- Email: [email protected]
U.S. government printing office, no more
Journal of Government
Pergamon
Information, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 281-285.1996 Copyright 0 lYY6 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved
1352-0237/96 $15.00+ .OO
PIIS1352-0237(%)00003-2
U.S. GOVERNMENT
PRINTING
J. TIMOTHY
OFFICE,
NO MORE*
SPREHE””
Sprehe Information Management Associates, Inc., 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 507, Washington, DC 20004-1701, USA; Internet: [email protected]
Abstract-Changes in electronic technology and publishing and distribution patterns are affecting how government agencies are making information available. These factors, as well as the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) monopoly-like status, its inability to transform its operations as described in GPOLZOOI: Vision for a New Millennium, its historical inefficiency, and its potential violation of the separation of powers doctrine require new institutional arrangements for the distribution of government information to
ABOLISH
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
PRINTING
OFFICE (GPO)
In 1991, GPO issued GP0/2001: Vision for a New Millennium [l]. GPO had engaged in a highly laudable strategic planning effort, projecting a future in which the agency would transform itself into a general purpose information dissemination utility for the federal government. The new GPO would receive information in electronic form from authoring agencies and produce publications in a wide variety of print, electronic, and optical media for distribution to the public. The agency saw itself becoming an information utility to the government, specializing in the creation, replication, and dissemination of government information in whatever format best suited the customer and the user. Seamlessly united to the issuing agency via electronics, GPO would produce and deliver tapes, diskettes, CD-ROMs, satellite transmissions, or printed documents. To realize this future, GPO announced its intent to migrate away from traditional printing
*This paper is based on the testimony of J. Timothy Sprehe before the Joint House-Senate Legislative Subcommittee Hearing on “Downsizing Legislative Branch Support Agencies,” February 2.1995. **J. Timothy Sprehe is president of Sprehe Information Management Associates. Inc., a consulting firm specializing in federal information resources management. In addition to his consulting activities, he writes an opinion column for the newspaper Federal Computer Week. In 1991 he retired from federal service with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) where he concentrated on federal information policy issues, especially access to and dissemination of government information. 281
J. T. SPREHE
282
and embrace contemporary information technology. This author was among those who praised GPO’s new vision, saying that, if there was to be a GPO in 2001, this was surely what it must look like. This transformation has not occurred. No sooner was GPO/2001 printed than it was abandoned. No one at GPO now speaks of GPODOOI;it is a document forgotten if not repudiated. The only progress made on electronic dissemination at GPO has come about because Congress passed a law requiring that certain tasks be accomplished. Otherwise, it is business as usual at GPO-the same old print-oriented environment, a struggling sales program, a depository library program being slowly starved of funds. Meanwhile, U.S. government information has become available as online databases available on the Internet, as computer diskettes, and as compact discs (CD-ROMs). In these new developments, the agencies that produce the information are already dramatically way out in front of GPO and are sure to stay there. The establishment of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) among executive branch agencies has spurred agencies to set up an Internet presence and to begin to make their publications available electronically to the general public [2]. The new electronic age calls for new institutional arrangements. The time has come for the Congress to recognize realities, to close down the GPO, and to set a new course for the distribution of government information to the public. In 1990, the General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that, while GPO’s monopoly-like role in providing government printing services was originally created to assure efficiency, “with the passage of time that role has been transformed; it now perpetuates inefficiency because centralized control permits GPO to be insulated from market forces” [3]. According to GAO, GPO is an inefficient institution. GPO is said to be hemorrhaging red ink at the rate of $1 million a month. Its 1995 appropriation cost the taxpayers $122 million. Even if GPO were a model of efficiency, the government simply does not need its own printing agency, especially not in the electronic age and in the age of desktop publishing. Indeed, in its present form GPO presents a basic constitutional problem for the Congress, GPO is a legislative-branch agency that controls a management function of the executive branch, namely, the procurement and manufacture of printed products. Were the courts asked, they would doubtless find that this arrangement violates the separation of powers and is unconstitutional [4]. Federal printing is a management function connected to the production and distribution of government information. Printing and distribution should be left to the agencies that create and produce the information, so long as they do so within policy guidelines laid down by Congress. Congress should take the bold but eminently reasonable step of divesting itself of its printing function by closing GPO. It should do so in an orderly manner that ensures the economic security of GPO’s work force, ensures that federal printing is handled just like the manufacture and procurement of other goods and services that government requires, and ensures that some necessary functions of GPO are carried on elsewhere. In doing so, the Congress should articulate its own new vision for distributing government information in the electronic age.
