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Government Leader home > March 2005 issue
March 2005; Vol. 1 No. 1
Dynamic Type
By Richard W. Walker
At the Government Printing Office, CEO Bruce James relies on a corporate structure to beef up the bottom line.
When he arrived at the Government Printing Office nearly three years ago, Bruce James found a 19th century management structure—and a bottom line that was seriously lagging.
“When I walked in the door, we had lost
about $100 million [over five years] and
Congress was fed up,” James said. “Congress
wanted to bring GPO into a situation where
we could predictably earn a fair return and
have investment capital for the future.”
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| | TURN OF THE CENTURY: GPO’s Bruce James says the management style he’s instilled at the agency helped it go from losing $33 million in 2003 to making $11 million last year. | |
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GPO, a congressional agency with about
2,500 employees, buys between 600 and
1,000 printing jobs a day for government
agencies. It gets about 15 percent of its
funding from congressional appropriations;
the rest comes from fees earned in
providing products and services to other
government agencies.
A steady revenue stream is crucial at GPO,
especially when it comes to creating capital for
investments in the transformation initiative.
James installed a corporate-style management
structure, starting with himself as
CEO and William Turri as chief operating
officer. That, along with some prudent
downsizing, helped GPO get on track financially,
he said. In 2003 the agency lost $33
million; last year it made $11 million.
“That’s a $44 million turnaround with
this structure,” he said. “The structure was
put into place to make this happen.”
The Industrial Age organizational chart it
replaced was massively top-heavy. “It was a
command-and-control design, where all
orders emanated from the top and were followed
down a chain of command,” James
said. “That style went out a long time ago.”
At the time, the chief executive at GPO held
the title public printer of the United States. On
the next rung was the deputy public printer.
But both titles were in the same box on
GPO’s organizational chart, James said.
“There was no defined role for the deputy
as long as the public printer was in the
office,” he said. “I guess he played solitaire on
his computer. That struck me as not a very
good way of running the organization.”
He created the CEO position at the top,
abolished the deputy printer position and
replaced it with the chief operating officer,
who reports to the CEO.
In the key management areas, he designated
a chief financial officer, a chief human
capital officer and a chief information officer,
all of whom report directly to the COO.
He also created an Office of Innovation
and New Technology, co-directed by officers
who report directly to the CEO.
In addition, he designated a chief acquisition
officer to oversee GPO’s contracting activity.
The CAO reports to the managing director
of the agency’s Customer Services Division,
who in turn reports directly to the COO.
James, a political appointee who was con-
firmed by the Senate in November 2002,
sees his role as leading GPO’s drive to transform
from a traditional printing shop into
a modern digital information organization.
“In order to do that, I need to spend a lot
of my time focused on the future, not on the
operation today,” he said.
James brought extensive experience from
the printing industry to GPO. A 1964 graduate
of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s
School of Printing Management and Sciences,
his printing experience dates to when, at the
age of 11, he started a basement print shop in
his hometown of Cleveland.
He later started and ran several printing
operations, often on the cutting edge of
industry technology. In the 1970s, the now defunct Uniplan Corp. pioneered the use of mainframes for text and graphics. Barclays
Law Publishers of San Francisco, started in
the mid-1980s, created an automated, digital
custom printing system. For four years in a
row, Barclays made Inc. Magazine’s list of the
500 fastest-growing companies.
More to do
He retired from business 12 years ago,
moved with his wife, Nora, to Lake Tahoe,
Nev., and turned to government and nonprofit
work, which eventually landed him in
Washington.
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| | CIO Reynold Schweickhardt |
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While James takes the long view for GPO,
COO Turri maintains the day-to-day focus,
including acting as the CXOs’ chief whip.
“My role is to coordinate everybody’s
efforts to make sure they’re working on our
new strategic plan and not going off on their
own,” Turri said.
“That’s part of the problem we have in government—
people tend to go off and do their
own thing,” he said.
Another of James’ early steps was to build a
central IT organization. GPO didn’t have one.
“Every little business unit had its own IT
structure, and they didn’t talk to each other,”
he said.
