Dan Barkley (Council Chair):
Good morning. I appreciate the several hundred phone calls I got this morning as a wake up. I am awake today. Probably earlier than I wanted to be. I just have one quick announcement, the Electronic Committee will meet in Salon D; and the Cataloguing Committee will meet in the Washington Ballroom over lunch today. We have a full agenda this morning. I don’t want to take any more time. I want to get started, we have some very exciting speakers here this morning, so would you all join me in giving a warm welcome to the Honorable Bruce James, the Public Printer of the United States.
Honorable Bruce James (Public Printer):
Well, good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you again. This is my second Depository Library Council meeting and those of you who were in Reno recall the stage that we set on and that square table and the hundreds of people in the audience which ended up being a huge surprise to me. This time I’m prepared for all of you though. Well, it’s my distinct pleasure, as my first job today to introduce Robert W. Ney, member of Congress from Ohio. Now there are a number of very important people in this room this morning, but probably none more important than Bob Ney . Bob, as many of you know, has a long career in public service. First in Ohio, and then in 1994 he was elected to the United States Congress. He came to Washington and got interested in a number of issues, among which is the GPO, Depository Library Program, Library of Congress, and his role as Chairman of the House Administration Committee, he serves as Chairman in this cycle of the Joint Committee on Printing. And the Joint Committee on Printing is the group that is responsible for the oversight of the Federal Depository Library Program. And so, he is the one that makes sure that we at the GPO are keeping up our end of the bargain. He’s the one that makes sure that the resources are there and available to continue this marvelous program which is gone on now for nearly two hundred years. So without further adieu, I would like to introduce Chairman Ney, and thank you Chairman Ney for all of your support for this program.
Chairman Ney:
Thank you, thank you. It’s real pleasure to be here. Bruce James is probably not been in office 22 years and I think that the different levels I’ve served, legislature and out here that Bruce James is probably the most unusual human being that I’ve ever met. He actually kept to his word. When we met with him, he said he was going to take a certain direction and he did it. And that’s unusual sometimes in the US Government. So I give you a lot of credit. I tell you Bruce James really deserves a round of applause for the work that he’s done. And also GPO Superintendent of Documents, Judy Russell. She also has just really risen to the occasion to provide service. And I think exemplifies how the Government is here to help and not to hurt. Also, I’d like to thank Maria Robinson, she’s from Ohio, actually originally, a graduate of the Ohio State University, well she attended there as I did, also. Obviously, there are no Buckeye fans in here. Probably a lot of Wisconsin fans-- there we go. Well, you’re not real popular in Columbus this year, but you know we’ll forgive you. And also, of course Council Chair, Dan Barkley, who’s technically from the University of New Mexico and actually is from the State of Ohio. How many people here are from Ohio? Okay. How many people were born in Ohio or lived in Ohio or there’s usually a lot more? Okay. Also on the council somewhere are the two members from Ohio, Mary Prophet from Library of Denison, and also, John Graham from the Public Library of Cincinnati. So, I want to give a general welcome on behalf of the United States Congress and to all of you, from the JCP. You know it’s been in operation since 1813, and dates back to the age of James Madison and many of the founding fathers. The Federal Depository Library Program helps keep American informed on the actions of their public officials. And it’s really a vital component of our system of government. It’s something to be really amazingly proud of. The Joint Committee on Printing and Congress fully support the FDLP. Just recently the Congress approved and the President signed into law the Government Printing Office’s full request for a 16.9% increase in funding for the Superintendent of Documents salaries and expense appropriations, raising the budget to 34.5 million. The increased funding will be used to upgrade and improve GPO Access and provide the FDLP with needed resources. JCP will continue to support efforts to modernize the FDLP to improve public access to Government information. And I mention this, because the increase was obviously needed. These are very difficult times, budget wise, in our country’s history after the last two years. Obviously, the obligations that we have to intelligence, to military after 9/11. And also to two wars that we’ve been engaged in. So, acquiring a funding right now, believe me, is a very, very difficult thing to do. But I think that because of the way the system’s been run, people have faith in it and that is why the funding has come through. The FDLP is doing a very commendable job in transitioning to a predominantly electronic information system as Congress has directed it to. The JCP is confident in the leadership of Bruce James and Judy Russell in full consultation with the Library community, which is very important. The Depository Library Program is making the necessary transitions to continue to provide innovative effective public access to information in the 21st Century. Depository Librarians are critically important partners with the GPO and the operations of this program, and without them the program simply couldn’t function. The JCP and the GPO regard librarians as essential to providing effective public access to government information for the entire world. In the Internet age, the skills and abilities of librarians are needed more than ever to assist Americans in locating and using informational resources, including those provided by the government. Depository Librarians can be commended for the great job they do in providing public access to government information through their libraries. You know, as you get older, you appreciate things a lot more, and I appreciate my librarian at St. John’s Central in Blaire, Ohio. You always could get help, assistance and direction. And I