From the Editor: Mile-high Musings

I just returned from Denver, where I spent several days with government in-plants from all over the country. The event was the National Government Publishing Association conference, a meeting I've been attending since 1995.

The group is a lot smaller than it was back in its heyday. This is a shame, because the issues government in-plants face are different from those confronting other in-plants. For instance, they endure competition from small, hidden in-plants started up by individual agencies. This impacts GPO most of all, but state printing operations have also seen such internal competition. Managers reported discovering DocuTechs squirreled away in secret agency shops, and used only for general copying. It's enough to make any in-plant manager cringe.

I was glad to get the opportunity to visit Colorado's Integrated Document Services (IDS) operation during the conference. Mike Lincoln, northern regional manager, proudly led us around his facility, which features a wealth of printing equipment along with a robust mailing section. It's no wonder IDS was named IPMA's 2012 Mail Center of the Year.

A couple of unique things we saw were a locked, secure print room for printing checks, certificates and other sensitive materials; a secure storage area for archiving customer files from all over the state; and an incoming mail X-ray station, used to detect harmful contents in packages.

While in Denver, I also paid a visit to nearby Arapahoe County Print Services. Manager Tim Mulvey picked me up at the hotel and drove me to his shop, which features a Xerox Color 800 digital press (see photo), a Nuvera 144EA with inline finishing, an HP Designjet 5000ps wide-format printer and two A.B.Dick presses, among other equipment. The four-employee in-plant averages 13 million impressions a year.

Perhaps most interesting, though, was our discussion of managed print services. Tim is on a three-person panel charged with assessing the county's printers and copiers, with the goal of saving money by consolidating equipment. He said the city of Aurora did an assessment two years ago, reducing its fleet and saving nearly $250,000 in the first year. I was glad to hear that Arapahoe County put its Print Services manager on the panel so someone with an understanding of the technologies can help the county make an informed decision. Tim said a Request for Proposals just went out.

At the conference, I heard managers discussing their efforts to initiate a copier fleet management program and the various degrees of success they were having convincing upper management of the benefits. The sad part is, a vendor will eventually approach those same upper managers with a managed print proposal, and offer to do a "free" assessment. The results will not be unbiased. By failing to allow their own print manager to coordinate this, they will miss the opportunity to save even more money by controlling the process, as Arapahoe County has wisely realized.