When Booz-Allen Hamilton did the study for Congress a couple years ago and examined our operation, they expressed the view that we should privatize that structure, and we have continued to look at it. Fran may want to speak more completely to it.

Mr. BUCKLEY. We have been integrating our sales information with some of the online vendors. While we have an online bookstore up ourselves, we have been trying to provide our information to Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other places to resell through bookstores that way. We have statutory authorization to sell copies of our tangible products to bookstores for resale, but that is used only in a limited way by bookstores for, as Mr. DiMario said, particular titles that have a high demand. We don't see bookstores wanting to carry the full array of products that we have to meet the public interest for Government publications.

Mr. DIMARIO. I would only add, the law is structured in such a way that, with no copyright for most Federal publications, it encourages private republication of everything that we do. The encouragement is to have as broad a distribution as possible. Vendors currently can pick up from us any publication and resell it. We do sell the databases, and we are not trying to be a monopoly in any way.

Mr. MANSKER. I might add also, Mr. Chairman, that this material is provided through the Thomas system. So it is even further available to the public.

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, gentlemen. I have some questions that I will submit to be answered for the record.

[The questions and responses follow:]

ELECTRONIC FORMAT

Question. Please provide the committee with a five-year review of the subscription demand for the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, and Congressional hearings? Response.

Hearings are sold individually in varying quantities, not by subscription. Question. To what extent are people now using GPO ACCESS to bypass ink on paper versions of these materials?

Response. Downloads from GPO Access are today averaging about 31 million per month. Congressional Record retrievals are averaging 350,000 per month and Register retrievals are averaging 5.5 million per month. People are obviously using GPO Access to retrieve these documents, but not necessarily to bypass them. Paper copies of the Record are still needed for the conduct of legislative business in Congress, by agencies, by the public for reasons of permanence, authenticity, portability, etc. The Federal Register is still used in paper for many of the same reasons. People

GPO BOOKSTORES

Question. I understand the GPO is finally going to open an 800 number sales option. Isn't this an indication of just how unresponsive the Sales Operation Program is to the market place?

Response. No, the cost of 800 numbers has declined, making them more economically feasible than they once were. We place the highest priority on serving our customers. We offer many ordering options-online, mail order, local bookstores, and telephone.

Mr. TAYLOR. Mr. Hoyer, do you have any questions?

BEST IN-PLANT PRINTING OPERATION

Mr. HOYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DiMario let me congratulate you. For the third consecutive year, you have been designated the best in-plant printing operation in the country by InPlant Graphics magazine, a leading industry trade journal.

Mr. DIMARIO. Thank you very much.

Mr. HOYER. I want to congratulate you on that effort. I know that some perceive the GPO as not state of the art, not up to competitive standards, but in fact the industry itself recognizes that that is not the case, and in fact, believes that you have the best in-plant printing operation in the country. That is a significant honor to have and we are proud of you and your employees who have helped to achieve that.

Mr. DIMARIO. Thank you, Mr. Hoyer.

FTE LEVELS

Mr. HOYER. Now, talking about your employees and your continuing effort to keep FTE levels which will allow you to perform the functions expected, but understanding as well that you are trying to organize in a way that keeps the people that you need, you have asked for an extension of buy-out authority. Would you discuss why you need that?

Mr. DIMARIO. Well, the sales program, as we noted, is having a great deal of difficulty, and so we are planning to restructure that program. And as part of the restructuring, we have a great number of employees who are eligible for retirement, either in optional retirement or the early retirement. Employees tend, as indicated by Dr. Billington earlier, not to leave simply because they are eligible. As a result, we think we might have to use an incentive to reduce the numbers. For FY 2002, our budget is premised on a reduction of some 30 employees in the sales area. Is 30 the correct number? Mr. BUCKLEY. 33.

Mr. DIMARIO. 33, and we put that specifically into this budget request. We may do some of that through the bookstore reduction. Our hope is that we can do it through attrition, but if we can't do it through attrition, then we need a tool that would act as an incentive to leave. Our program has been very, very successful for us, and that is our reason for asking

Mr. HOYER. You indicate it has been successful. Do you have an estimate of the dollars that we have saved as a result of the use of early-out as opposed to RIF?