think that people have good visions in their minds of the library system and how much it can help. The growing use of electronic information technology raises several issues of interest at GPO. And the library community is actively working on such as insuring permanent public access to electronic collections, providing adequate security to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the government documents, and making the necessary technology and skills universally available to everyone who wants access to the government information. Ensuring that the costs of providing public access to electronic information are distributed equitably, defining the role of librarians in an increasingly Internet based information culture where nearly everyone has access to information all the time, and determining the best model for FDLP in the 21st century. These are a few of the goals that I think will be exciting and challenging. The development of the Federal Depository Library of the Year Award, by the way, which will be awarded for the first time as I understand it, I think Bruce at this conference, it’s an excellent idea. It will provide long and deserved recognition to this important program and help inform the public about what a great public resource this program has become. I commend you for doing that, people need to be recognized. Of course, you’re all important, everybody deserves an award, but the recognition I think will be something that is a good thing to start. And let me just close by saying that you’ve done a wonderful job. When I first was elected to Congress, approximately 10 years ago, we did not have a system where people could get to the US House. And on the opening day of Congress in January, I think it was January the 5th, the switch was flipped and Thomas came into be. And it brought the world to the US House and also it brought us to the world. And we’ve been able to communicate with more people now, obviously, than ever before. But it’s been a challenge for Congress. Our Committee House Administration overlooks the technology and we continue to constantly question ourselves on what we direction should we go. And I think the great thing about all of you is you also provide within your bailiwick, the direction that you need. You ask the questions and you bring everything into the 21st Century. Let me just close by again commending everyone, also I wanted to say that these have been a very difficult two years for our country after what has happened to us and with 9/11. And we always think first and foremost of our American men and women who are in uniform always defending this great Nation to provide the feeling of democracy the seeds and the movement of the democracy for generations to come. But also during these difficult times, where you live and what you do is where America does her work. And our communities will continue despite attempts to stop us; and our way of life will continue to be made better and more prosperous for future generations. That’s what you’re about, you’re about providing something that people may not know our names, or they may not know what you do, but surely the effects of what you are working on today are going to be there forever and ever for future generations in our country. So thank you for coming to Washington and God bless you.
Bruce James:
Well thank you Mr. Chairman, I appreciate very much you taking time to join us this morning. I really appreciate the kind words about the GPO, too. Now, next, before we start our regular program, I would like to ask a member of our community to step forward, Ridley Kessler, are you here this morning? Are you anywhere in the room? Could you step up here to join me, please? You know it’s been since…, yeah, just be careful; I don’t want you to be the first one to walk off the back here. I guess in the 18 months since the President announced his intention to nominate me for this job, I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of people in the community and learn an awful lot. And I’ve met some truly outstanding people and heard some truly outstanding stories, but I do believe Ridley, that you are perhaps in many ways, the Dean of this whole community. And we want to thank you for your 35 years of service to the library community.
Ridley:
Thank you.
Bruce James:
Now, I wrote Ridley a letter and I thought I’d share it with you all. We’ve selected parts we’ve X’d out, but let me read you what’s official here.
Dear Ridley, I would like to offer my congratulations on your retirement and my sincere thanks for your energetic and effective efforts throughout your career to promote free public access to government information. You have been tireless in helping people to obtain the government information they need through the Federal Depository Library Program. The level of inspiration, mentoring, and training that you have selflessly provided to countless students, staff, and colleagues set the gold standard for those who will follow you. You consistently put your energy and ideas to work to help improve Government Document Librarianship and the Federal Depository Library Program serving on multitudes of councils, roundtables, associations, committees, groups, and panels. You’ve earned the admiration and affection of your colleagues and friends. Please accept heartfelt thanks for the vital service you preformed in helping provide access to US Government information. As a small token of our appreciation of the Government Printing Office, we’re renaming our main building after you – No, I didn’t, but it’s not a bad idea). … As a small token of our appreciation of the Government Printing Office for your dedication to the goals of the Federal Depository Library Program, I am enclosing a Certificate of Appreciation, nearly as good. My very best wishes for a long and happy retirement. You will be missed.
Dan, I believe you want to add to this.
Dan Barkley:
As only Ridley would know, and he knows some things that I’m sure many of us don’t want to know. You know any time the government or federal agency makes a proposal into law, or something like that, they advertise in the federal agency and there’s time for public comment. Well Ridley, here’s your public comment, don’t mind the white out. I’ve gone through and X’d some comments out. But seriously, this is from your friends in the community and we want you to have a token of our appreciation.
Ridley Kessler:
Nicely done….
