Mike Wash

Government Printing Office Chief Information Officer (since 2004)

(www.gpo.gov)

Why He Matters

GPO Chief Information Officer Wash led a team that researched, developed and executed the Federal Digital System (FDsys), which was launched in 2009. It replaced GPO Access, which was the clearinghouse for federal data since 2004, and represents the government's bid to remake the nation's documents for a Gov 2.0 world.

Public Printer Robert C. Tapella has called the FDsys "a world-class information management system" that provides the public with a one-stop web site containing digital government documents. As of summer 2009, it contained over 160,000 digital documents.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Gerber Scientific Products (2003 to 2004); Eastman Kodak (1995 to 2003); Vice President of Engineering at Combyte (1993 to 1995); Director of Engineering Colorado Memory Systems (1991 to 1995); Kodak (1973 to 1991)
Hometown: Greenwood, Ind.
Alma Mater: Purdue University,1977

DC Office: 732 NorthCapitol St.
Web site

Path to Power

Wash received his BSSE degree from Purdue University in 1977.

In 1973, Wash first joined Eastman Kodak Company. He would work at the company for 26 years, eventually becoming the general manager of digital photo-finishing systems. As general manager, Wash directed more than $2 billion in service revenue. He was responsible for developing the system to deliver Kodak perfect touch processing for the consumer photo market in North America and Europe.

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The Issues

The GPO has existed as the primary dissemenator of government documents since 1895, and Tappella, the current public printer, says its challenges are "not much different than the disarray in the cataloging, distribution and storage of electronic documents we all face today. There is a solution for this electronic disarray - and we call it: e-lifecycle management."

In order to tackle the problems of authenticating and preserving public documents in the digital world, the GPO replaced its former archiving system, GPO Access,with FDsys, in 2009.

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GPO head Tappella said in July 2009 that he believes GPO should be the premier source of digital government information and support President Obama's "vision for transparency and open government.

FDsys

FDsys authenticates, preserves and provides permanent public access to government information, which is retrieved both manually and semi-electronically from legislative and federal web sites (the GPO is working to include judicial documents). The goal is to have a complete historical record of all federal government documents since the founding of the U.S.

In the future, FDsys hopes to support comments on pending legislation, a pilot project for rulemaking documents, become a leader in standardizing electronic publishing, and link the White House web site to FDsys for public search.

Wash's new system allows several new things :

Search across multiple federal publications with a single search box
Location of authentic documents with digital signatures
Browse government publications.
Preserve documents following an archival system to ensure long-term access to digital content

The Future

While FDsys already contains close to 200,000 digital government documents, it is moving forward with plans to include such titles as the Federal Register, the Congressional Record and the daily compilation of presidential documents.

One of its big goals is the release of the Federal Register in XML, which improves usability by employing tags to structure data.

The GPO is also working to provide more "granular authentication" for government documents, which will allow greater usability.

"With legal and regulatory materials it is also very important to maintain the chain of custody showing exactly how each law or regulation was enacted or came into force. This provides the basis for the electronic version to be as official as a printed edition," Tappella said in July 2009.

GPO is also looking to employ "metadata," which is basically bibliographical information about online documents, to improve search capabilities. It is also examining the possibility of exporting data as part of APIs, or "application programming interfaces."

The Network

Wash works closely with Robert C. Tappella, who as the public printer is head of GPO.

Additional Resources