date would never have been discovered by anybody in GPO or by the contractor, and it was just shot as it was furnished to us. Mr. RUDD. I am told by your people that this was the way it was submitted, and it was not your fault.

Mr. BOYLE. The agency gave us the copy and we shot it and that is how it was delivered.

Mr. RUDD. And they insisted on a reprint of the entire thing. Mr. BOYLE. At their expense.

Mr. RUDD. Regardless of the expense.

Mr. BOYLE. At the government's expense.

Now if this had been a contractor error and our contractor had made a mistake, we would have forced the contractor to print it at his expense. If the error had been made in the GPO, and the error was determined by the agency to be unacceptable, the decision of whether to print or not to print over at our expense is a decision of the Public Printer.

There are times we print publications that have errors, or the agency has submitted copy with errors, that I take a personal interest in. I have delegated responsibility to my people to determine whether we will reprint at government expense, and the agency appeal is to the Public Printer and then to the Joint Committee on Printing.

I don't think we need changes in the law. I think the law is strong enough now to say that unless-well, let me go back a minute. We say that the date could be fixed by some simple thing like pasting over it. When you have a long run job running on high speed presses, sometimes the labor involved in making a manual correction far exceeds the cost of printing it over, so we have to take all of the costs into consideration. We look at every single one, because every time an agency brings a job back and demands that it be printed over for some reason, if it is any sizable amount of money it comes to my attention and I make the decision as to whether it should be printed over or is a usable product.

Mr. RUDD. Regardless of whose expense.

Mr. BOYLE. Regardless of whose expense. But I don't have strong grounds to stand on when the agency demands and they say, look, it is our money we are spending and we want to get a better product.

Mr. RUDD. Let's take this example. You have printed a 55-page booklet with this cover. The only error is on the cover, a change from 1979 to 1978.

Now is there any way to change that without printing the entire 55-page booklet, basing the expense that you have in mind?

ALTERNATE CORRECTION METHODS

Mr. BOYLE. Well, there is a possibility. You could black out the 1978 and stamp 1979, but now you are back to a manual process of putting them through a slow printing process to overprint a new date.

Mr. RUDD. So it would be cheaper to print the entire 55 pages

over

Mr. BOYLE. It could be. Yes, sir.

Mr. RUDD [continuing]. Than it would be to just-

Mr. BOYLE. It could be. I am not saying it would be in this instance. I would have to get an estimate of one method against the estimate of the other and determine what was the least amount of cost to the government.

Mr. RUDD. Is that what would have happened in that case? Mr. BOYLE. I would hope that is what happened.

Mr. SAYLOR. Had this been brought to our attention, sir, and Mr. Boyle mentioned he delegated it, I would have handled it, I would have gotten the two estimates and made a determination on which was less expensive to the government. In this particular case I don't know all the circumstances. Normally I would have tried to prevail upon the agency to accept the error on the cover and do nothing.

Mr. RUDD. I am told by your people that the Bureau of Labor Statistics insisted on the entire reprinting. I am not sure.

Mr. BOYLE. Could we look further into this, Mr. Rudd?

Mr. RUDD. Sure, I would appreciate it if you would.

Mr. BOYLE. I would like to look at it.

Mr. RUDD. The point I am trying to make is this: This was really caused by a lack of attention by the people who made the request, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a little more attention to proofreading doesn't take any greater effort, and could save a major error like this.

What I am really looking for is some way to insure tighter guidelines for the people who make the request.

Mr. DEVAUGHN. This would not have been proofread in the Government Printing Office.

Mr. BOYLE. Mr. Rudd knows that. The agency says it was their

error.

Mr. RUDD. I would like to find ways to tighten up controls, and maybe this committee could help do that.

Mr. BOYLE. All right.

EXTENT OF REPRINT PROBLEM

Mr. RUDD. So that there will not be all of this wasted effort, time, and expense on something as simple as that. It sounds like it is a little nitpicking, but when you add these things up it becomes a real problem. With that in mind, let me ask you to please provide for the record a complete report on the extent of this problem. I don't know how you are going to find that out, and if it is going to cost a lot of money to do that maybe we ought to take a look at that.