Dan Barkley:
Well, you can thank George Barnum (phonetics) for that. But, that’s for you.
Ridley Kessler:
Thank you very much, thank you. Thank you Public Printer and Superintendent of Documents and all of you, but remember I just retired, I’m not dead. I hope to see you many times all around. So thank you so much.
Bruce James:
I suppose you come back next year, and people will say what are you doing here? Just, as if you don’t belong. That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it. I’ll share a little side with you. I was delivering a speech a couple of weeks ago in Chicago to Graph Expo, and Graph Expo is kind of the big show in the printing industry. You know they took over McCormick Place, and there are five, six, seven hundred vendors that are just displaying their wares from small table top machine, to huge multi-storage printing presses and there are tens of thousands of printers that gather, and I was giving the keynote address. I don’t know why they asked me, but probably because I buy a lot of printing. And, then I opened it to questions and you know you always get some interesting questions. I had somebody in the back of the room raise their hand and say, now, I’ve read someplace that you have renamed the Government Printing Office, you’ve gotten rid of the word printing and you’ve renamed it. Is that true? And I said, well I don’t think so. Said, I’ll tell you that, we did change the logo. And we got the logo changed and we think we have one that is more progressive, feels more like 20th century, without ignoring the past either. And I said that was kind of cute. And somebody asked me, well, how did you get that done? Did it take an act of Congress? I said, no, no, we just changed it. They said, can you do that? I said, well nobody has told me I can’t do it. So it’s done. I said, I think what you’re referring to is one of our middle managers who runs the Congressional Printing Group for GPO, and that’s a pretty important group and Congress thinks themselves their most important customers as you might imagine. And that’s Charlie Cook who runs that group for us, and has done a marvelous job for many years. And he’s the one that’s renamed his group from the Congressional Printing Office, to the Congressional Information Publishing Office, or whatever he decided to call it; and he did it without consulting with me first. And that I think is absolutely terrific tribute to where the GPO has come in a very short period of time. From a commanded control structure, where everything started with a public printer, every decision was made there, to the point we’re getting decisions down into the organization. We’re forcing decisions lower and lower and lower. And at the end of the day, that should mean we actually have much more, a much better level of response to our many customers, customers in this room and customers in government agencies. We’re beginning to look at the world in terms of customers. We even look at our employees in terms of being customers of our personnel services. So we’ve made a lot of changes, and I appreciate Bob Ney recognizing the changes that have been going on at GPO. I will tell you that I commented briefly to the council on Sunday, when I was in to make a couple of remarks, that maybe the most significant thing that you all ought to consider is that of the many entities requesting money from Congress this year, requesting appropriations, at this point, the President to my knowledge, has signed two appropriation bills. One is ours. And we got every nickel we asked for, and I’m not sure any other agency or department this cycle will get every nickel they ask for. And I think it’s a tribute to the men and women of the GPO, and just what faith Chairman Ney and members of the Appropriations Committees have and what we’re striving together to do. And we’re not there yet. I want to assure you that we’re just starting to march in the right direction. We’ve got a long way to go, but I am particularly appreciative of the support shown by the United States Congress. I know many of you personally know members of the Appropriations Committees, and other members of Congress and if you have an opportunity to drop them a note, or see them in person, I would appreciate it very much if you share with them your appreciation of what they did for us. Now for you folks standing in the back of the room, this is just like church, all the best things are open in the front if any of you would like to come up and join us or all of you just specters in the back of the room there. We have some wonderful seats right up here. Well, let me talk to you a little bit about where we are from my talk six months ago. I’m going to presume that all of you were there, if you weren’t there you probably read every word that I had to say. You recall that what I talked about was the fact that I came into the situation as Public Printer knowing a whole lot of about the printing industry and where the printing industry was going in terms of technology, but with little knowledge or appreciation for the Federal Depository Library Program, and so, I felt that it was my job to get out and listen. Man, I have visited so many different locations and talked with so many different people under Judy’s guidance and leadership that I am now beginning to get my arms around the Federal Depository Library Program and the importance of that program to this nation. And, if you heard me talk to the group of printers in Chicago, you would have been amazed to hear me talk mostly about my role as the guardian of government information, the collector/guardian of government information. Because I think that is where GPO starts. I know have a pretty good sense that 1813 really began the GPO. It was the 1860’s before the government acquired a printing operation, but they acquired that printing operation because that was the technology of the day - putting ink down on paper. If it had been computers in those days, they might as well have acquired a computer information facility. So I think that I have come to the conclusion that the future of the GPO lies in, not just the preservation, but the recognition and extension and expansion of the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st century in a rational way. Now, I told you that we were not just going to leave out and start to do things willy-nilly. We were involved back last April, in what I call the fact finding process, where we gathered information