Federal Digital System

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 →


I recently was asked to comment about the evolution of XML for a story about what the Government Printing Office is doing in migrating data to XML — and about how APIs (Application Program Interfaces) can help get agencies extract data out of their systems using XML (extensible markup language)

It reminded me of a conversation I had with GPO managers about 15 years ago in which I advocated how XML would give them “author once — use many” capability that would stand the test of time and it has! 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 →