Printing office offers open government help

Robert Tapella, the head of the Government Printing Office, recently sent to President Barack Obama five goals and accompanying actions the GPO can take to help implement the White House's transparency and open government agenda. Tapella, whose office oversees production and distribution of information products and services for all three branches of the federal government, sent the memo to Obama on March 9 but it was released publicly last week.

1. Goal: Position GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys, at www.fdsys.gov) as the official repository for Federal Government publications.

Action: Develop pilot concepts with the Administration's Open Government office.

2. Goal: Enable and support Web 2.0 functionality through FDsys to support public comments on pending legislation.

Action: Develop a pilot with the Open Government office to evaluate the process to collect comments on selected bills.

3. Goal: Establish a demonstration project to apply Web 2.0 features to rulemaking documents.

Action: Applying lessons learned, extend the demonstration project to the entire Federal Register on FDsys in a systematic way.

4. Goal: Participate in and lead efforts to standardize electronic publishing formats.

Action: Meet with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) e-Government and Information Group to develop guidelines for extending StratML to other Federal publication types.

5. Goal: Link the White House Web site to FDsys for public searches of Government documents.

Action: Contact and establish a working relationship between GPO's FDsys and the White House Web team. This would include creating a White House/GPO working group/Web team, providing a demonstration of FDsys for the White House Web team, and establishing a recurring meeting with the White House Web team for information exchange.