Government in-plants meet in Denver for NGPA 2012 conference

By Bob Neubauer

News from Back Home

During informal meetings at the conference, members related some of the changes happening at their in-plants back home.

In Delaware, the closure of the state’s Administrative Services in-plant has resulted in more work coming to the Legislative Council’s in-plant. Supervisor Debby Messina said her staff makes every attempt to complete these projects or to suggest an alternate plan if necessary.
Louisiana’s General Services Division is preparing to reduce its offset printing and move more into digital. Director Susie Barthel said requests for scanning services have made her look into this as a potential new service for the in-plant.
Scanning is also a service that Alaska’s Legislative Affairs Agency is moving into, said Duplicating Services Manager John Wright. He is currently using his shop’s Xerox equipment to scan, but he sought advice from other NGPA members at the conference about new equipment and software.
Providing some of that advice was Cindy Goure, from the Colorado IDS document conversion/scanning team in Pueblo, Colo., which runs seven mid-range scanners and scans 15 million images a year. This includes incoming mail, which is opened and scanned for recipients, as well as birth/death records and historic information. With better scanners on order, the operation expects to scan 30 to 35 million images a year in the near future.
Iowa’s Department of Administrative Services plans to add inserting and color printing equipment in the near future, as well as a Web-to-print system.
In Washington, D.C., small agency in-plants appear to be doing a large amount of printing that should be handled by GPO, observed Andy Sherman, director of the GPO’s Congressional Relations Office. He said it would be more cost effective for taxpayers to let GPO procure this work. The Government Accountability Office is doing a study to locate all of these small in-plants, he added.

State government printers from around the country assembled in Denver last month for the 35th annual National Government Publishing Association (NGPA) conference. About 30 government attendees took part in the three-day event, which was titled "Exceptional Government and the Power of Partnership."

In addition to the educational sessions, roundtables and member discussions, the group visited the State of Colorado's Integrated Document Services (IDS) operation, overseen by conference host Mike Lincoln. There they saw the in-plant's extensive offset and digital printing operation—which includes a Xerox Color 1000 and a two-color Presstek/A.B. Dick 9995 offset press, among other equipment—as well as its impressive mailing operation, home to two Pitney Bowes FlowMaster inserters and a 94-bin Olympus sorter.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.

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