The GPO Has A New Look And A New Name, But Mission Remains The Same

By Dawn Greenlaw-Scully

Secure, Intelligent Documents

GPO has been in the passport production business for nearly a century. In 1920, when the League of Nations began establishing international standards for passports, the United States Government turned to GPO for secure production of the then-new booklet-style documents. Ever since, GPO has been the trusted sole provider of U.S. passports.

For decades, passport standards were primarily status quo and, accordingly, production was business as usual. In the 1980s, passports began incorporating optical character recognition (OCR) machine-readable data and holograms. In 2003, GPO began working on supporting a new type of passport into which would be embedded a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag comprising a computer chip containing critical information used for authentication and an antenna for signal receipt and transmission.

GPO began producing these e-Passports in 2005 and started full production by 2007. GPO produces the blank book to which the State Department adds the actual personalized information. Scanned via a digital reader, the e-passport permits a three-way check of the traveler, the passport itself and the information transferred from the chip.

The e-passport business was contained within the main GPO production facility until the formation of Security and Intelligence Documents (SID) as a separate GPO business unit. SID Managing Director Steve LeBlanc had served previously as GPO production manager and spearheaded the electronic passport project there.

In 2008, SID established a second facility on the grounds of the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi as a fail-safe backup site and to ensure continuity of operations.

Passport quantities are determined by the State Department. Currently, SID designs, prints and delivers 13 to 15 million passport booklets annually, 70 percent of those in Washington and 30 percent at Stennis. However, although SID is the sole supplier of U.S. passports, passports are not the unit’s sole product.

“This move gave us the ability to launch an entire Secure Federal Credentials business as the first in-government option for agencies,” LeBlanc says. SID generates an additional 2 million secure credential cards for a range of purposes, including diplomacy, building entry, inaugural event access, law enforcement, driver’s licensing, and Medicare. SID’s biggest card client is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the Trusted Traveler programs that permit secure, but expedited border crossings for pre-approved, low-risk travelers.

SID is accessible to any federal agency, Congress and the Executive Office of the President. It is located in the same building as GPO’s main production facility, and SID jobs run on the same presses and bindery equipment as are used for other GPO printing.

“Differences [with SID jobs] include the use of security inks, such as those that only appear visible under certain lighting,” notes LeBlanc.

Secure products undergo redesign every five to six years, LeBlanc says. “We are always changing ink, paper, plastic, security threads and optical devices to stay ahead of the bad guys, and working with forensic labs on new products,” he declares.

Security features offered currently include optically variable inks (OVIs), microtext and micrographics, photograph overlay, tactile features, guilloche lines and special-effects raster. When SID decided to incorporate a new UV-curable ink as a security feature, GPO had to modify a press for UV curing.

Security is always maintained facility-wide and heightened where and when warranted, says LeBlanc, who points out that GPO has its own police force. Some card production services, such as lamination and punching, may be outsourced to partners with proper clearances.

Though just signed into law in December 2014, GPO's name change from Government Printing Office to Government Publishing Office has been "a long time coming," says John Crawford.

"We've been moving in this direction over many years, especially for the last 20 years or so," remarks Crawford, GPO's managing director of plant operations, and a 49-year GPO employee.

Headquartered in an eight-story, 1.5 million-square-foot complex just five blocks from the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, GPO is the country's largest in-plant. And at 154 years of age this month, it's also one of the oldest. Over the years, GPO has published numerous important documents, such as the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, The Warren Commission report and The 9-11 Commission Report, to name a few.

Ever since legislation was enacted in 1993 to enable GPO to upload databases to the Internet for dissemination, the office has been steadily increasing the amount of digital publishing it does.

"The last 10 years have been particularly exciting," says Crawford, "and today, we do as much electronic publishing as we do printing."

The name change was proposed by GPO Director Davita Vance-Cooks and introduced into legislation a year ago. The first female to oversee the GPO, Vance-Cooks was also the last to hold the title Public Printer, a position that was also renamed by the legislation.

