Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age Page: 10
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the demand for print has not gone away entirely, GPO faces the challenge of striking the
right balance between different formats. Today, GPO has one of the world's largest printing
plants and digital factories, and it remains one of the biggest print buyers in the world.
GPO purchased an estimated $331 million in print products in FY 2012 from private
vendors across the nation, accounting for almost two-thirds of the print products ordered
from GPO. Congressional documents, such as the Congressional Record, as well as products
for the Office of Federal Register (including the Federal Register and Code of Federal
Regulations) are produced by GPO in-house. GPO's Strategic Plan notes that its print
procurement program "provides great economic opportunity for the private sector." The
majority of the firms GPO deals with are small businesses of 20 employees or less. The
total number of contractors registered to do business with GPO is approximately 16,000.9
Compared to most other federal agencies, GPO runs like a business: only a small percentage
of its funding comes from direct appropriations, which cover the cost of administering the
FDLP and FDsys.10 GPO depends primarily on revenue from agency payments for work
performed by GPO and sales of publications to the public. The extent to which GPO's
operations are run on a cost-recovery basis distinguishes it from other federal agencies.
Along with sales of publications in digital and print formats to the public, GPO supports
openness and transparency by providing no-charge public access to government
information through FDsys (www.fdsys.gov) and through partnerships with approximately
1,200 libraries nationwide participating in the FDLP. GPO's FDsys website provides access
to nearly 700,000 documents online. GPO also provides for public sale of government
publications through its traditional and online bookstores, offers e-Books through
partnerships with multiple vendors, and has recently introduced a variety of mobile apps
of key federal documents.
This is why the "business model" concept is particularly apt as a conceptual framework for
reviewing GPO.11 Although the term "business model" is typically associated with the
private sector-identifying the customer value proposition, the profit formula, and key
resources and processes-a broader definition can be usefully applied to public
organizations such as GPO.12 As Saul Kaplan, the founder and chief catalyst of the Business
Innovation Factory, notes:
If an organization has a viable way to create, deliver, and capture value, it has
a business model. It doesn't matter whether an organization is in the public
9 Government Printing Office, GPO's Strategic Plan FY 2013 - 2017, Customer Centric and Employee Driven
(Washington, D.C.: October 3, 2012), 3.
10 According to GPO's Strategic Plan, only six percent of the agency's funding comes from the direct
appropriation. This includes the Superintendent of Documents Salaries and Expenses appropriation, and the
Revolving Fund appropriation, which has funded the development of FDsys and other IT systems.
11 Congress's study mandate made specific reference to this term in noting "past reviews have supported the
GPO's business model as the most efficient way in which the government should operate its printing and
information dissemination responsibilities."
12 Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann, "Reinventing Your Business Model," in
Rebuilding Your Business Model (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2011), 42.
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National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA). Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age, report, January 2013; Washington, DC. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc141805/m1/20/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.