The conference report to the 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act mandated that the National Academy of Public Administration (the Academy) conduct a broad operational review of GPO to (1) update past studies of GPO operations; (2) examine the feasibility of GPO continuing to perform executive branch printing; and (3) identify additional cost saving operational alternatives beyond those that GPO has already implemented.The Academy formed a five-member Panel of Fellows to conduct a ten-month study of the agency’s current role, its operations, and its future direction. The Panel determined that the federal government in the digital age must continue to ensure that the public has permanent access to authentic government information and that GPO has a critical role to play in meeting this need. GPO leaders have made significant progress in “rebooting” the agency from a print-centric to a content-centric focus, but the agency needs to make further business and operational changes. The Panel issued fifteen recommendations intended to position the federal government for the digital age, strengthen GPO’s business model, and further GPO’s continuing transformation. Among other things, the Panel recommended that Congress establish an inter-agency process to develop a government-wide strategy for managing the life-cycle of digital government information; GPO …

On May 22, 2010, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling: an independent,nonpartisan entity, directed to provide a thorough analysis and impartial judgment. The President charged the Commission to determine the causes of the disaster, and to improve the country’s ability to respond to spills, and to recommend reforms to make offshore energy production safer. This report is the result of an intense six-month effort to fulfill the President’s charge. The Commission’s report offers the President, policymakers, industry, and the American people the fullest account available of the largest oil spill in U.S history: the context for the well itself, how the explosion and spill happened, and how industry and government scrambled to respond to an unprecedented emergency.