Better Than Ever

by Bob Neubauer

Even though it's the largest in-plant in the country and produces scores of important government documents, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), in Washington, D.C., doesn't usually get a lot of national attention.

That all changed in September of 1998 when the Starr Report was unleashed on the world. GPO was given the arduous task of disseminating that report to an eager public. The initial report arrived on disk, but supplemental materials consisted of boxes of documents, which had to be shot as camera-ready copy. The resulting products were put on the Internet, on CD-ROMs and on paper—all under the watchful eyes of armed police officers.

"We took the extra step—just to assure Congress that we were treating this with the utmost security—of posting police officers throughout the plant at key production points," explains Andrew M. Sherman, director of the Office of Congressional, Legislative and Public Affairs. Had there been no guards, though, Sherman is confident that GPO employees would have maintained their usual extreme sensitivity to security issues.

"We have never had a record of leaks," Sherman maintains. The guards, though, seemed to have their hands full just keeping the mob of reporters at bay, he adds. Despite the distractions, GPO employees kept their minds on their work, Sherman says—though he admits, "there was a great deal of anxiety on everybody's part."

This situation was far from normal at GPO's Washington headquarters, where the daily production of the Federal Register and the Congressional Record are usually the top jobs. Taking up three buildings and almost 35 acres of floor space, GPO is larger than most commercial printers. Under the direction of Public Printer Michael DiMario, a presidential appointee, GPO generates $800 million a year, $100 million of which involves document dissemination.

Created in 1860, GPO handles congressional and executive branch printing and is in charge of distributing federal documents to the public. As large as GPO's printing operation is, though, it procures about 75 percent of its work from the private sector, and produces only the complex, time- and security-critical work.

Though certain forces in the government still grumble that GPO should be shut down, some jobs just can't be printed by the private sector, Sherman insists. A prime example is the Record. Its average size exceeds 200 pages—about the size of four to six metropolitan daily papers—but its page count has fluctuated from a low of 10 to a record of 1,912 pages. Material arrives in many different forms, including handwritten notes, and Congress sometimes stays in session until late at night. Despite all that, GPO is still mandated to get 9,000 copies of the Record printed and delivered to Congress by 9 a.m. every day.

Another example is the recent Omnibus Appropriations Spending Bill. A 16˝ tall stack of documents arrived at GPO and it had to be keyed in, proofread very carefully and output in the Congressional Record in just two days. The final congressional report, completed later, was 1,600 pages long.

In producing independent counsel Starr's report, GPO showed the same trademark speed and efficiency, despite the distractions provided by the guards and the reporters. The Report was up on GPO's Web site (www.access.gpo.gov) within a half-hour of receiving a CD-ROM containing HTML files from the House of Representatives. By the evening of that same day, GPO had produced 500 loose-leaf copies for House members using DocuTechs at GPO, in the Senate and in the House. By the next morning, 13,000 additional copies had been printed on GPO's smaller 32-page 25x38˝ Hantscho webs and bound for distribution.

"Everybody was just at their top performance here in getting it done," Sherman praises.

The overwhelming response to the GPO's Web site publication of the Starr Report was a landmark event in that it was one of the first times that such a newsworthy document was available on the Internet before it was printed. Even so, this was really just another example of how GPO has been changing to accommodate the latest technologies.

"There's a great public expectation for quick electronic access to government information and for it to be free, and we have accommodated that with our Web site," Sherman remarks. He says 15 million documents are downloaded from GPO's site each month. The bandwidth of the site is currently being expanded, he says.

Fiber-optics and lasers are playing increasingly large roles for GPO. Up to half of the Senate portion of the Record is transmitted to GPO from Capitol Hill via fiber-optic connections, and 80 percent of the Register is transmitted by laser beam from the Office of the Federal Register.

GPO recently took another bold step forward in technology when it purchased two new Krause America LX170 computer-to-plate systems. They will make plates for GPO's three 64-page, two-color, 35x50˝ Hantscho web presses, which are used to print the Record, the Register, the U.S. Budget and other documents.

Though the Starr Report may have made life difficult at GPO, it also brought GPO a lot of praise and recognition. Papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Hartford Courant and the Baltimore Sun published articles lauding GPO. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde even sent a letter of praise.

"People were very impressed with our ability to get this done," says Sherman.