officer.

The program’s goal is to digitize nearly every federal document published since the birth of the country. People can then search, view and download documents via a Web portal.

Historically, federal agencies would submit publications, and GPO would print for both the public and libraries. Although agencies will continue to submit publications, GPO will now work to disseminate the information electronically and in print.

“Access to government information is widely expected to be electronic,” said GPO manager Kate Zwaard, who spoke at the Interoperability Week held recently by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Part of the challenge is to ensure that the versions are correct and are posted almost immediately, especially timely documents such as the Congressional Record.

Adding to the challenge, GPO must keep the most important of the documents it publishes “in perpetuity,” Zwaard said. As a result, GPO will keep both archived copies of all submitted publications, and copies that can be used as originals and from which additional copies can be made.

New workflow
With FDSys, GPO has mapped out an entire life cycle for documents, from submission to archiving.

Participating agencies will submit documents in what GPO calls submission information packages. The document can be in any format, from Quark to Extensible Markup Language. In addition, the package can have supporting materials, such as images, as well as some metadata, such as how long GPO should keep the document available.

Since the SIP will be in a standardized format, Wash said he could see the eventual possibility of industry or other agencies creating SIP plug-ins for publication design tools, such as QuarkXPress or Adobe In-Design. Such plug-ins would automatically save a document in the SIP package format.

“So when the file comes to GPO, it would be a fairly automated process [for GPO] to ensure the information was all there,” Wash said.

More news on related topics: Content / Record Management, Data Management, IT Management



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