GPO unveils key priorities for 5-year modernization plan
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By
Chris Riotta
The Government Publishing Office is including a six-step process to emphasize its modernization and innovation efforts over the next five years.
The Government Publishing Office made modernization and innovation efforts a key goal in its five-year strategic plan the agency released this week, which also focuses on achieving operational excellence, ensuring financial stability and developing the workforce.
GPO – the agency tasked with publishing information products and services for the federal government, including passports and official congressional publications – said in an announcement about the five-year plan that it will "leverage its expertise into new software solutions for customers while ensuring a revenue stream to support future development" and shift to automated security processes to improve delivery times and enhance cost recovery.
GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern said in a statement that the plan builds upon the agency’s progress in its multi-year transition “from a print-centric enterprise to one fully comfortable in our digital present.”
The plan notes how the agency has evolved into an integrated publishing enterprise over its 161-year history and has a continued interest in modernizing its systems and processes to keep up with emerging digital content delivery technologies and changing trends in content consumption.
It goes on to identify six key steps GPO can take to continue modernizing its practices, beginning with offering a combination of its own solutions and commercial, off-the-shelf software under a software-as-a-service model to build revenue streams while bringing innovative solutions to customers.
The plan calls on GPO to increase its collaboration with the State and Homeland Security departments to create and provide the highest-quality secure credentialing products and services, as well as with intergovernmental partners to deploy new functionality and content. It also instructs the agency to transition away from paper-based processes and expand in-house publishing services amid ongoing vendor and supply chain issues.
Finally, the plan tasks GPO with using a trusted ISO-certified digital repository called GovInfo to preserve historic collections of government information. The agency will work with Federal Depository Libraries to identify documents and other materials that can be preserved as digital government information and expand access to those collections.
GPO also plans to develop its workforce by expanding cross-collaboration and knowledge-sharing practices and promoting apprentice and intern programs to increase inclusive recruitment.