William J. Boarman
Encyclopedia
William Joseph "Bill" Boarman (born June 30, 1946) is the 26th Public Printer of the United States
. A former American printer, labor union leader, and government consultant, he has previously served as Senior Vice-President of the Communications Workers of America
(CWA) and President of that union's Printing, Publishing & Media Works Sector.
, attending Northwestern High School
, where he was active in sports and drama—including the starring role in the school's 1964 senior class musical, "The Music Man
." His continuing education included: Printing Industry of Washington, DC, Printing Fundamentals – 1968; Four Year Union Printer Apprenticeship Program – McArdle Printing Company, 1971 Graduate; College level courses at the University of Maryland
, University College, American University
, and the George Meany University in Silver Spring Maryland; International Foundation Employees Benefit Educational Courses for Trustees, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2005.
He was married for 31 years to Mary Frances Boarman, until her death on April 29, 2008. He has two children, Christopher and Lauren.
(ITU), he served his apprenticeship at McArdle Printing Company in Washington, D.C. In 1974, he accepted an appointment as a Journeyman Printer at the Government Printing Office (GPO).
Active in the union from the start of his career, Boarman moved up in the union’s ranks as a local officer, and was elected President of his home Local 101-12, Columbia Typographical, when he was thirty years old. He later served as a national officer with the ITU where he was a key architect of the merger between the ITU and the CWA in 1987. He was elected ITU president shortly before the merger and has been re-elected to seven successive terms since.
Boarman has served as an unpaid consultant to several Public Printers and has testified before various congressional committees regarding GPO programs and policies as well as in confirmation hearings before the Senate Rules Committee. CWA President Larry Cohen
praised Mr. Boarman’s experience and his service to printing sector members and workers in the industry. "Bill brings an outstanding reservoir of knowledge to this work. He will be an outstanding Public Printer."
Boarman served as chairman of the $1 billion CWA/ITU Negotiated Pension Plan and the $125 million Canadian Negotiated Pension Plan. He was among the union leaders who spearheaded the creation of the AFL-CIO
Capital Stewardship Program and the Center for Working Capital in the Federation. Because of his experience in the field of pension administration, Boarman was chosen to represent CWA on the Council of Institutional Investors (CII), serving 12 years as a member of the CII Executive Board and three terms as its co-chair. He also served on the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities by appointment of the state’s governor. He served as Co-Chair, Taft-Hartley Northern American Study Group educational investment conference in Australia, UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada (1996–2001); and was a founding member of the “Capital That Matters” Conference, Harvard Law School
, 2003, and 2004.
Among the many other positions he has held is President of the Union Printers Home, a 122-bed skilled nursing facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado
.
would nominate Boarman as the 26th Public Printer of the United States
, succeeding the Honorable Robert C. Tapella
. Boarman’s nomination for this position was endorsed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
(D-Md) who said: "As a practiced and knowledgeable advocate for the GPO and its employees, Bill Boarman is an excellent choice to lead the GPO. I am pleased that the administration recognizes Bill’s talents and am confident he will attract bipartisan support in the Senate."
The United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
met July 20, 2010, to discuss Boarman's nomination, and
voted to report favorably out of committee. The next required step would have been a Senate floor vote. On December 29, after the Senate failed to hold that vote, the President made Boarman the Public Printer by a recess appointment. The Washington Post announced that Boarman officially "took the helm of the Government Printing Office" on January 5, 2011, "returning after 37 years to the agency where he began his career as a proofreader."
GPO disseminates the Congressional Record
and the Federal Register
, and numerous other products and services in both print and digital form. The agency has been tasked to build its digital capability into a state-of-the-art operation to improve transparency and citizen access to government documents and reports.
":
Boarman noted that Congress needs to revisit the 1962 law now covering the Federal Depository Library Program, in which 1,200 libraries throughout the country hold official documents from GPO. “Their walls are bulging now with books,” and the program will have to adapt to deal with material that increasingly is being produced and accessed electronically.
, "This is a printing office," which concludes: "From this place words may fly abroad, not to perish on waves of sound, not to vary with the writer's hand, but fixed in time, having been verified by proof: Friend, you stand on sacred ground," and then continued:
Additionally, he started a series of meetings with Senators and Representatives to study the information product needs of Congress, including a survey of the need for hard copies of products such as the Congressional Record
. Under his leadership, GPO launched a Facebook
page and increased publications available online, including those available through GPO's partnership with Google Books.
