President Bush Intends to Nominate Robert C. Tapella as Public Printer

WASHINGTON, DC—05/24/07—The President intends to nominate Robert Charles Tapella, of Virginia, to be the Public Printer. Tapella currently serves as Chief of Staff of the United States Government Printing Office. Prior to this, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the United States Government Printing Office. Earlier in his career, he ran Kelly Communications. Tapella received his bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University.

GPO Statement on White House Nomination of Public Printer:

“I am happy the process of finding a permanent Public Printer is moving forward. GPO employees and I are pleased that Bob Tapella will be taking the helm of the GPO. Bob and I have worked side by side for four years and I look forward to continuing our work together as GPO moves forward in its digital and technological transformation. We all stand ready to assist Bob as he prepares to take the lead of this world class digital operation.”

William H. Turri, Acting Public Printer

Turri will continue to serve as Acting Public Printer until the confirmation process of Mr. Tapella is complete. Turri, the Deputy Public Printer and Chief Operating Officer of GPO, has been serving in this role since Bruce James retired in January of this year.

About the Public Printer

The Public Printer serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the venerable United States Government Printing Office (GPO). The GPO’s core mission is Keeping America Informed. The agency provides expert printing, publishing, and digital media services to the three branches of the government. It is a near billion dollar government agency of 2,200 employees which operates like a business – while a portion of its funding comes from direct Congressional appropriation – GPO produces significant revenue by providing products and services to other Federal agencies and the American public.

About GPO
GPO produces the Official Journals of Government including two daily and one weekly “newspapers” recording the words and actions of our government: The Congressional Record, the Federal Register and the Patent and Trademark Official Gazette. GPO provides security and intelligent documents to federal agencies and American citizens, including the United States Passport. This year the passport has gone electronic with the inclusion of a contact less silicon chip capable of storing biometric data to enhance border security. GPO is perhaps the largest print buyer in America, ordering on behalf of federal agencies up to 1,000 printing jobs a day from private sector vendors throughout all fifty states. GPO has a creative services department that assisted in the design of the new passport with intricate security features and is also able to creatively implement the same advanced technological and animation tools utilized by major production studios.

Lastly, through a partnership with over 1,250 libraries across this country, GPO provides permanent public access to the documents of our democracy. Because printing is no longer the primary means of communication between the government and the public, GPO is developing a digital content system, code named “FDSys” to support printing, publishing and permanent public access to authenticated electronic documents that will ensure that digital information created today by our government will be available in perpetuity.