GPO Renamed

Buried two thirds of the way down in the “Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015” are these words: “The Government Printing Office is hereby redesignated the Government Publishing Office.” And with that, the 154-year-old GPO, the country’s largest in-plant by employee count, entered a new era when Congress passed the act last month and President Barack Obama signed it into law.

The change was proposed by U.S. Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks and introduced into legislation a year ago. The new name better demonstrates the current role that GPO plays in providing access to government information in digital format, such as apps and ebooks. The change follows the lead of other in-plants, such as the California Office of State Publishing, that have swapped the word “printing” for “publishing” in their names.

Also gone, though, is the title Public Printer, which is now replaced with “Director of the Government Publishing Office” (making Vance-Cooks the first to hold that title). A closer reading of the bill shows that Congress took this opportunity to clean up the language that describes the GPO, altering numerous references to “he” and “his” and other antiquated assumptions that the leader of the GPO would always be a male.