DISPOSE
OF GPO’S
FUNCTIONS
AND
PERSONNEL
The fundamental problem with GPO is simply that it exists. Today it employs 4,300 dedicated men and women who depend for their economic livelihood on GPO’s continued existence. The real question about GPO is not whether the agency should continue
US GPO, no more
283
to exist-it should not-but how to dispose of the various functions now carried out by the agency. Congress should pass the necessary legislation to accomplish the following: l
l
l
l
Transfer executive branch printing authority to the General Services Administration (GSA) and regularize executive branch printing as a routine government procurement like any other commercially available commodity or service [5]. Buying printing is no more magical or complicated than buying computers or telecommunications; it requires skilled personnel but not a whole federal agency. Establish in GSA an Office of Publications and Printing Standards to administer uniform guidelines and practices throughout the executive branch. Establish a small Office of Congressional Printing Management, integrated with House and Senate Information Systems, that would administer the procurement of congressional printing from the private sector. Alternatively, if Congress believes it absolutely must manufacture its own printed products in-house, establish a small Congressional Printing Office. Transfer the functions of the Superintendent of Documents to the Library of Congress (LC) with the stipulations that: (a) the government documents sales program should be abolished, and the executive agencies that produce government documents should be permitted to sell their documents directly to the public. Document sales could be integrated into the GILS recently founded in the executive branch. (b) the LC should radically restructure the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to bring it into conformity with the realities of the information superhighway. A nationwide electronic network may well prove to be the best delivery system for getting government documents to the public through depository libraries. The LC should carry out the functions of cataloging and indexing, bylaw distribution, and international exchange.
l
l
l
Authorize GPO to first offer early retirement and buyouts to its personnel and then freeze new hires at GPO in order to reduce the work force by attrition. In 1991 GPO estimated that the median age of its work force was 58 years and that, with normal attrition and no replacements, the work force would diminish from 4,900 to 1,800-an almost two-thirds reduction-by the end of the decade. This is a very old work force. Encouraging early retirement would substantially diminish the number of GPO employees. Guarantee a federal job to all remaining GPO personnel. Relocate them by requiring executive branch agencies to give hiring preference to these personnel and to absorb surplus GPO personnel in proportion to the amount of printing the agencies procured in the previous fiscal year. This is a small price to pay in the short run for the long run savings of closing the agency. Besides, if executive branch agencies are to have authority to procure their own printing, they will need to acquire some of the printing procurement expertise now residing in GPO. The executive branch operates over 1,000 printing facilities. Although executive agencies are themselves attempting to downsize, the overall size of the executive branch is such that the absorption of several thousand GPO employees, spread over many agencies, should not present a major problem. Articulate a statutory policy on the dissemination of government information to the public and direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement that policy within the executive branch. Among other things, the policy should ensure that:
284
J. T. SPREHE
(a) Government information should be sold at prices no higher than the cost of dissemination. Agencies should not view the sale of government information as a profit-making enterprise but solely as cost recovery. (b) No government document may be published unless it is simultaneously sent to the FDLP. The current arrangement depends on documents flowing through GPO as the point of capture. This system is known to be highly defective and many government documents never reach the FDLP. If the agencies sell their own documents, the Congress would have to take the necessary steps to ensure that the agencies supply copies of those documents to the depository libraries. RECOMMENDATIONS Closing a federal agency is never a simple matter and is not cheap in the short run. In the case of GPO, Congress has several sources of revenue that could be used to pay for the demise of GPO. Specifically, the following are recommended: l
l
Sell off GPO’s plant and facilities. GPO is located in prime Washington, D.C., office space. In 1991, GPO’s Washington operations occupied 1.5 million square feet as its central office complex and another 700,000 square feet of rented space in the metropolitan area. In its own strategic plan GP0/2001, GPO suggested that some of its buildings be sold in order to generate capital for a new consolidated headquarters [6]. All of GPO’s facilities should be sold and the proceeds used to defray the costs of closing down the agency. The GPO sales program realizes about $90 million each year in revenue from the sale of U.S. government documents. At present, that $90 million stays in GPO to defray its institutional expenses. The executive agencies that produce the vast majority of government documents bear the cost of printing but never see the revenues returning from sales. If GPO were abolished, that $90 million would still be generated from document sales. The question naturally arises: what should be done with that money? An obvious answer is that, for some period of years, the revenues from sales of government documents could be devoted to defray the costs of closing GPO. Beyond that initial period, Congress could decide to apply revenues from document sales to reduce the federal deficit. Some of the money could be used to support the FDLP. Some could be returned to the executive agencies producing the information products to be used to improve public access to government information, especially for increasing the number and quality of electronic information products distributed over the Internet.
