NSPA--Seeking New Solutions

State government printing managers gathered in Washington recently, not to discuss politics, but to chart courses into the future.

From Web sites to electronic forms, the talk at the recent National State Publishing Association conference centered largely around digital technology and how government in-plants can put it to use.

Hosted by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and organized by Andrew Sherman, director of the GPO's office of congressional, legislative and public affairs, the 22nd annual conference took place in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It featured several of GPO's most knowledgeable employees giving presentations on CD-ROMs, the Internet and electronic databases.

Especially notable was the attendance of Michael F. DiMario, U.S. Public Printer, at many of the conference events. DiMario and other key GPO officials spent lots of time mingling with the 57 government attendees, who hailed from 29 states plus the District of Columbia. This year NSPA was honored with three international attendees as well.

Both in the educational sessions and outside of them, attendees discussed numerous issues of concern to government in-plants, such as how to convince customers to send jobs digitally. Mark Shaw of Utah Legislative Printing said he asks customers to bring in both a hard copy original and a disk, then he outputs copies from each. When they see the quality difference, most customers start sending in jobs on disk. Other in-plants simply charge less money for digitally submitted jobs and thus reduce the number of hard copy submissions.

Electronic forms was another area of discussion. Several states noted that they now put forms on their Web sites for customers to print out themselves. The forms on the California Office of State Publishing's site can be filled out online. State Printer Celeste Maia Cron said this will be the wave of the future.

"I think you're going to see your printed forms go way, way down," she predicted.

Another issue that came up several times was color printing. In the past, attendees noted, color printing was virtually forbidden in government print operations because color was an added expense. Now, however, with the availability of digital color solutions, the cost of color has come down and government officials are beginning to shed their view that color is merely an extravagance.

In a session devoted to this topic, Edwin Bokuniewicz of Xerox pointed out that this traditional lack of color in government documents leaves in-plants with a lot of opportunities for new business. Color, he said, can spice up brochures, signs, newsletters, flyers, forms and other items. But more than just being pretty to look at, color increases the data retention rate by 70 percent, he said.

One use for a digital color device, like the Xerox DocuColor 40, is to print color covers and inserts for documents whose black-and-white pages are printed on a DocuTech, Bokuniewicz said. This allows the in-plant to keep the color printing work in-house.

Internet Interest

A session on the Internet kept attendees' interest levels high. Joking that the WWW part of a Web address stood for "Wild, Wild West," Carol Cini, associate director of GPO's Institute for Federal Printing and Electronic Publishing, noted that the Web was an unregulated place rife with unanswered legal questions. Still, it can be a great way to promote your services, he said—if you do it right.

He suggested putting together a team of designers, programmers, marketing specialists and editors to discuss site content and layout. Noting that a home page has, on average, just six seconds to capture a viewer's attention, Cini gave several design tips.

• Use the home page as an introduction to other pages. Keep links to a few high-level categories, and make sure all content fits on one window screen.

• Since people don't like to read Web pages, write short, factual descriptions of links to text pages.

• Don't think of the site as only a place to promote the CEO or the organization; customers are more interested in content and resources.

• Make Web pages interactive.

• Duplicate navigational headers on your pages, and include a link back to your home page.

• Put what the customer wants up front.

• Get customer feedback. Find out what they like and don't like about your site.

In-plant Truths And Exaggerations

The keynote speaker at this year's NSPA conference was no stranger to many in-plant managers. Consultant Jack Klasnic, IPG's 1987 Industry Leader of the Year, discussed some of the lies that have been spread about in-plants over the years.

Klasnic quoted spurious figures from reports that "proved" in-plants were inefficient and unproductive. Some of this faulty data, he said, was collected by biased parties, like commercial and quick printers. Sadly, he said, it is still often used in attempts to shut down in-plants. Managers must arm themselves with data of their own, including their actual costs and charges.

He brought up the myth that commercial printers, because they have salespeople who can point out money-saving tips to customers, are a better alternative than in-plants, who supposedly cannot offer this service. But in-plant managers, Klasnic said, are just as professional and know just as much about their businesses as commercial printers.

"You guys know more about your product than some salesperson at a commercial printer," he said.

To avoid the indiscriminate downsizing of the in-plant, Klasnic urged managers to help their organizations cut costs in other ways:

• Review all printed materials; point out where costs can be cut.

• Evaluate personnel and equipment requirements and act accordingly.

• Compare reprinted jobs for commercial printers and the in-plant.

• Estimate real costs up front. This often cuts needless printing costs.

• Document savings. Report them to management.

• Know true overtime costs.

As part of the conference, attendees got a detailed, guided tour of GPO's impressive headquarters. They learned how the Congressional Record and Federal Register are produced daily, saw GPO's new computer-to-plate systems and watched passports being produced in a high-security area.

Bob Neubauer can be contacted at:

bneubauer@napco.com