about every aspect of our business from the printing that we do, to the needs of our printing customers, the agencies and the government to your community and to the information industry. To all the various publics that we serve in some way or fashion to find out what the true situation was today and where folks felt the future was going to be. Well, I told you that if it was private sector we could get that job done pretty darn quickly and move on to the planning stage. But I felt that we needed to be a little bit more deliberative in the public arena to make certain that everybody had a chance to get there oar in the water. Everybody had a chance to interact with the fact gathering process. And I told you that I thought we’d be finished with our work by the end of this calendar year. Well, GPO is right on schedule, maybe we’re just a little bit ahead of where I expected to be. But we’ve inherited a partner in this process, the Government Accounting Office, who is spending a considerable amount of their money, I guess it’s tax payer money, it’s your money, it’s our money. It’s a considerable portion of our money on part of the fact gathering process and they are running a little behind where they expected to be and it now looks like it will be the end of February, maybe even the beginning of March before they can deliver their portions to us. So I don’t want to get the cart before the horse, and even though I’m anxious, very anxious to get moving here on development of plan. I think we’ll just wait until all of this comes together very naturally. And then we’ll be talking with you about the facts we’re finding. But by the time we’ve finished this whole process we’ll have talked with you thoroughly about what we see and what we believe the situation is. It is my hope that we can get everyone on the same page in regard to the facts. Everyone from the information industry to the library community these are the facts. And once we have determined what the facts are, then I think it will be easier to move forward and develop a plan for the future. And if you will, a strategic vision plan, whatever you want to call it. It’s where we’re going with our operation of the GPO. And you know, this is going to be a lot of fun. Judy and I are not going to sit down in the ivory tower and just create a plan, we certainly expect to engage all our publics- the library community, the printing community, information industry, our employees, very importantly, and of course Congress. And we’ll engage all these groups in talking about what a logical plan would be based on what the facts are, not what we would like the facts to be, but what the facts are. And then we’ll move forward. Now, I can share with you some things that we talked about in April, and I can tell you where I am on those today. I think I can share with you, some ideas where I think we need to go. Now none of this is going to be rocket science for you all. Because I think that you’ve discussed either in groups or large groups or committees part of GPO and part of other organizations, probably every single one of these issues. What I think is different now, is that the GPO is addressing these in a very organized fashion, where we intend on coming out of it with a plan. And we intend on providing leadership to the community in the electronic information age the same way we did when it was the age of printed documents. You know the issues that we talked about when I was here last are still in front of us. And that is to be able to electronically distribute information we’re going to have to have. And this is back to the fugitive document situation. And, I think in April, I learned from you that you felt that fewer than 50% of government documents that were worth saving were actually in the Federal Depository Library Program. I found that number shocking. But, I can tell you that you’re probably right about that. As we’ve gotten out and taken a look, and as I have had a chance to talk with secretaries and agency heads, I think you’re probably exactly right about that, and I’m beginning to understand why. The second part of that is the authenticity of the information that we offer in electronic form, and I’m speaking specifically about downloading from the Internet. Today, as you well know, if you download information from the US Government Printing Office site, GPO Access, and it may be labeled as US Government Information, but you have no way of knowing whether that is an authentic replica of the information that the author originally created. And the third aspect- man, that paper is really tremendous stuff. You know you can save that forever. You know I think you can save a paper document for four or five hundred years, maybe longer, if it is not exposed to direct sunlight, and be sure that information survives. Well, you know, you heard me say that I don’t have any confidence that ten years from now, that we’ll be able to read this magnetic optical data that we record today. And it still may be on those disks, but will we even have equipment to read it? So those remain the big challenges for the GPO. And some of them are technical in nature, but I think that what we’re finding is that as much as there’s technical challenges in this, that for the main part it is deciding from a business stand point what we need to do, how we need to address these issues and do it in a systematic professional way that’s repeatable, reputable, over and over again. And so, those remain the three big areas. I can tell you a little bit about where we are in each of those. I guess Judy calls these mission critical areas. When it comes to comprehensive information delivery, the elimination of fugitive documents, the OMB compact, I think, is going to be a big step in the right direction. Now to refresh your memory, before I arrived on the scene, Mitch Daniels as a Director of the Office of Management and Budget had decided that the GPO was obsolete, unneeded and ought to just disappear off the face of the earth. And maybe from his perspective, he was right. I went to meet with him before I became Public Printer and listen to what he had to say, and I think if he’d been right with his premise set he probably would have been right to say that the GPO had become obsolete. Unfortunately, his premise set was incorrect because he thought that somehow that all the government’s printing was going out on that red brick building on North Capitol Street, and you know, years