As with every scheme, problems remain to be worked out. One problem is that, if executive agencies were to sell their own documents, they might require statutory authorization for revolving funds. CONCLUSIONS For generations, the imposition of GPO as sole manufacturing and purchasing agent for executive branch printing has artificially interrupted the life cycle of government information products from creation to publication. The existence of GPO has meant that the government has inserted between information producers and public users an agency that possesses no knowledge of how the information came into being, of the nature and scope of that information, of the power and limits of that information, or how
US GPO, no more
28.5
best to understand and use that information. The net effect of this arrangement is that GPO has become a barrier, rather than a facilitator, in the task of informing the nation. It is time to end this arrangement and to devise new ways to better distribute government information. The Congress now has a unique opportunity to downsize legislative branch support agencies by providing for the orderly closing of GPO and the establishment of a new era in government information dissemination. Congress must seize this opportunity. NOTES 1. U.S. Government Printing Office, GP0/2001, Vision for a New Millennium: Strategic Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991). Information Locator 2. Eliot J. Christian, “Helping the Public Find Information: The U.S. Government Service” (GILS), Government Publications Review 21 (July/August 1994): 305-14. Status Contributes to lnef3. U.S. General Accounting Office, Government Printing Office: Monopoly-Like ficiency and Ineffectiveness (GAOIGGD-90-107) (Washington, DC: GAO, 1990) 2. 4. Consult: INS v. Chadha, 469 U.S. 919 (1983) for the Supreme Court’s view on the separation of powers in this area. Informa5. Bruce Morton, “Perceptions of Power, the People, and Future Access to U.S. Government tion,” Documents To The People (DTTP) 17 (March 1989): 9-17. 6. GP0/2001,32-33.
Pergamon
Information, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 281-285.1996 Copyright 0 lYY6 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved
1352-0237/96 $15.00+ .OO
PIIS1352-0237(%)00003-2
U.S. GOVERNMENT
PRINTING
J. TIMOTHY
OFFICE,
NO MORE*
SPREHE””
Sprehe Information Management Associates, Inc., 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Suite 507, Washington, DC 20004-1701, USA; Internet: [email protected]
Abstract-Changes in electronic technology and publishing and distribution patterns are affecting how government agencies are making information available. These factors, as well as the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) monopoly-like status, its inability to transform its operations as described in GPOLZOOI: Vision for a New Millennium, its historical inefficiency, and its potential violation of the separation of powers doctrine require new institutional arrangements for the distribution of government information to
ABOLISH
THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
PRINTING
OFFICE (GPO)
In 1991, GPO issued GP0/2001: Vision for a New Millennium [l]. GPO had engaged in a highly laudable strategic planning effort, projecting a future in which the agency would transform itself into a general purpose information dissemination utility for the federal government. The new GPO would receive information in electronic form from authoring agencies and produce publications in a wide variety of print, electronic, and optical media for distribution to the public. The agency saw itself becoming an information utility to the government, specializing in the creation, replication, and dissemination of government information in whatever format best suited the customer and the user. Seamlessly united to the issuing agency via electronics, GPO would produce and deliver tapes, diskettes, CD-ROMs, satellite transmissions, or printed documents. To realize this future, GPO announced its intent to migrate away from traditional printing
*This paper is based on the testimony of J. Timothy Sprehe before the Joint House-Senate Legislative Subcommittee Hearing on “Downsizing Legislative Branch Support Agencies,” February 2.1995. **J. Timothy Sprehe is president of Sprehe Information Management Associates. Inc., a consulting firm specializing in federal information resources management. In addition to his consulting activities, he writes an opinion column for the newspaper Federal Computer Week. In 1991 he retired from federal service with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) where he concentrated on federal information policy issues, especially access to and dissemination of government information. 281
J. T. SPREHE
282