Mr. BOYLE. No, we keep track of every job that has to go back to the press.

Mr. RUDD. Please include specific facts of each agency's requirements that printing be redone-we are talking about redo's nowbecause of the mistakes that they make or improper proofing on their part, so that we can get a handle on the additional cost and work that this is imposing on the Government Printing Office, and the contractors who work for you.

Can we get that?

Mr. BOYLE. Yes, sir. We will supply it for the record.
Mr. RUDD. Thank you very much.

[The information follows:]

The subject Labor Department publication consisting of a cover and 56 pages of text was submitted to the GPO on Program 2333-S as camera ready copy to print a total of 3,970 copies. Prior to the contractor shipping the completed publication, the ordering agency discovered an error in the date on the cover and ordered delivery and distribution halted and requested that the job be reprinted with corrected cover copy submitted.

GPO personnel made estimates based on overprinting, removing and replacing cover, and complete reprinting. The contractor's estimate of $955 to reprint was the least expensive method to obtain an acceptable product that would be distributed to the depository library system and be sold to the general public and private industry. In regard to the extent of the problem of reprinting because of errors caused by personnel in the ordering agency, we have on record in this Office only 5 instances of reprinting because of department errors out of 97,750 orders received and processed in fiscal year 1978.

The five specific instances of reprinting because of department errors are as follows:

1. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare brochure titled, “1979–80 H.E.W. Fellows Program." GPO Jacket 270-784.

Department error in furnished camera copy, an improperly trimmed photograph, and faulty trimming of the brochure by the contractor resulted in a reprinting. H.E.W. paid half of the reprint cost amounting to $1,280.00.

2. Library of Congress special printed cards. GPO Jacket 258-992.

Department required 60,000 cataloging cards to be reprinted because of a type size error. The error was caused because the Department had not specified the size correctly. Cost to reprint was $568.00.

3. U.S. Postal Service's Report to Congress. GPO Jacket 231-204.

Department originally had requested a certain type size and after GPO submitted proof they insisted on a different type size. Although this job was still in the proof stage, the resetting of type caused an additional $3,400.00 cost to the Government. 4. Internal Revenue Service Form 5544. GPO Jacket 263-420.

Due to an error in furnished copy, 675,000 forms plus 50 sets of reproducible proofs were reprinted at a cost of $7,254.79.

5. Public Health Service/Department of Health, Education and Welfare booklet. GPO Jacket 284-109.

After the printing of the first signature the Department submitted a change in the "Foreword." This change resulted in reprinting a 48-page signature at a cost of $501.12.

It is possible that there are other instances of reprinting because of agency error that this Office would not have on record. We do not identify jobs by title and if an agency resubmitted a publication to reprint on a new requisition we would not know it was being reprinted unless it was called to our attention. In addition to work being produced in the main plant and 6 field printing plants, we procure work on contract from the Central Office and from 14 Regional Procurement offices. Much of the work of the agencies is procured on term contracts administered by the GPO whereby the agency deals directly with our contractor and we never see the actual work in GPO.

Before any publication is reprinted at government expense or contractor's expense, the Government Printing Office determines whether the reprint is necessary or whether the product in question is usable. The final decision of the Public Printer is usually accepted by the ordering agency who can appeal to the Joint Committee on Printing if there is not agreement. We have no record of the Joint Committee overruling the decision of the Public Printer in the past year.

The possibility of errors in printing is very high because of the very nature of the printed product and the printing production process. The percentage of jobs reprinted within the government at government expense because of error is very low. Mr. BENJAMIN. I am going to give you several questions to respond to in the record. I will give it to you by number and we will provide copies of the questions. Before proceeding with those, the Public Printer does not have control over "special sales." Describe the items covered under this program and the costs involved.

Can changes be made to effect a savings?

PUBLICATIONS IN SPECIAL SALES PROGRAM

Mr. LABARRE. The Special Sales Program includes those publications which are in the sales program, but the price is not regulated by the Public Printer. They do not come under the pricing authority outlined in section 1708 of Title 44, U.S. Code. They include subscriptions to the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, the Federal Register Index and the List of CFR Sections Affected, and the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents. Also included are single sales of the Congressional Record, the Record Index, the Federal Register, and Index, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, the Congressional Pictorial Directory, and the books entitled The Capitol, the Constitution, Eminent Americans, Our Flag, How Our Laws Are Made, and the Pledge of Allegiance. That is the total number of publications in the Special Sales Program.

