GPO's permanent press

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

Brass at the Government Printing Office soon will get a first look at a draft plan for transforming the government's document agency into a digital-content manager. Says new GPO chief technical officer <b>Mike Wash</b>: "The cornerstone of the plan is world-class content management."

Brass at the Government Printing Office soon will get a first look at a draft plan for transforming the government's document agency into a digital-content manager.The plan's author, inventor Michael L. Wash, came to GPO in June as chief technical officer and co-head of the Office of Innovation and New Technology. He holds 18 U.S. patents from his previous career at Eastman Kodak Co.'The cornerstone of the plan is world-class content management,' Wash said. 'We are expected to preserve federal publications whenever they are needed and at a level of authenticity that can be trusted. They should be available in perpetuity.'Around Oct. 1, Wash and an in-house GPO team will present public printer Bruce James with a three-year plan for creating an enterprise capable of managing the government's print legacy as well as current and future 'born digital' content. Once the plan gains James' approval, GPO will seek funding from Congress.Meanwhile, GPO is preparing to redevelop the site of its century-old brick complex in Washington and move within the next two years to smaller headquarters. A now-disused underground conveyor once carried reams of printed output from the agency's presses to the old Washington Post Office for delivery. GPO itself operated in analog mode for most of the 20th century.But the last decade forced changes. By last fall, GPO had shut down all its brick-and-mortar bookstores except the one at headquarters. About 2,500 employees remain of a workforce that once was twice that size. The chief human capital officer, Robert Carr, was named last year to retrain GPO workers for jobs that entail less paper-handling.Nonetheless, GPO still is a big consumer of paper. In 1992, the agency bought about 79 million pounds of paper. Last year, it consumed 38 million pounds.As creation of hard-copy documents has declined at GPO, online use of government documents has been on the rise. GPOaccess.gov currently lists more than 250,000 government titles, all downloadable for free.But paper still matters. The agency has adopted a publish-on-demand strategy using different, specialized presses for long or short document runs with large or small page counts. Although it now contracts out many jobs, GPO still prints U.S. passport pages in Washington, and its officials do not foresee renaming the office to reflect the planned digital destiny.To merge the paper and online worlds, the Wash team's plan must resolve a content management dilemma: The government's legacy paper documents are no longer warehoused in quantity but must still be available when needed. Plus, the digital content created by government agencies today already amounts to many terabytes'Wash could not estimate how many'and grows daily.GPO isn't alone in struggling with the access-and-storage dilemma. The National Archives and Records Administration and the Library of Congress also are trying to design massive content management plans, but with slightly different goals. NARA's interest is in archiving the government's content, LOC's in distributed access to many kinds of digital information'not just government documents.Following NARA's lead, GPO recently hired Integrated Computer Engineering Inc. of Arlington, Va.'a unit of American Systems Corp. of Chantilly, Va.''to make sure our concept of operations is compliant with the IEEE enterprise content management standard and as robust as it can be,' Wash said.Extensible Markup Language tagging 'is likely to be one of our approaches' to managing the government's digital content, he said, 'but it's a formatting solution of today. Twenty years from now, there will be something else. We have to make sure the system we invent will not have to be re-engineered in 20 years.'To store all the terabytes, Wash does not yet know whether GPO will choose centralized storage or a distributed model. 'My personal opinion is that we will have a mix of those,' he said. Distributed storage is better for maximizing uptime, he believes, but central storage gives faster access to the information.Not too many years ago, users traveled to a federal depository library to read hard-copy documents, he said, but now they go to the Web and print out what they want. 'And that absolutely will change,' he predicted.'We know that we will continue to print text,' but future government documents might consist of, say, video or audio streams synchronized with text over satellite channels.'Our content management system has to be capable of supporting all that,' he said, without closing out new technologies or new ways of presentation that haven't been invented yet.

'We have to make sure the system we invent will not have to be re-engineered in 20 years,' GPO's Mike Wash says.

Rick Steele

At GPO, inventor Mike Wash has a plan to care for content beyond print































Following the leader











NEXT STORY: Fine-tuned control

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.