Digital At Last in Delaware

The Delaware State Legislature may not realize it, but when their session starts in January, for the first time all of their legislation will be printed digitally.

The four-employee legislative print shop has just replaced its offset duplicators with a pair of Xerox DocuTech 6115 printers with Freeflow workflow and a stacker/stapler/tape binding system.

“It’s great,” proclaims Deborah Messina, Print Room supervisor, adding, “It’s really quiet in here.” She jokes that, without the presses, she and her staff have not ruined any of their clothes with ink stains lately. “And our hands are rather clean,” she adds.

Though the shop has a Duplo DP-460H duplicator for letterhead, business cards and notepads, the new 115-page-per-minute digital printers mark a major analog-to-digital workflow shift for the Dover-based in-plant.

Previously, though legislation arrived digitally, an electrostatic plate had to be made for the presses. Copies of a 275-page bill, for example, were not available until every page had been printed, collated and bound.

“Now, with the DocuTechs, our first copy out is ready,” Messina says.

Adding the DocuTechs allowed the shop to reorganize its equipment for the first time in decades.

“We moved equipment that hadn’t been touched in a really, really long time,” she says. “We’ve got more walking space in our room than I’ve ever had in the time I’ve been here”—and that’s been nearly 30 years. The shop was also freshly painted and recarpeted.

On the front end, a Freeflow scanner now lets the shop scan a document once and store it for output multiple times.

With the Legislative session still almost two months away, the in-plant is keeping the DocuTechs busy producing year-end reports, conference programs, tour packet information and the state constitution. The real test, though, will come when the session arrives.

“I’ll probably get a little nervous about the week before we go in session,” Messina admits.