ADMINISTRATIVE NOTES Newsletter of the Federal Depository Library Program [ Back Issues ] -------------------------------------------------------------------- May 1, 1999 GP 3.16/3-2:20/08 (Vol. 20, no. 08) -------------------------------------------------------------------- GPO ACCESS: NEW AND IMPROVED Remarks by T.C. Evans Assistant Director, Office of Electronic Information Dissemination Services Before the Depository Library Council and Federal Depository Conference April 12, 1999 Bethesda, MD It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to report on the continuing growth and development of GPO Access. Hopefully, you have had an opportunity to use our new Web pages released last week and to benefit from the improved response time. These improvements are a direct result of your feedback and months of hard work by a number of GPO areas to act upon them. Reaction from the user community has been decidedly positive, and we are very grateful to those who have shared their views with us. While we seldom have any problem getting feedback if something goes wrong, we often must content ourselves with the old saw that says: "no news is good news." This is by no means an end to the changes on GPO Access. Work is already underway on a number of the lower-level pages in an attempt to utilize the many improvements that have come from the work on our primary pages. Efforts are also underway to continue working on the infrastructure of GPO Access to provide the best possible performance. We have also spent a considerable amount of time examining usage and the ways in which we measure GPO Access usage. The system changes necessary to improve performance and the growth of information available on GPO Access forced us to change the way in which we capture the number of documents downloaded each month. As a result, an improved process fully capturing all downloads from GPO Access regardless of which piece of the system was involved has been implemented. The first month in which the new method was employed was February and more than 19.1 million downloads were recorded. Let's consider the February number for a moment. The 19.1 million downloads translate to more than 680,000 per day, over 28,000 per hour, 475 per minute, and approximately 8 per second, depending on your preferred unit of time. Regardless, this represents heavy usage, particularly in light of the fact that downloads result from a variety of other activities on the site. As the full effect of the system performance improvements are felt in subsequent months, numbers should go even higher. Preliminary numbers currently being evaluated for March indicate that almost 22.2 million downloads were completed in that month. This represents more than twice the number for March 1998. None of this would have been possible without the dedicated efforts of GPO personnel from many organizations. This includes the Web Committee, the many hardworking men and women in Production and Documents who strive to support the demands placed upon them, and the many people in the user community who give of their time to help GPO Access grow. Although many of these individuals cannot be with us today, and most are back at the office toiling away, they all deserve our thanks for a job well done. In addition to the improvements already described, there are some other recent and upcoming changes to GPO Access that bear mention. In no particular order, they are: * The online House Journal is now available. There is a possibility that a Senate version may soon follow. * A browse feature has been added to the Public Laws application. A similar feature is being developed for Congressional Bills. * The Congressional Pictorial Directory for the 106th Congress is available on GPO Access. * Progress has been made in the development of a site search application for GPO Access. Additional work must be done before testing can begin, but we hope to have it ready in the near future so that it can become a standard feature on all of the primary GPO Access pages. An adjunct benefit of this effort will be an index that will be made available for search engines to use in adding the products and services of GPO Access to their listings. * A comprehensive effort is under way to improve the sales portion of our site. This effort has begun with today's release of the initial offering of encryption protection for placing orders. It will be refined as part of an improvement to our shopping cart feature that is being readied for release in the near future. This and other improvements are being prepared under the umbrella of the U.S. Government Online Bookstore that will pull together and enhance access to the many products available through the sales program. * A new and larger booth has been procured for use in an expanding number of important tradeshows around the country to spread the word about GPO programs. * A project is underway to provide a page whenever a user clicks on a link provided by GPO Access that causes the user to leave the site. This will also enable us to measure how many times users are referred by GPO Access to other sites housing Federal Government information. * A new online GPO Access survey is being readied for release. This is a follow-up to the previous online surveys and will be used to judge the progress of our development efforts and to gain insight for further efforts. * Work is underway to develop a comprehensive privacy notice for GPO Access. * EIDS staff members are preparing guidelines for the development of GPO Access for consideration by the Web Committee. * A new Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission Web site is being hosted on GPO Access. I would like to make note of the fact that in the March 15th issue of PC World, GPO was recognized as one of the leading public sector technology innovators in the Nation. The magazine contains a special report identifying and ranking "the real world organizations using advanced information technologies in the most innovative ways." Of the 100 State and Federal Government and education sites listed, GPO is ranked ninth. Indeed, of all Federal Government sites alone, GPO is ranked second. It would be an understatement to say that we are very proud of the success of GPO Access. As you can tell, GPO Access is continuing its rapid evolution. I invite you to take advantage of GPO Access demos to be given over the next few days by EIDS trainers. Introductory sessions will be held this afternoon and on Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. Advanced searching demonstrations will be held on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. and at 3:45 p.m. I also invite you to participate with me in an open forum on GPO Access to be held on Wednesday, at 10:45 a.m., in the Versailles IV Room. I look forward to discussing with you there, and at any time, the ways in which you feel that GPO Access could be improved.