and embrace contemporary information technology. This author was among those who praised GPO’s new vision, saying that, if there was to be a GPO in 2001, this was surely what it must look like. This transformation has not occurred. No sooner was GPO/2001 printed than it was abandoned. No one at GPO now speaks of GPODOOI;it is a document forgotten if not repudiated. The only progress made on electronic dissemination at GPO has come about because Congress passed a law requiring that certain tasks be accomplished. Otherwise, it is business as usual at GPO-the same old print-oriented environment, a struggling sales program, a depository library program being slowly starved of funds. Meanwhile, U.S. government information has become available as online databases available on the Internet, as computer diskettes, and as compact discs (CD-ROMs). In these new developments, the agencies that produce the information are already dramatically way out in front of GPO and are sure to stay there. The establishment of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS) among executive branch agencies has spurred agencies to set up an Internet presence and to begin to make their publications available electronically to the general public [2]. The new electronic age calls for new institutional arrangements. The time has come for the Congress to recognize realities, to close down the GPO, and to set a new course for the distribution of government information to the public. In 1990, the General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that, while GPO’s monopoly-like role in providing government printing services was originally created to assure efficiency, “with the passage of time that role has been transformed; it now perpetuates inefficiency because centralized control permits GPO to be insulated from market forces” [3]. According to GAO, GPO is an inefficient institution. GPO is said to be hemorrhaging red ink at the rate of $1 million a month. Its 1995 appropriation cost the taxpayers $122 million. Even if GPO were a model of efficiency, the government simply does not need its own printing agency, especially not in the electronic age and in the age of desktop publishing. Indeed, in its present form GPO presents a basic constitutional problem for the Congress, GPO is a legislative-branch agency that controls a management function of the executive branch, namely, the procurement and manufacture of printed products. Were the courts asked, they would doubtless find that this arrangement violates the separation of powers and is unconstitutional [4]. Federal printing is a management function connected to the production and distribution of government information. Printing and distribution should be left to the agencies that create and produce the information, so long as they do so within policy guidelines laid down by Congress. Congress should take the bold but eminently reasonable step of divesting itself of its printing function by closing GPO. It should do so in an orderly manner that ensures the economic security of GPO’s work force, ensures that federal printing is handled just like the manufacture and procurement of other goods and services that government requires, and ensures that some necessary functions of GPO are carried on elsewhere. In doing so, the Congress should articulate its own new vision for distributing government information in the electronic age.
DISPOSE
OF GPO’S
FUNCTIONS
AND
PERSONNEL
The fundamental problem with GPO is simply that it exists. Today it employs 4,300 dedicated men and women who depend for their economic livelihood on GPO’s continued existence. The real question about GPO is not whether the agency should continue
US GPO, no more
283
to exist-it should not-but how to dispose of the various functions now carried out by the agency. Congress should pass the necessary legislation to accomplish the following: l
l
l
l
Transfer executive branch printing authority to the General Services Administration (GSA) and regularize executive branch printing as a routine government procurement like any other commercially available commodity or service [5]. Buying printing is no more magical or complicated than buying computers or telecommunications; it requires skilled personnel but not a whole federal agency. Establish in GSA an Office of Publications and Printing Standards to administer uniform guidelines and practices throughout the executive branch. Establish a small Office of Congressional Printing Management, integrated with House and Senate Information Systems, that would administer the procurement of congressional printing from the private sector. Alternatively, if Congress believes it absolutely must manufacture its own printed products in-house, establish a small Congressional Printing Office. Transfer the functions of the Superintendent of Documents to the Library of Congress (LC) with the stipulations that: (a) the government documents sales program should be abolished, and the executive agencies that produce government documents should be permitted to sell their documents directly to the public. Document sales could be integrated into the GILS recently founded in the executive branch. (b) the LC should radically restructure the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to bring it into conformity with the realities of the information superhighway. A nationwide electronic network may well prove to be the best delivery system for getting government documents to the public through depository libraries. The LC should carry out the functions of cataloging and indexing, bylaw distribution, and international exchange.
