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New public printer nominated

According to a White House Personnel announcement:

The President intends to nominate Robert Charles Tapella, of Virginia, to be the Public Printer. Mr. Tapella currently serves as Chief of Staff of the United States Government Printing Office. Prior to this, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the United States Government Printing Office. Earlier in his career, he ran Kelly Communications. Mr. Tapella received his bachelor’s degree from California Polytechnic State University.

Update 5/25/2007, 5:20pm AST by Daniel

A little more background on Mr. Tapella can be found in GPO’s press release issued on his appointment as Deputy Chief of Staff in January 2003.

He is described as having several assignments on Capitol Hill:

From 1996 to 2000, he served as professional staff on the House of Representatives Committee on House Oversight, where he supervised the Office of Member Services; Chief of Staff to Rep. Bill Redmond (R-NM); and Special Assistant to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, where he worked on strategic planning for re-engineering the information technology infrastructure of the House legislative process and developed plans for major information technology initiatives for the Office of the Clerk. Tapella gained his first legislative office experience from 1986 to 1993, when he worked as district representative for Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA).

And for whatever reason, in 2003, GPO thought it was important to note that Mr. Tapella was a Young Republican:

A California native, Tapella is a past National Board member and current member of the Young Republican National Federation, Inc., an alumnus of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, and an alumnus of Leadership Sunnyvale’s Class of 1995. He resides in Alexandria, VA.

A November 2005 Seybold Report has a few comments from Mr. Tappella, although these appear to be simply GPO policy of the time:

Tapella said the GPO is beginning to evaluate how it will publish information in the future. The trend, he said, is toward an electronic delivery method because of an increase in demand for information in electronic form. “Half of all our documents are never printed,” he said.

Tapella doesn’t envision that print will disappear in the coming decade, but the GPO is developing a model for storage and output via the Web and is using print-on-demand technology. A very important aspect of this system will be maintaining the security and authenticity of all documents in electronic form.

AND

“The number of documents continues to grow,” Tapella said. “It’s not going down.” To keep up with its mission of keeping the public informed, the GPO will need to continue to rely on external partners, which will mean plenty of opportunities for companies that can provide the services, supplies and printed materials the agency needs.”

Source:
Title: Government Printing Office Needs a Few Good Printers.
Authors: Joss, Molly
Source: Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies; 11/16/2005, Vol. 5 Issue 15, p18-19, 2p
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