What has not changed, though, is GPO's essential purpose: "to create the information products and services required by Congress and Federal agencies and distribute them to the public." The office's official tagline is "Keeping America Informed"; however, the distribution and dissemination vehicles GPO uses to keep America thusly informed have expanded far beyond print to include eBooks, digital publishing, online access, mobile apps and social media.

Relevant and Cutting Edge

Crawford, who's been in the printing trade since 1958, has experienced the evolution of the industry and the GPO first-hand. "We've made so many changes—to the positive," he declares. "If we hadn't, GPO wouldn't be relevant anymore.

"Now, we're cutting edge almost everywhere, getting everything online so people can have that access," Crawford continues. "For example, when we printed the [Congressional] Record this morning, we already had it up online before we even took copies up to the Hill."

Although quantities are decreasing overall, print still has its place, Crawford emphasizes.

"People still like copies in their hands, too," he says. The key is to ascertain and print what's needed at maximum efficiency with minimum waste.

For example, in years past, GPO printed 20,000 copies per day of both the Congressional Record and Federal Register; today, it prints 2,500. In the same time span, GPO went from printing 100,000 copies of four volumes of the annual federal budget to a yearly print run of 20,000.

"Back then, print was the only way people could get the Federal budget," Crawford points out. "Today, they can access it online, as an app, or on a CD-ROM." He notes that GPO now gets 500,000 online hits for each budget and that a mobile viewing app, launched a few years ago, has reached 50,000 downloads.

As a result of technology, a Federal budget that once took four to five weeks to produce now takes three or four days, Crawford reports. GPO works closely with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to procure files and facilitate production.

"They understand what we can do," he adds wryly. "This year, we didn't get everything until [the week we were scheduled to go to press], because they know how quickly we can turn it around.

"We never miss our deadlines," Crawford asserts. "When we had 50˝ of snow here a few years back, but had to get a Record out, all our employees showed up. For the ladies and gents up on the hill, we measure the delivery of the Records by minutes."

'Amazing' New Web Press

Overall, GPO print volumes are still in the millions annually. Toward ultra-efficient production and ultra-fast turnaround of Congressional Records and other jobs, the office recently invested in a Timson ZMR (Zero Makeready) web press that can accommodate a 6x9˝ format. New technology on the press enables operators to replace plates while the press continues to run at full production speeds, with plate changes taking about three minutes. Waste is substantially reduced. When Crawford spoke to IPG, GPO was running signatures on the press and planning to complete acceptance testing in February.

"This press is amazing," he declares. "Right now, we have three presses running the same type of work over three shifts, so by nine crews. Once the new press is up and running, it will do the work of those three [presses], allowing us to cannibalize one and keep the other two as back-ups." The pressroom will continue to operate its other presses, including several Heidelberg units.

GPO has a 4.9-year return-on-investment goal for the ZMR press, and Crawford thinks ROI "may turn out to be even less" than that. In addition, citing economic and service reasons, Crawford is also looking at a new digital inkjet press to produce the House and Senate calendars, as well as some bills.

The shop has also enjoyed several upgrades to its bindery—new inserters, folders and case makers—as well as to its prepress and platemaking operations.

"Everything we've done has been toward increased output, faster makeready and less waste," Crawford says. Over four decades, technology and process improvement have also allowed GPO to downsize its workforce from 8,500 to 1,700 employees, the fewest in the past century. Since 1980, GPO has reduced its workforce by 74 percent.

"But what hasn't changed," Crawford notes, "is that we still have human beings working here who are dedicated to and enthused about what they do, and who we value greatly. We're still in the same location: four well-constructed buildings that take up a city block and a half, just a couple of blocks from the Capitol.

"And we're still looking out for the needs and best interests of the government and the taxpayers," he concludes.

Whether "P" stands for Printing or Publishing, GPO remains GPO.