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Francis J. Buckley, Jr.
Superintendent of Documents

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here in Philadelphia, a city of such historic significance, on President’s Day! I am especially pleased to have this opportunity to talk with you today about the Government Printing Office’s (GPO’s) initiatives in the area of digital public information and to be part of a panel with Walt Warnick. He and I have taken our "show" on the road a number of times over the past year and on behalf of GPO, I want to express our appreciation to him for the partnerships on which we have embarked with the Department of Energy.

Last October I participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for PubScience with a number of individuals including Walt and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. In his extemporaneous remarks, Secretary Richardson complimented the work of GPO and noted we were often not recognized for all the important work we do in printing and dissemination, but that we were doing the "Lord’s work." Certainly high praise! Kurt Molholm (Director, Defense Technical Information Center) who was there, quipped that when they refer to GPO they say "oh my God."

Since we are in Philadelphia, it provides a great segue for me to tell you about one of our latest ventures at GPO. In December 1999, we released a new feature on our GPO Access website, "Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids." With Benjamin Franklin as a guide, the site provides a locator service to age-appropriate online government resources for students in grades K-12, parents, and teachers. In addition, "Ben’s Guide" provides tips for using GPO Access and links to other Federal Government websites for kids as well as some games and puzzles to make the site fun.

The GPO staff members who are working on Ben’s page are quite immersed in the life and times of Mr. Franklin. In fact, they have taken to sharing a number of his quotations with me – one that is rather appropriate for speechmaking is: "Speak little, do much," from Poor Richard’s Almanack (1755). Let me take Mr. Franklin’s advice; I will speak for a short time today while bringing you up-to-speed on how much we are doing in GPO in this electronic era.

Another quote from Mr. Franklin goes: "Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."

Indeed GPO is moving forward and doing all it can to "grow" into contemporary and future modes of information storage and dissemination from their 19th and 20th century roots. We cannot freeze technological development or turn back the clock. We want to assure that the American public continues to have ready, long-term no-fee access to electronic government information, as it has for the print/tangible products that have been distributed through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) for more than a century.

GPO, through its dissemination programs including its online service, GPO Access, is moving forward in its transition to an electronic future. But before I talk about the Digital Millennium, let me very briefly describe the major dissemination programs I oversee as the Superintendent of Documents:

• Under our Cataloging and Indexing Program we produce the long-running Monthly Catalog of the United States Government Publications. This catalog and its predecessors have provided a basic index to government information products since 1895. It is now available in print and on our website as well as via FTP for subscribers who want the whole file. Since 1987 the Library of Congress has recognized GPO as the authoritative national source for descriptive and subject cataloging for Federal Government documents. We're cataloging approximately 25,000 items per year on OCLC using the MARC format, Anglo-American Cataloging Rules and LC subject headings. We are cataloging print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online resources. In addition, other locator services are being created and maintained on GPO Access such as: GILS records for GPO and 42 other agencies, Browse Electronic Titles (BET) and Browse Topics. These additional Locator Services provide hypertext links to over 10,000 Government information resources. Most FDLP products in paper and CD-ROM and those available via the Internet are cataloged within one or two weeks of receipt.

• The Federal Depository Library Program is our basic program for public access to government information products. We like to think of it as the first "freedom of information program." In FY ’99, we distributed over 16 million copies of 40,000 publications to the 1351 libraries in the depository program. Despite the transition to electronic formats for many government information products, this was an increase of 1.4% in tangible titles distributed over FY ’98 and an 11.5% increase in copies over the previous year. Depository libraries are located in almost all congressional districts across the U.S. and territories. Title 44, our legal mandate, provides for a wide array of government publications to be provided to depository libraries for no-fee public access. Section 1902 requires that all government publications of public interest and educational value, except those classified for national security, or those required for official use only or for strictly administrative or operational purposes be made available to depository libraries. Selective depository libraries choose what publications they want to receive based on the needs of their local constituency and have a minimum 5-year retention requirement. The 53 regional depository libraries receive complete collections for permanent retention and public access.