Mr. DIMARIO. I think we have saved about $3.6 million, some

on the early-out program. So it has been useful to us, but it is expiring, and so we need

Mr. HOYER. That is the net savings over and above the incentive payment that is made and the net savings that would have

Mr. DIMARIO. We have not offered the incentive payment.
Mr. HOYER. Oh, you have not?

Mr. DIMARIO. Even though I have had the authority, I have not felt it necessary to use that incentive payment, because we have been meeting our requirements through attrition. But, again, it is a tool that, if necessary, in order to scale the program down, I would want to have available.

I have been reluctant to use it, even though I have been authorized to use it, because we have been meeting our requirements. We have so many people especially in GPO, over half of the agency, eligible for regular and early-out retirement, which means they may go out before age 55 and 30-year service. The system is voluntary. Someone may leave at age 55 with 30 or more years of service without a reduced annuity. I, for one, have 38 years of service. We have many employees with much more service than I have. They are not

Mr. HOYER. When you reach 50, are you thinking of retiring?

Mr. DIMARIO. I reached 50 14 years ago, but I am still here. It is, you know, a situation where in order to get the work done, we have got to manage the workforce, and we can't have a wholesale exodus from the place. And if we use the authority across the board, or indiscriminately, that is what would happen. So we have attempted to use it in a managed way. Previously when we had the buy-out authority and did use it, we had a significant reduction in the number of employees, but I had to limit the areas that we used it in.

After using it, a number of employees who were, for whatever reason, not given the buy-out authority, sued us. So we ended up in years of litigation over the question of whether or not those employees were treated fairly in the process of being given a $25,000 buy-out. It is a difficult thing to manage and use successfully. On the other hand, we

Mr. HOYER. Did you prevail in the suit?

Mr. DIMARIO. We did in most cases. There were a couple of cases we did not.

Mr. HOYER. Let me go on to my last question.

Mr. DIMARIO. Yes, sir.

POLICE CONSOLIDATION

Mr. HOYER. Last year the Senate proposed a merger of your GPO police and the Library of Congress police and the Capitol police. That was not enacted, but there is still interest in the idea. Can you give me your thoughts on that?

Mr. DIMARIO. I would have no opposition to the merger, so long as GPO, in the process, is provided with adequate security for its premises and its employees. We don't want to end up as the stepchild in the process of a merger into the Capitol Police structure. Our employees at the time, our police officers, were certainly encouraged by the sense that they might receive the same compensa

wanting to come over for more pay, but there were other issues out there. We have since negotiated a contract with them, regarding their pay, and we reached an agreement. It is not quite what the Capitol Police get, but the agreement puts their pay on par with other Federal police in the District of Columbia. We were attempting to stay within that executive branch level.

I guess my sense in response is if you want to carry it out, that is fine. There are benefits to the Congress, and I would have no objection to it.

Mr. HOYER. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have some questions that I will submit to be answered for the record. [The questions and responses follow:]

QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD FROM MR. HOYER

Question. The technology used in the Plant has changed dramatically in recent years. Do you have an idea how much money has been saved on Congressional printing through improved technology like direct-to-plate?

Response. Productivity increases resulting from technology have enabled GPO to make substantial reductions in staffing requirements while continuing to improve services for Congress. In the mid-1970's, on the threshold of our conversion to electronic photocomposition, we employed approximately 8,500 persons. Today, we have about 3,100 employees, fewer than at any time in this century. In the past 8 years alone our staffing has been reduced by 35 percent. The reduction was accomplished while at the same time modernizing and improving our services.

Electronic technologies have significantly reduced the cost, in real economic terms, of congressional publications. In FY 1978, the appropriation for Congressional Printing and Binding was $84.6 million, the equivalent in today's dollars of more than $200 million. By comparison, we project that the cost of congressional work for FY 2002 will be $81 million, a reduction of nearly two-thirds in real economic terms. This has yielded substantial savings to the taxpayers. The vast majority of the reduction is due to productivity improvements and staffing reductions made possible through our use of electronic printing and information technologies.

