[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 152 (Friday, November 22, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H9116]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL F. DiMARIO, 23RD PUBLIC PRINTER OF THE UNITED STATES

  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, as the 107th Congress draws to a close, I 
want to pay tribute to a great public servant and dear friend whose 
Government service is also now drawing to a close. Michael F. DiMario, 
the 23rd Public Printer of the United States, will soon retire from his 
post now that the Senate has confirmed his successor. Mike has served 
as Public Printer since November 1993, and he leaves the Government 
Printing Office a much different and better place than when he took 
office nine years ago.
  Mike's achievements as Public Printer are numerous and represent a 
sea-change in the way GPO produces and distributes government 
information to the American people. Mike's preeminent achievement has 
been the establishment and phenomenal growth of GPO Access 
(www.gpo.gov/gpoaccess), the GPO website established pursuant to a 
landmark 1993 act of Congress passed with his enthusiastic support. GPO 
Access today makes about 225,000 Federal titles available on-line, free 
of charge, to anyone with a computer and access to the Internet. 
Members of the public today use GPO Access to retrieve an average of 31 
million documents each month, over a million every day; more than 1.1 
billion Federal documents have been retrieved via GPO Access since it 
went live in 1994. The GPO site also serves as host to 19 other Federal 
websites, including the Supreme Court's, and the databases GPO prepares 
for GPO Access are indispensable to the Congress's prominent 
legislative website, THOMAS, which is operated by the Library of 
Congress. GPO Access was the primary site for several major Federal-
document releases of the past decade, including the Microsoft anti-
trust decision, the Supreme Court's decision in the Florida election 
cases, and the Starr Report, as well as all annual Federal budgets. GPO 
Access has won multiple awards from the on-line, library, legal, 
government, and educational communities, and will undoubtedly continue 
to revolutionize the distribution of government information.
  During his service, DiMario also strongly supported and successfully 
implemented the Congress' policy decision to transition the Federal 
Depository Library Program to a primarily electronic format. He worked 
closely with the library community to implement this transition in a 
way that met Congress' goals of economy and efficiency while continuing 
to serve the needs of the public. Today, more than 60 percent of the 
new titles going into depository libraries are electronic, and the 
program has realized sufficient savings to underwrite the costs of GPO 
Access without requiring substantial new appropriations.
  DiMario also brought other new technologies to GPO, streamlining its 
operations. Notable among these advances are the capacity to move print 
copy directly from computer to plate, which is now used to produce 90-
95 percent of all plates used in GPO; roll-fed on-demand printing; and 
new, smaller, more efficient presses. DiMario also enhanced GPO's 
electronic communications capabilities through establishment of an 
agency web site to facilitate online posting of most bid solicitations 
for printing contracts, and an office-wide Intranet. Working closely 
with the House, Senate and other Federal agencies, DiMario oversaw the 
successful Y2K transition at GPO with no disruption of service. On his 
watch, In-Plant Graphics magazine chose GPO as the top in-plant in the 
country for four consecutive years, and in 1999, PC Week magazine 
hailed GPO as one of the top technology innovators in the United 
States. GPO has received ``clean'' financial opinions on all 
independent audits conducted during DiMario's tenure, and a 
comprehensive management audit in 1998 found that GPO has strong 
support among its ``customers,'' i.e., the Congress, Federal agencies, 
and the public. During last year's anthrax crisis, DiMario offered GPO 
facilities for the use of various House and Senate offices, and he made 
available GPO's loading docks to the Capitol Police when Congress' own 
delivery-screening facilities were unusable. Since that time, he has 
worked to establish off-site printing and web capabilities to prevent 
disruptions of service in future emergencies.
  Throughout his tenure, DiMario has strived to cut costs at GPO, and 
as a consequence, GPO's appropriations have remained relatively flat. 
Total personnel strength has declined by more than 35 percent since 
1993, and now stands at the lowest level in over a century. It is a 
testament to Mike DiMario's leadership that he achieved the reduction 
through attrition with no significant workforce dislocation. During his 
tenure, DiMario worked closely with GPO's unions to reach reasonable 
wage contracts and ensure the successful implementation of new 
technology and new ways of doing things.
  Through changing times, Mike stoutly defended the GPO against 
shortsighted proposals to reinvest or privatize its operations, 
regardless of their source. He clearly articulated how valuable GPO is 
to Congress's legislative operations, to the economical and effective 
procurement of printing for executive agencies, and to the public's 
ability to access Government information in a comprehensive, equitable 
manner. In the past several months, his defense of GPO against the ill-
advised printing proposal of the Office of Management and Budget has 
been just as determined. The fact that GPO continues to operate today 
is due in no small part to the fact that Mike believes in the agency 
and never shirked from defending it when necessary.
  Mike DiMario has had the 4th longest consecutive term of service as 
Public Printer since it began operations in 1861. He resides in Bowie, 
Maryland, so he's not just my friend, he's also my constituent. As Mike 
departs the GPO for a well-deserved retirement following 40 years of 
Federal service, I am sure my colleagues join me in wishing him good 
luck, Godspeed, and offering him the thanks of a grateful Nation for a 
job well done.

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