Transforming the Government Printing Office

Daniel writes “The Congressional General Accounting Office released a report today on the Government Printing Office:

Government Printing Office: Actions to Strengthen and Sustain GPO’s Transformation. GAO-04-830, June 30.

Currently, only the highlights are online, but the full report should be available shortly from both GAO and GPO.
Here are some of the hightlights

Daniel writes “The Congressional General Accounting Office released a report today on the Government Printing Office:

Government Printing Office: Actions to Strengthen and Sustain GPO’s Transformation. GAO-04-830, June 30.

Currently, only the highlights are online, but the full report should be available shortly from both GAO and GPO.
Here are some of the hightlights:

“Federal government printing and dissemination are changing due to the underlying changes to the technological environment. The Public Printer and his leadership team understand the effects of his technological change on GPO and have begun an ambitious effort to transform GPO and reexamine its mission. Federal agencies are publishing more documents directly to the Web and are doing more of their printing and dissemination of information without using GPO services. At the same time, the public is obtaining government information from government Web sites such as GPO Access rather than purchasing paper copies. As a result, GPO has seen declines in its printing volumes, printing revenues, and document sales.

To assist in the transformation process under way at GPO, GAO convened a panel of printing and information dissemination experts, who developed a series of options for GPO to consider in its strategic planning. The panel suggested that GPO
• develop a business plan to focus its mission on information dissemination as its primary goal, rather than printing;
• demonstrate to its customers the value it can provide;
• improve and extend partnerships with agencies to help establish itself as an information disseminator; and
• ensure that its internal operations are adequate for efficient and effective
management of core business functions and for service to its customers.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the report, the latest in a series of GAO reports issued over the years. Hopefully there will be more mention of the Federal Depository Library Program in the full report than there was in the highlights (i.e. more than none!).”