[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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