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 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to present the funding requirements of the Government Printing Office (GPO) for FY 1998, which are $84 million for Congressional Printing and Binding and $30.5 million for the Salaries and Expenses of the Superintendent of Documents. To assist you in your review of our appropriations request, I have provided introductory information relative to GPO's mission and programs. OVERVIEW OF GPO GPO Mission and Purpose GPO's mission, as required by the public printing and documents chapters of Title 44 of the U.S. Code, is to fulfill the printing needs of the Federal Government and distribute Government publications to the public. In 1993, an amendment to Title 44, the GPO Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act (P.L. 103-40), expanded our statutory mandate to include the dissemination of Government information products online. GPO is essentially a service organization. We provide printing and information replication services to Congress and Federal agencies through in-plant production and the purchase of information products from the private sector. We procure approximately 75 percent of all printing requisitioned from us, and produce the remainder in-house, of which about half is for Congress. We disseminate Government information directly to the public through a sales program and to Federal depository libraries nationwide where the information may be used by the public free of charge. We disseminate a growing volume of information via the Internet free of charge. We catalog and index Government information products, and we distribute them on behalf of other Federal agencies. We conduct all of our services in a non-partisan, service-oriented environment that emphasizes the primacy of the customer's requirements for timeliness, quality, security, and economy in printing and related information services, and are committed to achieving the greatest access and equity in information dissemination whether through printed publications, CD-ROM, or online. There are significant information policy implications resulting from the mission and operations of GPO. Our programs reduce the need for duplicative and wasteful printing operations throughout the Government, achieve significant savings through a centralized production and procurement system, and enhance public access to critical Government information. More broadly, GPO is a key component of the Government's informing function, a role traceable to Article I of the Constitution. A century ago, publications distribution activities under the Superintendent of Documents were placed by Congress in GPO to create an economical link between those operations and our production activities. The link between production and distribution in GPO ensures that the most comprehensive range of publications possible is made available for dissemination to the public. The establishment of a single dissemination entity in the Superintendent of Documents provides the public with a central, visible, and convenient point of access to the myriad Government publications produced each year. We are located in the legislative branch not only to provide for direct oversight by Congress of its own printing, but to facilitate direct oversight of the Government's primary information dissemination programs by the elected representatives of the people. Electronic information technologies have not altered our mission to perform an informing function, although these technologies are changing the way that mission is performed, making the information products produced by GPO far more cost-effective and universally accessible than ever before. ELECTRONIC SUBMISSION OF CONGRESSIONAL DATA Products Received Electronically As noted above, we already receive a number of products electronically from Congress: introduced bills, filed House reports, House calendars, up to 40 percent of hearings pages from both the House and the Senate, and up to 50 percent of Senate proceedings for the Congressional Record (including the Senate Daily Digest in the Record). For some of these products, such as the House calendar, we receive electronic data that is standardized and certified (or verified) to run through GPO's prepress systems with minimal intervention by GPO. We simply convert the data through our MicroComp program and print and process the data for online dissemination as we receive it. For other products, more GPO work is required before the product can be printed and released for online dissemination. However, a number of congressional products are not received electronically. By the end of the 104th Congress, we were receiving only 3-5 percent of House proceedings for the Congressional Record electronically (although this proportion is expected to increase substantially in the 105th Congress). Up to 60 percent of hearings pages from the House and Senate combined are submitted to us as camera copy, a technique that was adopted many years ago as a cost-saving measure in conventional printing (and also as a means of capturing non-digitized information, such as affidavits, news articles, or other exhibits), but which now results in a majority of hearings data not being digitized for database construction and dissemination via CD-ROM or online service. We are targeting these products for increased submission in electronic formats in the 105th Congress to both reduce the cost of production as a print product and, in the case of hearings, to make them available for electronic dissemination. We will work closely with the Clerk of the House, the Secretary of the Senate, committees, and other parties in both Houses to improve the rate of electronic submissions of congressional data to GPO. GPO's Services I want to emphasize to this Subcommittee that there are strong reasons for GPO's continued involvement in the preparation and dissemination of congressional information products. Our production process standardizes databases so they can be conventionally printed, demand-printed, and/or disseminated electronically in the proper and consistent format. GPO assures that data will be proofread to ensure it is correct, an essential function since making a typographical mistake in a critical report or legislative bill can have far more serious consequences than making a typo in a newspaper. We also assure that production scheduling is in accordance with instructions from the congressional leadership, and that dissemination is carried out in accordance with leadership instructions as well as statutory requirements. Optimally, we would like to see as much data as possible submitted to us electronically, and this data should be standardized and certified for GPO's prepress systems. We are actively encouraging greater electronic submission of data to GPO. We have had a number of meetings with congressional staff to discuss improving the rate of electronic submissions. Our rate structure for the Congressional Record is designed to encourage more electronic submissions. For manuscript submissions, the page rate is $448. For pages submitted electronically, the page rate is $408, a reduction of 9 percent from the manuscript rate. Increased submission of Record data in electronic format will generate savings in the 105th Congress. Proposed House Document Management System Recently a plan was proposed for creating a House document management system. Funding is being requested for this system for FY 1998. The primary objective of the plan is for the House "to become less dependent on [GPO] for preparation, printing, and distribution of official House documents" (House Committee on Appropriations, Legislative Branch Appropriations for 1998, Hearings, Part I: Justification of Budget Estimates, p. 163). GPO was not consulted in the development of this plan. We have serious concerns about this plan. Its premise--to establish "a standard format and easy to use word processing software" (Hearings, Part I, p. 163)--appears to overlook the initiatives we are undertaking to provide increased electronic document capabilities for all of Congress, particularly through the conversion of all congressional documents to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The plan apparently would rely on congressional staff for document inputting, formatting, and management, despite efforts by Congress to reduce staff. It envisions the installation of a system over a 3-year period, with an investment of $5 million to $8 million in hardware and software alone (apparently not including equipment maintenance costs), and a potentially significant investment in personnel and training. It is not clear from the plan what would happen to existing electronic interfaces we currently maintain with the House Appropriations Committee, the House Office of Legislative Counsel, House Information Resources, and the Office of Law Revision Counsel, which works with us to produce the U.S. Code. It also is not clear what would happen to the uniformity between House and Senate publications under this plan. Where public dissemination is concerned under this plan, it is not clear whether distribution of official House documents would be made to depository libraries, whether they would be cataloged and indexed through GPO, or whether they could be provided for sale through the Superintendent of Documents. The proposed system apparently would utilize the Library of Congress's THOMAS information system, despite the fact that THOMAS already derives some of its congressional database offerings from GPO. The plan leaves in question the provision of access to key House documents through GPO Access, including the House portion of the Congressional Record, which we are required by P.L. 103-40 to provide to the public online. This plan appears to undermine the capability already resident in GPO to support the printing and information product needs of both Houses of Congress. The plan seems to be an effort to reinvent the wheel for one House of Congress, and would merely shift costs of production from GPO to the House itself, with the attendant loss of the standardized resource currently residing in GPO. Rather than having the House create an independent document system, we want to work with Congress within the framework of Title 44 to achieve real savings for the taxpayer in--and genuine improvements for public access to--congressional information products.