The Government Publishing Office (GPO) has recently made public their comments regarding the draft title 44 reform bill (PDF) currently working its way through the Congressional Committee on House Administration (CHA). GPO’s comments are broken into the following sections:
- Contracting out congressional printing
- Decentralizing agency printing
- Work produced in agency plants
- Economic impact on GPO
- Regulatory authority
- Government Printing Office / Public Printer
- Joint Committee on Printing
- Elimination of duplicating from statutory definition of printing
- Increased discretionary expenditures
- FDLP Improvements
We certainly appreciate GPO’s analysis of the draft bill and its impact. It mirrors and reiterates much of what we and many others have been saying about this bill. That is, the bill as written would have extreme negative effects on GPO’s budget, infrastructure and staff — which would have a drastic impact on GPO’s ability to manage FDLP services for the nation’s libraries downstream! — it would re-decentralize and deregulate printing and public information access across the government, thus driving up the costs of public information provision and greatly expand the issue of fugitive government information. If this bill is enacted, the public, libraries and the government itself would suffer as the long-standing FDLP system providing access to and preservation of government information would crumble.
We recommend that you read GPO’s analysis as well as our “Suggestions for Revisions to Chapter 5 of the Title 44 Bill” and contact Chairman Greg Harper and your representatives on the CHA as well as your Senators on the Joint Committee on Printing.
“Comments on Draft Legislation to Amend Title 44, U.S.C. (December 11, 2017 version)” to the Committee on House Administration on January 31, 2018. This document relays all comments, observations, and concerns with the draft revision to Title 44 as it relates to the Federal Depository Library Program, other Superintendent of Documents programs, and to GPO as an organization.
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