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March 17, 2005
Thursday keynote: Transforming the GPO
Bruce James, Public Printer of the United States and CEO of the U.S. Government Printing Office, spoke about the plan to do a full analog to digital overhaul on the GPO. (There is a .pdf press release about his CIL presentation on the GPO site and everything.)
While giving us a little history, he talked about how in the beginning, documents were hand set, often by candlelight overnight, in preparation for Congress the next day. I got to thinking, if the docs were hand-set, does that mean that the documents were actually shorter back then? If you look at some bills now (the USA PATRIOT Act, for instance), they are miles and *miles* long. I wonder if there's any information anywhere on the history and evolution of government documents due to technological advances. Anyone out there got a lead?
As it is right now, the GPO is still using the latest state of the art technology to emulate a centuries old process. Generating content that was born digital is significantly different from the process of print media. So how do you "take a 140-year old agency and turn it 90 degrees to the right"? This is what the government is asking him to do.
The GPO spent 5 years developing a plan for the 21st century, taking input from all of their stakeholders (government and public alike) to formulate that vision. There's going to be a new structure, with new business units, to create new success. Because, well, they're looking for a structure that actually makes things *happen*, which is not what they have right now.
In his presentation on the pending changes in his agency, Mr. James pointed out various key steps in the plan that mirror some of the things that libraries learn from to assist this type of change in their libraries:
- Networking: He sought out the skills that he needed within the staff, not necessarily viewing those who made the most money as those who were the most valuable. Then, they looked at other government agencies, to seek out the talent they needed but didn't have. Lastly, they looked at the private sector, to see what it had to offer to improve the GPO. Drafting the right people was interesting and difficult, because the GPO doesn't really pay what young, hip movers and shakers are looking to make. So, he sought to capitalize on the institutional knowledge of older, more experienced employees when seeking out new talent, as well as reaping the benefits of the contacts of those people to help move the plan forward with a rockin' team.
- Technology issues: Another obstacle was the agency's lack of proficiency in dealing with new tech. He created an R&D-like department (Office of Innovation and New Technology, which has a blog for one of their major projects) to keep up. Instead of being reactionary, he wanted to make sure that the GPO could get ahead of the curve, as well as keep up.
- New business development: Drumming up new business was not standard practice at the GPO. While they do have steady business, having a monopoly on the entirety of the government's printing, it's a handicap because it doesn't really promote any kind of innovation or need to change. The GPO went about making their operation more efficient, so that they could find new service opportunities.
- Library buy-in: Scanning original docs to capture margin notes and bits like that, adding metadata, creating a database that allows text searching, are all in the plans to "back up" the content, so that it doesn't disappear. Some content will continue to exist in print, as well, so that when libraries have faith that the digital archive is really good enough, the GPO can then go further with making some content only available in digital format. But Mr. James doesn't want to be the one making that decision; he'll leave it to the libraries to let him know when their ready.
All of these changes server the significant transition in the use of government information, and therefore the need for the GPO to better serve it's constituency (it doesn't hurt that they'll become more efficient and cost effective while they do it).
I wonder, if as I speculated earlier, there was an evolution of government documents, where they started out streamline due to the by-hand nature of it, to a bloated character due to technology (typewriters, computers, laser printers) that allowed for the production of lots of content without nearly as much effort, if government content going straight to the web will adopt the characteristics that people who read online prefer: shorter text, screen-long pages, paragraphs mixed with bullets.
A hundred years from now, telling the story of the GPO will be different from what it is today. The GPO is looking to transform the information from text only to a more rich media approach, which is the trend that online information is following. The GPO hopes to accomplish this through focusing on authentication of content through temporary, redundant archiving, version control to verify that the content online is the real deal, and methods that meet the vision of the future of content. Keep an eye on their projects, I think they'll be producing quality successes in the future.
March 17, 2005 11:58 PM