So James created the CIO position and brought in Reynold Schweickhardt, who was previously director of technology for the House of Representatives.
“My role is to bring the IT systems into conformity
with best practices,” Schweickhardt said.
As CIO, Schweickhardt is responsible for establishing
information resources management
policies and programs for GPO’s IT resources.
Schweickhardt works closely with CFO Steven Shedd on the deployment of IT initiatives. “We both report to Turri, but we’re pretty much joined at the hip in terms of a lot of the spending,” Shedd said.
The biz view
This CIO-CFO partnership brings to the
agency a comprehensive analysis of GPO’s
IT investments from a business perspective,
Schweickhardt said.
“It’s about how we use technology to end up
with transformation, cost reduction and effi-
ciency,” he said. “In too many agencies, you end
up with a shiny new piece of technology that
hasn’t actually been a driver for transformation.”
One example: GPO now makes some
286,000 government titles available online.
While Schweickhardt reports directly to the COO, CTO Michael Wash reports directly to James. The divergent reporting lines reflect the fact that both Wash and James are more focused on future transformation at GPO.
Wash is responsible for developing the
Digital Information System, which will be
the core of GPO’s future operations.
Using DIS, all federal documents within the
scope of the Federal Depository Library Program
will be cataloged and entered into the
system according to GPO metadata and document
creation standards.
Wash’s co-director in the office, Scott Stovall,
is responsible for monitoring emerging technologies
that might be applicable to DIS.
“We need to have our eye on technologies
that are out there in the future so that as
they become available they can be integrated
into the system here,” Wash said.
In keeping with GPO’s integrated approach,
Wash’s office doesn’t work in isolation.
“One of our first deliverables was to create
a concept of operations for the future
digital system,” he said. “That was done in
very close collaboration with all of the
functions within GPO in [defining] what
the requirements would be in a future
state.”
CAO Kerry Miller, the agency’s top contracting
officer, provides goods and services
to both the agency’s federal customers and
its internal users.
“I have a group of contracting officers in
acquisition services whose job is to buy all
the goods and services that [the CXOs]
need to carry out our functions, including
IT,” he said. It’s no small task: 90 percent of
the printing work is contracted to the private
sector.
GPO did have an edge over other federal
agencies in setting up a corporate-like management
structure.
Its organizational structure is not defined in
statute, giving the agency more freedom to
overhaul, Schweickhardt noted.
Also, as a small agency, GPO can act more
swiftly to reorganize, much like a private corporation
responding to new market realities.
“GPO is different than a lot of agencies,”
James said. “We can move more nimbly and
quickly on some of these changes.”
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| Going Digital | GPO has cut back in recent years on paper,
printing, bookstores and employees. One
big increase: The titles available online.
PAPER USE AND PRODUCTION
1992: 79 million pounds of paper purchased
2004: 34 million pounds of paper purchased
2005 Government titles available online for free download: About 286,000
Printing work contracted to the private sector: About 90 percent
GPO BOOKSTORES
1995: 23 in cities around the country
2000: 18
2002: 14
2003: 1, in Washington
EMPLOYEES:
1995: 4,091
2000: 3,185
Current: 2,500 (approximate)
Source: Government Printing Office
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| Bruce James’ tips on transformation | The most difficult task of organizational transformation is to convince leaders and rank-and-file employees to let go of the past, to understand that the past is an anchor that has to be cut loose.”
It helps to have a crisis that lets all
employees see the need for change. In our case
it was OMB threatening to have executive
branch agencies bypass the GPO and buy printing
services from the private sector.”
Leaders and employees need to be guided in
developing and embracing their own logical and
clear strategic vision for the organization’s
future.”
You need to identify leaders at all levels
who will embrace change, then put them in positions
to make changes and ensure that senior
management supports them.”
You need to target specific opportunities
for quick successes to prove to the organization
and others that it is possible to move forward.”
While customer focus is important, you can
never lose sight of the most important
asset of any organization—its own people.
Every employee needs the opportunity to help
the organization achieve success.”
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