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD PRICE INCREASE

However, as you can recognize, most of the money involved is for the Congressional Record and the Federal Register. I will have some savings in 1980 in the Special Sales Program because the Congressional Record price was increased from $45 to $75. It will take an entire year to realize the benefits of this increase, because each month as a subscription terminates, the subscriber is mailed a renewal card with the new price on it. In other words, the increase is staggered from January 1979, when it became effective, and will continue incrementally each month until December 1979.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Do you anticipate loss of subscriptions as you phase in your new price?

Mr. LABARRE. Well, sir, it wouldn't really make any difference. If the new price is responsible for a lost subscription, we would not lose the subsidized portion of the money in the Special Sales Program. So in either case it will reduce the money necessary for the Special Sales operation.

I have noticed that subscriptions to the Congressional Record have gone down very slightly, however, since the new price was announced. In 1980 I estimate that the Special Sales Program will cost $120,000 less as a result of the Congressional Record being raised in price, but this is one of the rare opportunities we have to reduce the amount necessary for publications which are subsidized.

PRICE INCREASES FOR OTHER SPECIAL SALES PUBLICATIONS

Mr. BENJAMIN. Do you have any other recommendations? Mr. LABARRE. The only other recommendation would be, of course, to increase the prices for all publications in the Special Sales Program so we could break even and place them in the General Sales Program.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What procedure would that involve?

Mr. BOYLE. The major amount of money in the Special Sales Program is the losses we have on the Federal Register, and the subscription price of the Federal Register is set by the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register. The Administrative Com

mittee of the Federal Register consists of the Archivist of the United States as chairman, a representative of the Attorney General, and the Public Printer.

Mr. BENJAMIN. You are one third of that distinguished committee.

ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE OF FEDERAL REGISTER

Mr. BOYLE. I am one third of the committee. For the past 3 years, in fact this past year, the GPO member of the committee has submitted a motion at a formal meeting of the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register to raise the price of the Federal Register and the vote has been 2 to 1. This year I submitted a motion to increase the subscription price of the Federal Register from $50 to $80 per year, from $5 to $7 per month, and from 75 cents to $1 a day.

There was a vote to table my motion, to inquire whether this increase violated the President's inflation guidelines and by telephone yesterday I received word from the other two members of the committee that they will recommend to me that we turn the pricing problem over to our standing subcommittee to try and resolve it this year by possibly not raising the price totally to the subscriber but raising the cost to both the agency that publishes in the Federal Register and the subscriber, and I think that when we come back here next year, there won't be a Special Sales Program. I believe we can wipe it out.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I thank you, Mr. Boyle, not only on this program but the other programs since you have become the Public Printer, I feel we have had a great improvement. I wonder if perhaps the leverage you might need is that we would withdraw any subsidy, and then you might have a three to nothing vote.

Mr. BOYLE. I am not going to comment on that.
Mr. BENJAMIN. No, I don't expect you to.

Let's do this. If we can get from you information on each one of these items and the identity of controlling agency, we will follow up with a letter from this subcommittee suggesting to them in a friendly manner that we increase these prices, to something realistic.

[Discussion off the record.]

Mr. BENJAMIN. On the record.

BY-LAW MAILING PROGRAM

Mr. BENJAMIN. Explain your by-law mailing program. What costs are attributable to it? Can changes be made to effect a savings? [The information follows:]

By-Law mailings are those performed by the Superintendent of Documents under provisions of law without reimbursement from the sponsoring agency. The program includes such activities as distribution of Department of Agriculture publications for Members of Congress as a result of constituent requests on Lists 1 and 3; distribution of free (to the recipient) copies of the Congressional Record, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Soil Surveys, and the Code of Federal Regulations; distribution of the U.S. Code and Supplements, Deschler's Precedents, etc., to Members of Congress; handling of Congressional Book Exchange Accounts; and the distribution of certain Congressional publications to foreign legations.