and years and years ago during the second World War is when we found that you needed to have an efficient mix between doing work in-house and buying in the private sector. And by mixing that effectively we could reduce the cost to tax payers, we could extend the reach of the GPO very considerably. We could benefit from the best ideas from the private sector and the private sector could benefit from our best ideas too. It could be a good partnership. And that partnership has grown and thrived over many, many, many, many years. And last year we had 2568 printers throughout the United States, and I use the word printers to describe all of our contractors, who produced everything from pamphlets and booklets to CD ROMs and microfiche for us. So we have a wide range of interest and we have bought that material very competitively. Well, as Mitch and I talked about this, and as he got more information, and after I became Public Printer we continued to dialogue about this and basically we agreed we didn’t want blow up the GPO and the Federal Depository Library Program, that made no sense whatsoever. That we needed to do is reconsider what was most fundamentally important and begin to look how we could recast all of this. And I will tell you, I am very, very grateful to Mitch Daniels, now a candidate for Governor in Indiana. I am very grateful that his last day in the job he signed a compact with us. I’d gone in a couple weeks, two or three weeks before he left saying, we discussed it, we discussed it, I need you to solve this before you leave because if we don’t get this done, you know it could be years before we can get back and address this issue again. He was willing to do it. And the essence of this was the recognition by OMB that the most important role that the GPO has, is in gathering government documents from all sources, cataloguing, organizing those documents, distributing broadly throughout the United States and making certain they are available to the public. That is fundamentally what this document recognizes. We tried to address an area that when I was in the private sector I thought made no sense, and which Mitch Daniels and many of the agency heads thought made no sense, and that was these archaic regulations governing government printing. You know it wasn’t so long ago that you couldn’t put a photograph in the government publication because halftones were expensive. If you read the regulations literally today, you almost never could use color. I’m not talking about full color. I’m talking about a second color. And you know, we have these rules governing paper. We managed to create a series of rules that make it almost twice as expensive to create paper for the government as for the private sector. All this makes no sense whatsoever. And so we wanted to create some opportunities to open this up and give printers a chance, who as you might imagine is beginning to change how they look at the world, or they’re going to be dead. Last year there were 10,000 printers world wide who went out of business and they’re not going to be replaced. So, printers are looking at how they are going to recast their businesses, and they’re looking two directions. They’re looking into content management, and they’re looking into distribution of finished products. We thought it would be wise to give these vendors an opportunity to go and talk directly with agencies of government about their services and about what they could offer. And let the agencies themselves write their specifications. It’s their money, not our money. Let them write their specifications and what it is they would like to have in a communications device vehicle. And then to bid that themselves. Agencies would be able to select a vendor that would give tax payers the biggest bang for their buck, not necessarily the lowest price or quote on the job, but the one that would bring the best value to the taxpayers. We wanted a framework of rules surrounding this. We didn’t want to run right out and open this up. So we decided that GPO will maintain the list of suitable vendors, and to become a vendor you have to register. And this of course is done all electronically in today’s world. We will register vendors, and qualify them – excuse me – I didn’t smoke a cigar this morning either. We will register those vendors and then, if an agency has somebody they want to use that is not on our list, we’re not going to be an obstructionist here, we’re going try to get them on the list as promptly as we can. And it’s the new GPO, things don’t take six months anymore. We get the stuff done right away. We’ll get it on there and the agency can bid it out. Now in the past, we have put a 7% surcharge on top of printing, most printing. And that money has come back to the GPO to operate our business. And in this case we will charge vendors 3% to participate in the program, whatever they quote the agency, that’s what the agency pays. There is no mark up to the agency, but they will rebate 3% to us. The reason I know they are going to, is that we’re going to pay the bills. And to me this is the most important part of this compact. In order to pay the bill, the printer must give us an electronic manuscript of exactly what was used to print the document as well as a couple of printed copies too. And we always have the opportunity to buy more printed copies if we need to through the SuDocs program. But, if we do this right, I ought to admit a couple of other things, in conjunction with this OMB has agreed to work with us on shutting down these rogue printing plants that have grown up in government. And maybe rogue is not the right word, because I’m sure at one point many of them made sense. Just as the private printer sector has watched volume fall, the GPO has watched our volume fall. Each of these agency shops, most of these agency shops have watched their volumes fall too. And of course it’s a little more difficult when you have an in-house operation to contract it. So OMB is going to work with us on making certain that we don’t have these facilities wasting taxpayers’ money sitting around in various government agencies. They are also going to work with us to make certain that any document that is created by an agency, again an electronic manuscript comes to GPO. So you can see what we got here. I was so pleased to do this, because this could have taken us two, three, four, five or more years to address this subject. And I was so pleased that we were able