GPO

The legal profession may be known for many things, but innovative practices isn’t always one that comes to mine – especially within government circles.

So it may come as a surprise that among a newly-published list of 50 leading contributors to the legal community, which included executives from Yale Law School as well as Apple and Google, it also included Mary Alice Baish, the superintendent of documents for U. S. Government Printing Office. Keep reading →

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has signed an agreement with Barnes & Noble to sell Federal eBooks.

GPO works with federal agencies to produce their publications, books, and reports in print and digital formats, including eBook formats. Keep reading →

The rapid embrace of computer tablets in and outside of government has escalated the debate among federal agencies over the merits of designing native applications for tablets.

But if the Government Printing Office offers any indication, the prevailing approach is expected to be for agencies to channel development resources into applications that recognize and adapt to a variety of mobile devices, rather than concentrating on specific products, according to Lisa LaPlant, GPO’s lead program planner for programs strategy and technology (pictured above center). Keep reading →


Though historically a place where ink meets paper, the Government Printing Office now produces nearly all of the country’s most important documents in digital form and is currently pursuing technologies to broaden its reach across agencies and to the public.

Chief Technology Officer Richard Davis said efforts are under way to migrate troves of digital information in the Federal Digital System created in 2006 to Extensible Markup Language (XML). The first of which was the fiscal 2013 budget released Monday via a collection of documents published by GPO. The rest of GPO’s data will migrate during fiscal 2012. The move will essentially allow users to use and pass on the information more easily and could eventually allow GPO to generate revenue through new digital products. Keep reading →

The proposed Federal Budget released this past Monday to Congress for fiscal year 2013 is actually a collection of documents, assembled by the Office of Management and Budget and published digitally and in print by the Government Printing Office.

The document, as required by Congress, must show the current and projected condition of the U.S. Treasury at the end of the last completed fiscal year, the current fiscal year, and the next fiscal year if the proposed budget is carried out. Keep reading →


On a recent chilly morning inside the tall brick building where America’s official information has been printed and stored for 150 years, Davita Vance-Cooks began shaking hands with the 1,900 employees she’s now in charge of leading through a technological transformation.

A few got warm hugs or pats on the shoulder. It’s clear Vance-Cooks is no stranger in this crowd. Keep reading →


The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has provided support to the Library of Congress (LOC) in the creation of a new iPad app that provides users with mobile access to the daily Congressional Record.

The app was requested by the House of Representatives Committee on House Administration. The Congressional Record is the official compilation of the proceedings and debates of Congress. GPO makes this publication available everyday that Congress is in session in print form and in digital form on the agency’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). Keep reading →

Since 1878, the Statistical Abstract of the United States has been printed by the Government Printing Office on behalf of the Census Bureau.

The “Stat Abstract” is considered “the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It compiles data from multiple sources, including the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other federal agencies and private organizations. Keep reading →

For us East Coasters, our recent experience with an earthquake was an unusual one. Of course, they’re comparatively rare here and not as strong as the ones that plague the West Coast, but it still makes you think about what would happen to your house (and you) if a really big one hit.

What about my house? Even aside from how it would stand up structurally, I’ve got a lot of books and bookcases – maybe an avalanche waiting to happen. Then there are the china cabinets – it really wouldn’t do to have grandma’s best strewn across the room in shards, would it? Keep reading →

It’s hard to believe that the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is almost here. It was one of those events, like Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination, which remains in the memory with startling clarity.

From where I was working in the Government Printing Office (GPO), we could see the column of smoke from the strike on the Pentagon. Later, after Federal Government facilities in the DC area closed down, I walked from GPO to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (I still remember a woman telling a Smithsonian guard that she had seen someone on the building’s roof – and who could tell what that meant in a world spinning out of control?) to meet my wife, who by some miracle got into the District and picked me up. Keep reading →