l
l
l
Authorize GPO to first offer early retirement and buyouts to its personnel and then freeze new hires at GPO in order to reduce the work force by attrition. In 1991 GPO estimated that the median age of its work force was 58 years and that, with normal attrition and no replacements, the work force would diminish from 4,900 to 1,800-an almost two-thirds reduction-by the end of the decade. This is a very old work force. Encouraging early retirement would substantially diminish the number of GPO employees. Guarantee a federal job to all remaining GPO personnel. Relocate them by requiring executive branch agencies to give hiring preference to these personnel and to absorb surplus GPO personnel in proportion to the amount of printing the agencies procured in the previous fiscal year. This is a small price to pay in the short run for the long run savings of closing the agency. Besides, if executive branch agencies are to have authority to procure their own printing, they will need to acquire some of the printing procurement expertise now residing in GPO. The executive branch operates over 1,000 printing facilities. Although executive agencies are themselves attempting to downsize, the overall size of the executive branch is such that the absorption of several thousand GPO employees, spread over many agencies, should not present a major problem. Articulate a statutory policy on the dissemination of government information to the public and direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement that policy within the executive branch. Among other things, the policy should ensure that:
284
J. T. SPREHE
(a) Government information should be sold at prices no higher than the cost of dissemination. Agencies should not view the sale of government information as a profit-making enterprise but solely as cost recovery. (b) No government document may be published unless it is simultaneously sent to the FDLP. The current arrangement depends on documents flowing through GPO as the point of capture. This system is known to be highly defective and many government documents never reach the FDLP. If the agencies sell their own documents, the Congress would have to take the necessary steps to ensure that the agencies supply copies of those documents to the depository libraries. RECOMMENDATIONS Closing a federal agency is never a simple matter and is not cheap in the short run. In the case of GPO, Congress has several sources of revenue that could be used to pay for the demise of GPO. Specifically, the following are recommended: l
l
Sell off GPO’s plant and facilities. GPO is located in prime Washington, D.C., office space. In 1991, GPO’s Washington operations occupied 1.5 million square feet as its central office complex and another 700,000 square feet of rented space in the metropolitan area. In its own strategic plan GP0/2001, GPO suggested that some of its buildings be sold in order to generate capital for a new consolidated headquarters [6]. All of GPO’s facilities should be sold and the proceeds used to defray the costs of closing down the agency. The GPO sales program realizes about $90 million each year in revenue from the sale of U.S. government documents. At present, that $90 million stays in GPO to defray its institutional expenses. The executive agencies that produce the vast majority of government documents bear the cost of printing but never see the revenues returning from sales. If GPO were abolished, that $90 million would still be generated from document sales. The question naturally arises: what should be done with that money? An obvious answer is that, for some period of years, the revenues from sales of government documents could be devoted to defray the costs of closing GPO. Beyond that initial period, Congress could decide to apply revenues from document sales to reduce the federal deficit. Some of the money could be used to support the FDLP. Some could be returned to the executive agencies producing the information products to be used to improve public access to government information, especially for increasing the number and quality of electronic information products distributed over the Internet.
As with every scheme, problems remain to be worked out. One problem is that, if executive agencies were to sell their own documents, they might require statutory authorization for revolving funds. CONCLUSIONS For generations, the imposition of GPO as sole manufacturing and purchasing agent for executive branch printing has artificially interrupted the life cycle of government information products from creation to publication. The existence of GPO has meant that the government has inserted between information producers and public users an agency that possesses no knowledge of how the information came into being, of the nature and scope of that information, of the power and limits of that information, or how
US GPO, no more
28.5
best to understand and use that information. The net effect of this arrangement is that GPO has become a barrier, rather than a facilitator, in the task of informing the nation. It is time to end this arrangement and to devise new ways to better distribute government information. The Congress now has a unique opportunity to downsize legislative branch support agencies by providing for the orderly closing of GPO and the establishment of a new era in government information dissemination. Congress must seize this opportunity. NOTES 1. U.S. Government Printing Office, GP0/2001, Vision for a New Millennium: Strategic Planning (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991). Information Locator 2. Eliot J. Christian, “Helping the Public Find Information: The U.S. Government Service” (GILS), Government Publications Review 21 (July/August 1994): 305-14. Status Contributes to lnef3. U.S. General Accounting Office, Government Printing Office: Monopoly-Like ficiency and Ineffectiveness (GAOIGGD-90-107) (Washington, DC: GAO, 1990) 2. 4. Consult: INS v. Chadha, 469 U.S. 919 (1983) for the Supreme Court’s view on the separation of powers in this area. Informa5. Bruce Morton, “Perceptions of Power, the People, and Future Access to U.S. Government tion,” Documents To The People (DTTP) 17 (March 1989): 9-17. 6. GP0/2001,32-33.