to do it. Now, Mitch Daniels wanted to jump right in and say okay, let’s start tomorrow. And I was sort of a little more temperate than that, I said, whoa, whoa let’s slow down here. Let’s try this, let’s pick an agency and, or department. Let’s try this for a year and iron out all the kinks, because we know there’ll be kinks. And we know that we haven’t been smart enough to figure out every detail and how this is going to work. So, OMB picked the Department of Labor, we thought that was an excellent choice on their part. And we’re beginning to work with the Department of Labor. Now, it’s interesting that we’re coming at this from three perspectives. Jim Bradley, who is Judy’s counterpart in running the sales side of our business to government agencies, they’re at the same level; same rank. He’s got about 500 people to deal with government agencies. And it’s not just dealing with them, it’s the procurement (phonetics) of whatever they need from outside world too. And, so, he’s built the whole team- a sales team to deal with the Department of Labor, patterned after what we want to do in the future. To eliminate multiple layers of handing jobs back and forth, but rather have a small group of people who have a customer and everybody in that group - all three, four or five people in that group- would know everything there is to know about that customer. So when the phone rings, they can pick it up and they know the answer. They have the responsibility from the time the customer gives the order to the time the vendor delivers that order. This will help GPO employees so much, because they have felt so handicapped in being able to directly interface with the client or directly interface with the vendor to make certain that what was needed, what our agency and customer wanted, was getting done. So, we’re looking for a mechanism that would be much more straight forward and will get the job done much better. We’re doing that with the Department of Labor, that’s our first one. We’re examining how this work comes to us. Meanwhile, Judy is looking at the whole area of fugitive documents in the Department of Labor and trying to understand how those documents are created. You know, you only get one small department, but with only one department, you could begin to get your arms around it. Judy’s also looking at how we can have a mechanism for transferring documents that are created that don’t go through the GPO, and how they can be transferred into us. And the third person in this process is our Inspector General. And as many of you know, I’ve changed a lot of people in the organization and management at GPO since I’ve been there, and one of the most important changes is in the Office of Inspector General. And you know the Inspector General offices have only been around for about 25 years, and they’re still trying to figure out what their role is. Our Inspector General, whom I appointed, serves at my pleasure, but he appoints, and he reports to Congress, and to me. Congress can call up, any member of Congress, and say, hey I want you to go look at this, or I want you to do that, and by law he has to do it. He’s pretty independent. When you have a role like that, people, can get really confused about what their primary job is. I felt that the previous Inspector Generals at the Government Printing Office were just way off in left field. They were playing a sort of gotcha game, auditing to get you, as opposed to looking at where we could use those resources to move the agency forward. Well, by golly, we have a new situation today. Now we’re looking at are things that are going to be very important to us in the future. One of which is the fugitive document problem. The Inspector General has put together a whole group to look at this issue, going to Inspector General to Inspector General, and General Counsel to General Counsel. So, we’re going to look at building a mechanism an effective enforcement mechanism to enforce these rules and laws. We’re looking at a number of things at the Department of Labor, and at the end of the day, some will work, some won’t. And I’ll be able to report to you by this time next year where we stand on this and how we’re proposing, or how we have rolled it out to the rest of the government, because I’m looking at trying to do it at the beginning of the next fiscal year. The next area, is the permanent public access of information. We are embarked on a program with our long time partner, the Federal Register, on authenticating information. When I say our long time partner, John Carlin, the Archivist of the United States, I’m addressing a meeting with me standing at his side, not so long ago, in which he talked about the partnership between the National Archives and the GPO in regard to the Federal Register. And what he said was that we have done this together for 70 years, and in those 70 years, not one day, have we failed to deliver the Federal Register. If that’s true, and I assume it is, that’s a pretty remarkable story. And it shows you the commitment to each other and the depth of partnership between the two organizations. They’re in a building across the street from us and you know, they face all the problems that you do, and we do, with electronic information. They face the problem of getting electronic documents into the Federal Register and verifying those documents. So we’ve initiated a pilot program with them, that watermarks documents at the point of author origin, and carries them through the cycle into the Federal Register production, and then further on to our data base. We’ve just gotten that off the ground and going, shows very great potential. Our technicians are following this, and we have people in the outside world that are following it for us. We’re not sure this is the end of the day technology, but we’ve learned a whole lot about how you have to think about applying the technology like this and all the steps that are involved from a business stand point. So, I would say that this is a huge move forward, and again we’ll be working on this over the next few months as we learn more and more about how to authenticate documents. And again, what I’m looking at in my judgment, the ultimate is to take control at the point of author origin, seal that document and be prepared to deliver it by Internet. Have someone pick that document up forward it somebody else, who forwards it to somebody else, who forwards it to somebody else, and still make sure that document