As the country observed this month the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, the nation's honorary first public printer, Government Printing Office officials looked to him for inspiration to reach another historic milestone.

GPO had just issued a draft request for proposals for a system that will revolutionize the way the government distributes information to the public. GPO's transformation from a 19th-century printing press operation to a 21st-century electronic information agency demands a new publishing and distribution model. GPO officials refer to it as the Future Digital System.

Federal Computer Week recently sat down with GPO's leaders to discuss this turning point. Agency officials worried aloud about what the founding fathers might think of the current moment in history.

"The founding fathers, led by Madison, felt that the success of what they called the 'New Republic' depended upon having an informed citizenry," said Bruce James, the United States' 24th public printer. "And that's been the role of the GPO basically since our creation."

As reminders of that role, a huge portrait of Franklin looms high on James' office wall and a lamp with a shade depicting Franklin's face sits on a table near the doorway.

In 1895 Congress gave GPO the responsibility of informing the U.S. public. It charged GPO with ensuring that all citizens could find information about the work of the three branches of government. The agency's first printings included the Congressional Record and Annual Message of the President to Congress.

Printing, the agency's bread and butter, meant producing characters with ink using a printing press. But in the Digital Era, that kind of printing is becoming passe.

"When I came in here three years ago, one of the first questions I confronted was, 'Is our middle name getting in our way?' because the word 'printing' so often throws people off about what we really do here," James said. "So I look up 'printing,' and lo and behold, there is a fourth definition of printing: an image on a computer screen."

"The nature of printing is changing," said Robert Tapella, GPO's chief of staff. "It isn't necessarily that printing itself is going away." In the next 300 years, the nature of printing will likely change again, he added.