Question. You are requesting 8 additional FTE's in the Salaries and Expenses Appropriation. Why?

Response. Six additional FTE's are being requested for the Cataloging and Indexing Program, to improve GPO's capability to discover, catalog, and process online Government information. Two additional FTE's are requested for the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), specifically to manage the FDLP Electronic Collection. The new FTE's would support the highly detailed and technical tasks associated with preservation of electronic publications, such as handling large digital collections. They will further integrate existing systems and develop new procedures and strategies for digital preservation.

Question. What steps are you taking to ensure permanent public access to government information in electronic formats?

Response. GPO's strategy for assuring permanent public access to digital publications in multi-layered. GPO Access material, at www.access.gpo.gov, and information hosted on GPO Access servers on behalf of the originating agency, is archived at GPO on GPO servers. This includes all information from GPO Access since its inception in 1994. For Government publications that are to be included in the FDLP only in electronic form, GPO obtains, where possible, a documented arrangement with the issuing agency that either assures that publications will be available from the agency server permanently, or will be turned over to GPO for archiving. Where a documented arrangement is not possible, GPO downloads a copy of the digital publication and houses it in an archive on GPO servers, making the archived copy available only at the point that the original product is no longer available from the publishing agency's server. GPO is also working with partners in the library community to provide archival housing of specialized categories of digital information.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Mr. TAYLOR. Thank you, Mr. Hoyer. Mr. LaHood.

Mr. LAHOOD. Nothing.

Mr. SHERWOOD. As you transition from a conventional printing operation to this high-tech digital delivery system, are you having trouble-do you have the resources and the authority to pay the kind of bonuses and attract the type of people and retain the type of people that you need because these skills are in such high demand in the commercial workplace?

Mr. DIMARIO. In certain IT areas, information technology areas, we have a great deal of difficulty, especially with what are known as C-plus or C-plus-plus programmers that are necessary to do some of that work. Recently the Office of Personnel Management authorized an increase in salary, premiums if you would, for certain IT personnel, and we are offering those. We have brought that to bear for our employees, which I think we were required to do. Overall, we are getting adequate staffing. When we go out for most GPO jobs, we have a very significant number of applicants. But when we go out for highly specialized IT jobs, then we run into problems. We have had some of the people most responsible for our success in transitioning leave and go elsewhere, some in retirement. We do pay significantly less than those people can get in the private sector.

Mr. SHERWOOD. In the same vein, in this transition to a digital delivery organization, do we need to be concerned about the security and the authenticity of our information on the Internet? Do we have sufficient firewalls and so forth in place that we can't be compromised?

Mr. DIMARIO. I would say through diligence, we are it will be a yes answer. We have them in place. There have been significant attempts to penetrate our firewall. They have not been successful. As I testified on the Senate side, since January there have been some 300,000 attempts to get into our system. And we have had none get beyond the firewall, although one got into an area where we could identify and contain the person. Some of these hacking attempts were coming from China and elsewhere.

Also, we are putting in place for authenticity's sake, a public key infrastructure. We are well on our way on that, which authenticates the data and secures the data.

So I would say we certainly need to keep on top of it and keep moving ahead. GPO funds most everything from rates, so we pass the cost on through our rate structure. The only appropriations we receive are the two that are here, the salaries and expense appropriation which is mostly for the depository library program, and the congressional printing and binding. The rest of it comes through fees that we charge others.

We have managed to keep our technology fairly high-end. I am very proud of where GPO is today. We have gone from 8,500 employees 25 years ago to a little over 3,000. When I took over 8 years ago, we had 5,000 employees. I think we are performing very, very well and all you have to do is see the awards we get from the outside folks in the electronic arena, people who use the system. That does not eliminate criticism of where we are, and to the extent that we are criticized, we will address the criticisms.