ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program Vol. 18, no. 04 GP 3.16/3-2:18/04 February 28, 1997 MICHAEL F. DIMARIO PUBLIC PRINTER PREPARED STATEMENT BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON APPROPRIATIONS ESTIMATES FOR FISCAL YEAR 1998 February 11, 1997 GPO AND CONGRESSIONAL PRINTING GPO produces the daily and permanent editions of the Congressional Record, bills, resolutions, amendments, hearings, committee reports, committee prints, documents, stationery, and a wide variety of other products that are essential to the legislative process in Congress. We provide support to Congress through the creation and storage of electronic databases of publications, printing, distribution, CD-ROM, online access, and print-on-demand services. Before 1860, Congress used systems of contract printing that proved to be inefficient, unreliable, and vulnerable to corruption. GPO was established to provide Congress with immediate, reliable service in a work environment under its direct control. We work closely with the staffs of the leadership in each House of Congress, the Joint Committee on Printing, the Secretary of the Senate, the Clerk of the House, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, the House Oversight Committee, other committees (including most prominently the Appropriations Committees), and individual Senators and Representatives to ensure that all congressional printing is done promptly, uniformly, and economically, and that it facilitates the orderly flow of essential legislative business. Support for the Cyber-Congress GPO is sometimes mistakenly characterized as outmoded because we print paper products. In fact, over the past three decades we have built a core capability for electronic information and communications services to support Congress's information needs. In the 1960's we began some of the printing industry's earliest use of electronic photocomposition, digitizing data as a typesetting process. In the next decade we converted the production of congressional publications to this technology. We have continued to upgrade our systems as successive generations of technology have appeared. Today, our state-of-the-art electronic prepress systems are characterized by a complex of direct electronic linkages via CAPNET to a variety of congressional offices on Capitol Hill for data interchange. Using this network, we receive portions of Senate and House proceedings for the Congressional Record, House votes, Senate Digest, and House and Senate bills. Drafts of legislation destined to be introduced are received electronically from the Senate and House Offices of Legislative Counsel; the input is stored at GPO and can be accessed directly back on Capitol Hill for redrafting. We receive the House calendar electronically, and we also provide user support to a significant number of committees that are linked to us for the preparation of hearings, committee prints, and other critical documents. Once considered only the by-product of the print production process, digitized electronic databases of congressional information are now the primary product: they are the databases from which the official versions of documents are produced in print, CD-ROM, and online access formats. We use electronics to support Congress in other ways as well. For instance, we operate a print-on-demand system in the Senate Document Room that has reduced the requirement for printing extra copies of Senate documents for storage. This system, and another print-on-demand system located at our plant, are both networked to our congressional databases resident at GPO. Another example involves all of the materials published by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies for the swearing-in of President Clinton and Vice President Gore three weeks ago, which were designed by GPO personnel utilizing the latest computer technologies. Our electronic systems provide Congress and the taxpayers with a number of advantages. They provide a standardized system for use by both Houses of Congress, resulting in compatibility of production processes and uniformity in the resulting products. They provide for the interchangeable use of databases to produce different congressional publications. For example, a bill can be printed as a separate publication, or in reports or in the Congressional Record without rekeying or data manipulation, generating significant savings. Our systems are a centralized resource where production and dissemination equipment and staffing can be concentrated, yielding economies of scale and obviating the need for duplicative resources in each House of Congress. Finally, they facilitate both production and dissemination. Databases prepared for printing become databases suitable for CD-ROM distribution and for online dissemination on the Internet to libraries, schools, offices, and homes nationwide and around the world. Savings for Congress from the Use of Technology Our use of electronic information technologies has already substantially reduced the real cost of congressional information products. Improved productivity resulting from technology has enabled us to make substantial reductions in staffing requirements while continuing to improve services for Congress. In the mid-1970's, on the threshold of our conversion from hot metal typesetting to electronic photocomposition, we employed nearly 8,200 persons, more than 1,000 of whom were in the composition area alone. Today, we have 3,674 employees on board, fewer than at any time in this century. In the past 4 years our staffing has been reduced by 25 percent. In our composition area, we now have approximately 400 employees. The chart on page I-3 of our Budget Justification that was submitted to this Subcommittee details the historical decline in spending, in real economic terms, for congressional printing. In FY 1978, our appropriation for Congressional Printing and Binding was $84.6 million, the equivalent in today's dollars of $209.5 million. By comparison, our approved funding for FY 1997 is $81.7 million, a reduction of nearly two-thirds in real economic terms. This has yielded a savings to the taxpayer of well over $100 million per year. While some of that reduction is due in part to decisions Congress has made to reduce print runs for various publications, the vast majority of it is due to productivity improvements and staffing reductions made possible through the use of improved technology. These improvements, moreover, were achieved without interrupting service to Congress.