[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 13, 1999)]
[House]
[Page H5441]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE HAILED AS LEADER IN ELECTRONIC INFORMATION 
                               TECHNOLOGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, critics often hasten to draw attention to 
government agencies' failures, while ignoring successes if they notice 
them at all. Today I want to draw the House's attention to two 
prestigious awards and other accolades recently received by the 
Government Printing Office (GPO) for its leading role in electronic 
information dissemination through GPO Access, its acclaimed Internet 
information service (www.access.gpo.gov).
  First, the Vice-President's National Partnership for Reinventing 
Government has honored the GPO and the Energy Department (DOE) jointly 
with a ``Hammer Award'' for the ``Information Bridge,'' a project which 
makes available thousands of unclassified DOE scientific and technical 
reports in electronic format.
  Using the World Wide Web, users enter the DOE electronic 
dissemination system through GPO Access, where they can view over 
30,000 DOE reports already on-line, with more becoming available every 
day. The Information Bridge eliminates the need to disseminate these 
reports to depository libraries in printed form, thereby saving 
production and distribution costs to the government, and processing and 
storage costs to the libraries.
  This is GPO's second ``Hammer Award'' for GPO Access; the first came 
in 1997 for reengineering the Commerce Business Daily with the Commerce 
Department. In 1998 Vice-President Gore and Government Executive 
magazine named GPO Access one of the 15 ``Best Feds on the Web.''
  In addition, the legal community has recently lauded GPO Access. Law 
Office Computing magazine's April/May issue named GPO Access one of the 
top 50 legal-research web sites for 1999. The magazine's top 50 web 
sites, which included only seven federal sites, were chosen as 
favorites of law librarians, attorneys and paralegals based on 
experience with the sites and their usability.
  Further, the April 1999 issue of Chicago Lawyer magazine reports that 
the newsletter legal.online has selected GPO Access as both the ``best 
research site for laws'' and the ``overall best Government site.'' 
Finally, the GPO just received the first American Association of Law 
Libraries' ``Public Access to Government Information Award'' as the 
``official, no-fee, one-stop public access point for the growing 
universe of web-based electronic Government information.'' These 
accolades follow GPO's selection in February by In-Plant Graphics 
magazine as the top in-plant operation in the country, and in March as 
a top technology innovator by PC Week magazine.
  Public- and private-sector entities alike appreciate the leading role 
GPO is playing as we advance into the information age. Let's join in 
the applause for the dedicated professionals of the GPO.

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