Paper Still Popular

While some federal officials are touting the benefits of paperless processes, the Government Printing Office has found that people still like to hold documents in their hands.

GPO now publishes many of its publications both in print and on the Web. People download more than 8 million documents a month from GPO Access, the office's online repository of publications like the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations and the federal budget.

But sales of print versions of those publications have not dropped significantly, says GPO spokesman Andrew Sherman. For example, in February, President Clinton's fiscal 1999 budget was downloaded 64,428 times, up 535 percent from 10,149 downloads for the budget a year ago. But paper copy sales decreased only 7 percent from last year, down from 7,918 copies to 7,390 copies.

"The paper sales were affected only marginally," Sherman says. "Electronic availability tends to supplement, rather than supplant, the print versions."

Sherman says people like the authenticity of paper documents, and like to ensure that a document is permanently around for reference. In contrast, people like to use electronic versions to search for specific information.

"There's something different about seeing a document online," Sherman says.

GPO has not dramatically reduced its printing costs because of online availability, either. While distribution costs drop when fewer copies of a publication are ordered, Sherman notes that a significant portion of printing costs comes in producing the first copy of a publication. The more copies that are printed, the less expensive additional copies become.

Commerce Business Daily, the daily publication of federal contracts, is one GPO product for which online technology has reduced the costs of production. Agencies now submit contract listings electronically. Commerce Business Daily is then automatically published online at CBDNet, and GPO prints out PostScript files of the CBDNet listings for print distribution. Agencies pay $5 per contract notice, down from $18 per submission before GPO developed the online production process.