• GPO Access is our free website that contains official government information products from all 3 branches of government. We have over 104,000 publications on our own servers and point to nearly 70,000 other publications on agency websites. Our in-house data is primarily basic legislative or regulatory information. We are seeing rapidly growing use--our most recent statistics indicate an average of 21 million items per month downloaded from the materials on GPO servers. The electronic transition of the FDLP is occurring in tandem with the publishing patterns of Federal agencies, as many of them are in their own electronic transition. We, therefore, have more and more Federal Government information products being made available to depository libraries and the public via GPO Access. In FY 2000 to date, 4 months--Oct. 1999 through Jan. 2000--the proportion of materials provided to depository libraries was: 57% electronic, 25% microfiche, 17% paper, 1% CD-ROM. This compares to all of FY 1999: 46% electronic, 37% microfiche, 17% paper, 1% CD-ROM. You can see, the electronic number continues to grow.

• The Document Sales Program’s mission is to provide a broad spectrum of government information products for sale at reasonable prices while recovering costs. In 1999, we sold about 19 million copies of some 12,000 publications with revenue of about $51 million dollars. The program includes a large central facility, which accepts orders by phone, mail, fax or e-mail and ships materials by mail or Federal Express. In addition, we have 24 bookstores across the country, including one here in downtown Philadelphia, plus the Consumer Information Center in Pueblo, CO. For the last couple of years, we have experienced dramatic reductions in sales due to changing government publishing practices, both in quantity and format, changing customer purchasing patterns, and increasing competition for products and markets from other government sales programs and the private sector. The fact that we and other government agencies put many of our sales publications on the Web for free access, including our traditional best sellers such as the Federal Register, Congressional Record, Code of Federal Regulations and Commerce Business Daily, undercuts the market for people who have only occasional reference use of the publications. The bottom line is we find ourselves in a somewhat schizophrenic position, promoting free access on one hand and trying to run a cost recovery sales program with the same information in different formats on the other hand. But what we can get satisfaction in is the greater total amount of public access and use of Federal government information we are seeing.

While there might be disputes as to whether we are, in fact, in the new millennium, there can be no argument that we are now in the digital age. Be that as it may, GPO’s work continues to include that term "printing."

As an example, the just released fiscal year 2001 budget is still wanted in print, in addition to the growing demand for the electronic version. Sales of the budget books, both print and CD-ROM versions, were up over last year. The main GPO Bookstore reported first-day sales revenue of $133,175 for the tangible versions. This is up from $112,249 in 1999. Our other Washington, DC bookstore generated revenue of almost $25,000, which is an increase from last year as well.

The actual number of tangible copies sold the first day declined slightly in both Washington, DC locations to about 4500, even though this was the first year that the CD-ROM version of the budget was available on the same day the budget was released. It sold, I am told, like "hotcakes," and many individuals were pleased to find a CD-ROM version available at less than one-tenth the cost of the print version. But as a contrasting commentary on the times, we put the budget up at the same time on our GPO Access website and had over 115,000 hits on the first day.

In this transition period, we are pleased that we continue to provide more access to more government information in a variety of formats to more people than ever before! The methods and mediums are evolving and changing, but the overall purpose of informing the nation is being fulfilled.

But although the growth in electronic technology in some ways provides more and better access to government information products, I think we can all agree that it has created problems, too. It has become more of a challenge for GPO, librarians and the public to find data in the decentralized environment of Federal websites that are being established without coordination, standards or guidelines. As you know, there are a number of public and commercial efforts underway to provide indexing and retrieval programs for government information on the Internet. There are various approaches by search engines such as GovBot, Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista and Google and some services are establishing specialized programs or portals such as Northern Light and America Online.

Within the government in the last couple of years, there have been proposals for a master web.gov site, and currently there are discussions about a partnership-based clearinghouse for Federal government information. Through it all, GPO Access has continued to grow and develop. GPO continues to provide data to the Library of Congress for its Thomas (as in Jefferson) database and to other information redisseminators. And we have removed a robot exclusion so our site can be indexed by other search engines and retrieved by people performing general searches as well as by those performing searches specifically on GPO Access.