is an authentic US government document. So, that’s what we’re looking at there and as I say making some progress in that front. The aspect of permanent public access, keeping information in perpetuity, remains a tough challenge. We have ventured around the country and I don’t want to make it sound like we sort of got in the car and drove willy-nilly. I have established a group called Innovation and New Technology that are managed by some very smart people, and it’s their job to investigate and look at all these technologies. We’ve had more than a dozen meetings at locations outside of the GPO, where we’ve taken anywhere from 10 to 20 GPO employees, and we’ve gone for as long as two or three days to go very in depth to look at the laboratory level at what’s going on with the development of technologies. Particularly technologies to do with the ability to maintain digital data in perpetuity. We’re making progress in that front, and by the time we’re back together, six months from now, I’ll be talking about pilots that we’re operating in that area too, I’m sure. So that sort of summarizes where we have been since I have met with you last. I realize that all of these subjects are being discussed by you and various groups in various ways. What I hope to do is put the GPO in a position of being a leader in these areas, and having a place where we can focus our efforts and having it managed by people day to day, who we pay to do that. People whose primary job is to stay on top of this and do these kinds of things. And so often, not just in this community, but in every community where you’re trying to wear several hats, you know at the end of the day the guy that signs your paycheck gets most of your time. And you know, because of that I want to make certain that the GPO has people whose paycheck is depended upon their managing and leading in these areas. Judy is reorganizing the GPO to accomplish exactly that. Let me tell you what I think the Depository Library Council and all of us need to be looking at over the next few months. We need to examine the areas that are vitally important to the future of the program, and ones which the GPO does not have the magic answer. And the first is one I think that is of growing interest everyday, and that is what constitutes a version of information. If my job is to preserve all government documents in perpetuity, what constitutes a government document today? In the old days, of course, we had a first printing, a second printing, a third printing, a fourth printing. What happens with the Department of Labor where they can be updating data all day long on a database? What constitutes a version? What do we need to maintain? Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a matter of public policy. I’ve gone over and I’ve talked with some Members of Congress in both houses about this, people that should be interested in it, and who just rolled their eyes back in their head. So, we’re not far enough along that we’re going to get help on a Congressional level on this. So I think we’re in need guidance from you as a council on where we should go with this, because at the end of the day, we’ve got to have an answer to it. We’ve got to have an answer to what constitutes a version. And this is going to affect a lot of our planning, so I need this answer sooner rather than later. I’m road mapping how we’re going to get to this answer, but this should not be determined by the GPO. This should be determined as a matter of public policy, not just by the library community either, but you need to get going on this. Second, I think it’s safe to say, that from this moment forward the primary method of distributing government information will be digital. We will need to find a way to store this information in perpetuity safely, and have access to it hundreds of years from now. I know we can do that. The question is, what do we do with this legacy collection? And I know that almost everyone of you in this room has faced this and are certainly getting asked questions at every level, below you, on side of you, above you, about what’s going to happen to all this paper. Well clearly, it doesn’t take a genius to see that we’re going to have to digitize a whole lot of it. And you know, when you digitize something I guess you’ve got two choices, you can make it a searchable database, or you can digitize images. Frankly, we’re probably going to have to do both. And it’s the prioritization of that material that is very important to us. We’ll find ways to partner with the community to get this done. We’re already at work with various constituents and looking at how we’re going to partner to get the job done, but it is the prioritization of it, and the decision of what is worth making fully searchable versus capturing a page as an image, which is dependent on the nature of the material. And so, we need help in that area. Again, we don’t want the GPO making the decisions in that area. We want that to be in conjunction with the community. And the third one, the one that is going to be contentious, of course it’d be the one that I like the most, is how are we going to make money at this? The reason that we’re here, two hundred years after the fact, in some ways unchanged in mission, is because a sustainable model was built many, many years ago for what would work at the GPO. You know my friends outside of government are amazed when we talk about how we run the GPO. We run it like a business. We have revenues coming in; we have expenses going out; at the end of the day, we want to have money left over. And we want that money left over to invest in the next level of technologies. We’re charged by law with recovering the expenses for most of what we do. And again, when that was paper, pretty easy. Well that old model was really great, wasn’t it Judy? Any chance we can go back to that? That was so easy. You know, we’d print a document, we printed it for fifty previous years, and knew exactly how many copies we’d sell, so SuDocs would order 500 copies or 5,000 whatever was necessary. We’d stick them in a warehouse and slowly but surely we’d fulfill them, and at the end of the year, we’d have a bunch of money left over and had a big party. Or maybe decided how to invest it in the next generation of technology. Well that started to break down several years ago. And all of this money that GPO had in coffers for moving forward, for changing the mix of the business, has disappeared. When I