Amid the government-wide push to modernize legacy systems, the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is closing in on transiting from its print-heavy systems to a digital-first structured data workflow that makes Federal documents available across multiple platforms.
GPO Director Hugh Halpern explained that the office responsible for producing and distributing official Federal documents is shifting its operations that have historically been print-centric to a new digital technology for XML-based publishing called XPub.
XPub is replacing the decades-old MicroComp system – a transition that Halpern explained is reducing costs and improving accessibility and efficiency at GPO.
“We are in the process of phasing out and replacing [MicroComp] with a new product we call XPub, based around some commercial, off-the-shelf technology, but is heavily customized for the environments we work in,” said Halpern while speaking at a virtual NextGov event on May 29. “Once XPub is deployed, we’re going to be in a more data-centric workflow, where we’re taking those good XML files from Congress or our other customers … to produce content that goes on the web and is easily displayed.”
That workflow includes turning physical documents into electronic versions where with the click of a button, documents can be accessed across multiple Federal sites and databases, Halpern explained.
The switch to XPub was spurred by a surge in legislative volume during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. That led to GPO overhauling its internal workflow after discovering that small administrative steps were creating major delays, helping to slash its bill-processing backlog from 1,300 to just a few hundred.
“I think other agencies are in similar conundrums, where they’ve got these legacy processes that they’ve got to figure out some way to support, and that often is the thing that slows us down,” said Halpern. “My advice to other agencies is to be open and willing to break apart your workflows and your processes … and figure out how you can make them better.”
GPO is also looking to automate some of its routine processes but is still looking for the right tool after finding that artificial intelligence systems still fall short of matching the expertise of its trained proofreaders. Halpern pointed to the variety of legislative drafting styles which are sometimes too complex for AI to dissect.
“The way we amend law, you can have all of those different styles all in one bill,” said Halpern. “We haven’t found a tool that can dissect that and really understand the context of what it’s looking at, what the style is, and then apply the right style.”
Instead, he said that GPO is focusing on converting substandard electronic files into structured data formats like XML, which are easier to work with and help streamline typesetting and review.
“We hope to be deploying some tools to look for those internal inconsistencies here in the next couple of months,” Halpern added.