The New Model

f the Government Printing Office is the traditional model of government, the Defense Automated Printing Service may be the new model. DAPS is an arm of the Defense Logistics Agency that provides mostly small-job printing for the military services and defense agencies, plus a small amount for other agencies.

Where GPO is centralized, with almost all employees and equipment at its headquarters, DPAS has its 2,000 employees spread out at 300 production sites nationwide and worldwide. The largest facility has about 20 employees. "They're right there where the customer is. The customers want to come, they want to get in, they want to have it handed to them quickly. They don't want to have it centralized somewhere, except where they have huge volumes and they can afford to wait," says Marshall H. Bailey, director of the
Defense Automated Printing and Support Center at Ft. Belvoir, Va., which oversees DAPS.

For most jobs costing more than $500, DAPS uses GPO. "They do a great job and we don't want to get in that business," says Bailey. "We're doing the work that we need to do decentralized. It's not necessarily a fair comparison. There may be a use for their model for some types of work. It's not because our model is better, it's because it's the type of work that suits our model. Any work that doesn't suit our model, we go to GPO."

With its decentralized structure and quick response times, DAPS might seem a prime candidate to take on work from other agencies, acting as the type of franchise agent that reinventors want to establish throughout government. Currently, DAPS, which operates on a revolving fund basis, performs only about $29 million in non-DoD work out of a total workload of some $363 million annually. About half of the non-DoD work came to DAPS a year ago when it took over the 10 regional printing facilities previously operated by the General Services Administration.

However, Bailey says DAPS has no particular interest in expanding its role in printing government-wide. "We're an element organized by DoD to try and reduce their costs. I really feel like we ought to do that first," he says. "It seems to me that you really have to feel like you've reached your full potential within Defense before you do that."

"Our primary thrust is to reduce the cost for the warfighter and still produce the maximum service," says Bailey. "It is not to move out to other federal sectors."