Government Publishing Office GPO

Congress created the Government Printing Office by joint resolution in June 1860 to end a costly and patronage-ridden system of contracting out federal printing. It opened on March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, in a building on North Capitol Street that remains its headquarters. In 2014 Congress renamed it the Government Publishing Office to reflect its shift from ink on paper to digital publishing. Its Director is appointed by the President with Senate confirmation, and the Joint Committee on Printing oversees it.

GPO produces the official, authenticated versions of the documents the government runs on: bills, public laws, the Congressional Record printed overnight after each day in session, committee reports and hearings, the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations with the National Archives, and the President's budget. Its free govinfo website is the official online source for these texts. It also manufactures blank U.S. passport books for the State Department and other secure credentials.

Through the Federal Depository Library Program, GPO distributes government publications to more than a thousand libraries across the country, which must make them available to the public free of charge. The agency is funded partly by appropriations and partly by charging other agencies for its work, and it has shrunk from more than eight thousand employees in the 1970s to around fifteen hundred today.