[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 28 (Tuesday, February 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H703-H704]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: ``BETTER THAN EVER''
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayes). Under a previous order of the
House, the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Hoyer, is recognized for 5
minutes.
[[Page H704]]
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring to the attention of the
House the following article about the Government Printing Office from
the December 1998 issue of In-Plant Graphics which describes the GPO as
``Better Than Ever.'' As a case in point, the article describes GPO's
first-rate production and dissemination of the six-volume, 8,327-page
Starr Report from last September, a mammoth production job for which
the distinguished chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Mr. Hyde)
has thoughtfully commended the agency.
The article correctly notes that GPO receives little national
attention. The fact is, we in Congress could not perform our
legislative duties without the timely, professional, non-partisan
support of the GPO. Nor could millions of our constituents enjoy an
easy, no-cost path to over 140,000 government publications without GPO
Access [http://www.access.gpo.gov], an electronic gateway to more than
70 federal databases.
Mr. Speaker, as we conduct the people's business, let's remember that
we could not do so without the support of many others, including the
dedicated professionals of the Government Printing Office. The article
follows:
Better Than Ever
(By Bob Neubauer)
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annual sales.............................. $195.9 million
Operating budget.......................... $187.4 million
Full-time production employees............ 1,264
Total GPO full-time employees............. 3,375
Jobs printed per year..................... 163,200
Annual impressions........................ 4.7 billion
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even though it's the largest in-plant in the country and
produces scores of important government documents, the
Government Printing Office (GPO) doesn't usually get a lot of
national attention.
That all changed in September when the Starr Report was
unleashed on the world. GPO was given the arduous task of
disseminating that report to an eager public. The initial
report arrived on disk, but supplemental materials consisted
of boxes of documents, which had to be shot as camera-ready
copy. The resulting products were put on the Internet, on CD-
ROMs and on paper--all under the watchful eyes of armed
police officers.
``We took the extra step--just to assure Congress that we
were treating this with the utmost security--of posting
police officers throughout the plant at key production
points,'' explains Andrew M. Sherman, director of the Office
of Congressional, Legislative and Public Affairs. Had there
been no guards, though, Sherman is confident that GPO
employees would have maintained their usual extreme
sensitivity to security issues.
``We have never had a record of leaks,'' Sherman maintains.
The guards, though, seemed to have their hands full just
keeping the mob of reporters at bay, he adds despite the
distractions, GPO employees kept their minds on their work,
Sherman says--though he admits, ``there was a great deal of
anxiety on everybody's part.''
This situation was far from normal at GPO's Washington
headquarters, where the daily production of the Federal
Register and the Congressional Record are usually the top
jobs. Taking up three buildings and almost 35 acres of floor
space, GPO is larger than most commercial printers. Under the
direction of Public Printer Michael DiMario, a presidential
appointee, GPO generates $800 million a year, $100 million of
which involves document dissemination.
Created in 1860, GPO handles congressional and executive
branch printing and is in charge of distributing federal
documents to the public. As large as GPO's printing operation
is, though, it procures about 75 percent of its work from the
private sector, and produces only the complex, time- and
security-critical work.
Though certain forces in the government still grumble that
GPO should be shut down, some jobs just can't be printed by
the private sector, Sherman insists. A prime example is the
Record. Its average size exceeds 200 pages--about the size of
four to six metropolitan daily papers--but its page count has
fluctuated from a low of 10 to a record of 1,912 pages.
Material arrives in many different forms, including
handwritten notes, and Congress sometimes stays in session
until late at night. Despite all that GPO is still mandated
to get 9,000 copies of the Record printed and delivered to
Congress by 9 a.m. every day.
Another example is the recent Omnibus Appropriations
Spending Bill. A 16-inch tall stack of documents arrived at
GPO and it had to be keyed in, proofread very carefully and
output in the Congressional Record in just two days. The
final congressional report, completed later, was 1,600 pages
long.
In producing independent counsel Starr's report, GPO showed
the same trademark speed and efficiency, despite the
distractions provided by the guards and the reporters. The
Report was up on GPO's Web site (www.access.gpo.gov) within a
half-hour of receiving a CD-ROM containing HTML files from
the House of Representatives. By the evening of that same
day, GPO had produced 500 loose-leaf copies for House members
using DocuTechs at GPO, in the Senate and in the House. By
the next morning, 13,000 additional copies had been printed
on GPO's smaller 32-page 2538" Hantscho webs and bound for
distribution.
``Everybody was just at their top performance here in
getting it done.'' Sherman praises.
The overwhelming response to the GPO's Web site publication
of the Starr Report was a landmark event in that it was one
of the first times that such a newsworthy document was
available on the Internet before it was printed. Even so,
this was really just another example of how GPO has been
changing to accommodate the latest technologies.
``There's a great public expectation for quick electronic
access to government information and for it to be free, and
we have accommodated that with our Web site,'' Sherman
remarks. He says 15 million documents are downloaded from
GPO's site each month. The band-width of the site is
currently being expanded, he says.
Fiber-optics and lasers are playing increasingly large
roles for GPO. Up to half of the Senate portion of the Record
is transmitted to GPO from Capitol Hill via fiber-optic
connections, and 80 percent of the Register is transmitted by
laser beam from the Office of the Federal Register.
GPO recently took another bold step forward in technology
when it purchased two new Krause America LX170 computer-to-
plate systems. They will make plates for GPO's three 64-page,
two-color, 3550'' Hantscho web presses, which are used to
print the Record, the Register, the U.S. Budget and other
documents.
Though the Starr Report may have made life difficult at
GPO, it also brought GPO a lot of praise and recognition.
Papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Hartford Courant and
the Baltimore Sun published articles lauding GPO. House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde even sent a letter of
praise.
``People were very impressed with our ability to get this
done,'' says Sherman.
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