think about it, it just saddens me so much. We have lost tens of millions of dollars. Money that I no longer have to invest in the future. Just lost it, because we didn’t react quickly enough to the changing environment. Well, the good news is that we’ve reacted now. And we’ve got control of this business. And we’re doing this, when I say we, I’m talking about every single one of GPO’s employees, all 2700 of the employees, and we may have two, three, four or five that don’t get it or don’t believe in it, but everybody else does. And everybody is working together to make certain that we run like a business, that we eliminate the stuff that doesn’t make sense anymore, that we reconstitute a lot of things. Everybody is working on this. I think it’s pretty incredible that we have 23 bargaining units, and I don’t know how many unions that is all together, close to 20 unions, and I never worked in a union environment before when I walked in the door. You know some of my friends in the private sector had, and of course, they hated unions and one of the first things I did, when the President asked me to do this job, was talk to the head of the AFL-CIO in Nevada. A fellow by the name of Danny Thompson, who runs the operating, president, or whatever his title is. And said, hey Danny, you know me, I know you, and it’s really. My job here is not to eliminate unions. My job is to figure out how to get along with them, and I need your help. And so, he and his people spent the day with me and talked to me about how people would be feeling when I came in the door, and what I would have to do to form a good relationship. Well, I’ve tried to follow his advice. Some days I’ve gotten it and some days, I haven’t. But in my opinion, our unions are the best partners that we have. And I mean that very sincerely. It’s almost unbelievable the cooperation that they’ve given to management, particularly new management coming into the GPO and how they’ve worked with us to try to make the changes that are necessary to make. So, I commend the GPO Union, particularly Union leadership. They have just been phenomenal as we’ve changed many things. We now have righted the GPO financially, and we’re real close to it, we don’t have it right yet. There are a few more things that we need to do. But as you know, ten years ago when we started out, distributing information on the Internet, we tried to charge for it. And we discovered, that it cost us more money to try to collect the money than we collected. And, that went on for a year or so, and we finally said this makes no sense at all, let’s quit it. And in those days, nobody could figure out how to make any money on the Internet, maybe they still can’t today, I don’t know, but we dropped it. And so we moved from charging for information to the general public to giving the information free to the general public. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you it’s not a sustainable model, it isn’t going to work. And, we’re going to have to invent a new way doing this, otherwise we’ll be at the mercy of Congress forever, and I suggest to you that we won’t be around two hundred years from now if we build a model that puts us at the mercy of Congress. Congress prioritizes the nation’s needs. You know, Chairman Ney said it very clearly, it’s pretty unusual for me to get all the money I wanted in view of what’s going on here. Well this is just an unusual set of circumstances- Republican Chairman, Republican President, Republican Public Printer, very unusual set of circumstances that came together right here. Wouldn’t want to count on that ever reoccurring again. I think we got to go back and we’ve got to create a business model here that will allow us to once again bring revenues in the door and pay the expenses so that we don’t have to go to Congress for a hand out. Now, I tried this idea in April on this group, and I just heard a large intake of breath, and I didn’t get as many poison pen letters as I expected. In fact, I didn’t get any poison pen letters. But I’ve had some people that were in that meeting talk to me and caution me that I was entering a mine field. And you know, hey, that is the reason why I’m here, I don’t mind mine fields. I don’t want to lose a leg on this, but I don’t mind mine fields. You know we got to figure this one out. Not so long ago, Judy and I went and visited with some representative in the information industry and it wasn’t a big group, a small group, about 20 people altogether. And we said to them, we got to figure out a way to do this, and I think that at the end of the day we got to partner with you. And we have to figure out how to create partnerships here that work. We got to figure out how to do partnerships that protect the Federal Depository Libraries, and it means what we do, they’ve got to get for free. And, you know, they didn’t wince, they didn’t cry, they sort of recognized that that was a reality of life if they wanted to find a way to partner with us. And, I don’t know what all the ideas are, but I sure would appreciate your counsel on the on ways that we could look at this that would be acceptable to the library community and yet be realistic in terms of building revenue. You know, I’m thinking about going out to one of the big guys like McKenzie who does this for the private sector, say to them, you know, I’ll pay you 10% of first year’s revenue, build me a model. And I’m serious. I’m thinking about figuring out how to do this in a way that really works, but I want to get some parameters and thoughts and ideas. I want to get this down a little more than we have right now, and I want to do it soon rather than later. So those are my three charges and issues to the Depository Library Council that I think are of importance. You know, like I said in the April meeting, most of you heard me say it one time or another that I just wasn’t very impressed with the minutes of the Depository Library Council when I took this job. They were focused the focus not in the right areas. The focus was on yesterday, it wasn’t on tomorrow. And one of the reasons that Judy Russell has the job is that I wanted somebody that clearly understood the future and would stay focused on the future. I wanted someone who would build the rapport within the Depository Library community, but most importantly create a council for us that really works in a collegial manner, and that I consider to be of real importance not just to GPO, but to you and the country.