One of GPO’s concerns, through the FDLP and GPO Access, is to provide current and future public access to electronic Federal Government information products of public interest or educational value. But it is clear that GPO cannot work on such an undertaking alone. Toward this end, we have created an Electronic Collection Development plan.

While we can exercise retention of the digital government information on our own servers, we are all too aware that public access to agency data can disappear with the click of the "delete" key. In fact, I am sure that many of you heard about the loss of some 43,000 e-mails at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) reported last year. What makes the incident most unfortunate is that the e-mails are gone without a trace; there was no back-up system in operation at the time this happened. How the messages disappeared is really not the issue. The fact is that they are gone and that is happening to other government agency information both by mischance as well as by uninformed or narrow decision making about retention and access requirements. It is imperative that there be safeguards in place to ensure that government information from the latter part of the 20^th century or the beginning of the 21^st century not wind up in a black hole in cyberspace.

GPO has embarked upon two strategies that, in tandem, should assure permanent public access to electronic Government information products. They are:

1. Partnerships between Government agencies, depository libraries and the FDLP;
2. The establishment of a digital archive.

We see a great benefit deriving from the development of partnerships that share the tasks of building, storing, disseminating, and preserving the FDLP Electronic Collection. The partnership concept builds upon the successful model of the distributed collection of tangible FDLP products made permanently available through regional depository libraries. In electronic product content partnerships, GPO wants to broker agreements with other Federal agencies and/or depository libraries to provide the environment and resources for permanent Internet access to agency products.

As an example, we work closely with DOE on a number of projects. DOE’s electronic dissemination system, Information Bridge, is available to depository libraries and the public via GPO Access. The Interagency Agreement between GPO and DOE states that DOE shall "ensure that reference copies of DOE reports made accessible pursuant to this IA remain freely available to Federal depository libraries and the public on an ongoing and permanent basis." Digital copies of this collection of research reports are available online and they no longer need to be disseminated to depository libraries in a tangible format for long-term retention for potential public access. In fact, the greater accessibility of these reports has caused use to increase dramatically.

Other prototype partnerships include:

• University of Chicago (UIC) and the Department of State -- UIC provides permanent public access to files removed from the active main pages of the State Department

• University of North Texas (UNT) and GPO -- UNT provides permanent online access to electronic publications of selected Federal Government agencies which have ceased operation – the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals Research Collection and the National Civil Aviation Review Commission Research Collection.

Another way to meet our permanent public access commitment for the Electronic Collection is to bring agency-disseminated Internet resources under the purview of GPO and incorporate them into a digital archive. We have begun to capture copies of agency electronic information products that we catalog and for which we create a PURL - a persistent universal resource locator - so that if the information is no longer accessible on the agency website users will be automatically redirected to the archived version. Our preliminary work indicates that this process works well for capturing static, online publications but replication of dynamic databases (those that change regularly) is a challenge we have not begun to actively address. As objectives for this program, we anticipate this year GPO will have over 500 "at risk" electronic titles stored in the FDLP Electronic Collection archive. In each subsequent fiscal year, our goal is to select, acquire, archive, and provide access to at least 500 electronic titles and by FY 2003, we want to develop a plan for avoiding technological obsolescence of the files in the Electronic Collection archive.

Last year GPO convened several meetings of representatives of the national libraries and other Federal agencies with major information and dissemination programs to discuss measures to advance the goal of keeping Federal Government electronic information products available to the public. The attendees discussed activities their organizations are undertaking and possibilities for furthering permanent public access. The meetings have provided an excellent opportunity for the attendees to bring others up-to-date on relevant activities within their organizations and discuss ideas and concerns with other individuals who are concerned about permanent public access issues. They have been so worthwhile, the group plans to meet quarterly.

I noted that on the NFAIS website there is a comment that the Internet world, "challenges existing institutions--publishers, libraries, and other information providers--to reinvent themselves and their products and services for the new age." Indeed, this is where GPO is today. We are still the office that does the government "printing"–with quotes around printing. But we are now, more than ever before, a service bureau that assists other government agencies with their printing or publication needs while providing public access for information products in various formats. Whether it is called reinvention or an evolutionary process, GPO will be changing in the Digital Millennium and is ready for the challenges ahead.

Thank you for your time here today.