Public Printer of the United States
The title of Public Printer of the United States refers to the official head of the Government Printing Office . Pursuant to , this officer must be nominated by the President of the United States and approved by the United States Senate...
. A former American printer, labor union leader, and government consultant, he has previously served as Senior Vice-President of the Communications Workers of America
Communications Workers of America
Communications Workers of America is the largest communications and media labor union in the United States representing about 550,000 members in both the private and public sectors. The union has 27 locals in Canada via CWA-SCA Canada representing about 8,000 members...
(CWA) and President of that union's Printing, Publishing & Media Works Sector.
Personal background
Boarman was raised in Hyattsville, MarylandHyattsville, Maryland
Hyattsville is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. The population was 17,557 at the 2000 census.- History :The city was named for its founder, Christopher Clark Hyatt. He purchased his first parcel of land in the area in March 1845...
, attending Northwestern High School
Northwestern High School (Hyattsville, Maryland)
Northwestern High School , established in 1951, is a public comprehensive secondary school located in Hyattsville, Maryland in Prince George's County, less than a mile from the internationally known University of Maryland, College Park. It is part of the Prince George's County Public Schools system...
, where he was active in sports and drama—including the starring role in the school's 1964 senior class musical, "The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
." His continuing education included: Printing Industry of Washington, DC, Printing Fundamentals – 1968; Four Year Union Printer Apprenticeship Program – McArdle Printing Company, 1971 Graduate; College level courses at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
, University College, American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
, and the George Meany University in Silver Spring Maryland; International Foundation Employees Benefit Educational Courses for Trustees, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2005.
He was married for 31 years to Mary Frances Boarman, until her death on April 29, 2008. He has two children, Christopher and Lauren.
Professional background
Boarman's career in the printing industry spans 40 years. A Practical Printer trained under the apprenticeship program of the International Typographical UnionInternational Typographical Union
The International Typographical Union was a labor union founded on May 3, 1852 in the United States as the National Typographical Union. In its 1869 convention in Albany, New York, the union—having organized members in Canada—changed its name to the International Typographical Union...
(ITU), he served his apprenticeship at McArdle Printing Company in Washington, D.C. In 1974, he accepted an appointment as a Journeyman Printer at the Government Printing Office (GPO).
Active in the union from the start of his career, Boarman moved up in the union’s ranks as a local officer, and was elected President of his home Local 101-12, Columbia Typographical, when he was thirty years old. He later served as a national officer with the ITU where he was a key architect of the merger between the ITU and the CWA in 1987. He was elected ITU president shortly before the merger and has been re-elected to seven successive terms since.
Boarman has served as an unpaid consultant to several Public Printers and has testified before various congressional committees regarding GPO programs and policies as well as in confirmation hearings before the Senate Rules Committee. CWA President Larry Cohen
Larry Cohen (union leader)
Larry Cohen is president of the Communication Workers of America, a 700,000 member labor union representing workers in Canada and the United States...
praised Mr. Boarman’s experience and his service to printing sector members and workers in the industry. "Bill brings an outstanding reservoir of knowledge to this work. He will be an outstanding Public Printer."
Boarman served as chairman of the $1 billion CWA/ITU Negotiated Pension Plan and the $125 million Canadian Negotiated Pension Plan. He was among the union leaders who spearheaded the creation of the AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL–CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers...
Capital Stewardship Program and the Center for Working Capital in the Federation. Because of his experience in the field of pension administration, Boarman was chosen to represent CWA on the Council of Institutional Investors (CII), serving 12 years as a member of the CII Executive Board and three terms as its co-chair. He also served on the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities by appointment of the state’s governor. He served as Co-Chair, Taft-Hartley Northern American Study Group educational investment conference in Australia, UK, Italy, Ireland and Canada (1996–2001); and was a founding member of the “Capital That Matters” Conference, Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, 2003, and 2004.
Among the many other positions he has held is President of the Union Printers Home, a 122-bed skilled nursing facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and most populous city of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. Colorado Springs is located in South-Central Colorado, in the southern portion of the state. It is situated on Fountain Creek and is located south of the Colorado...
.
Nomination and appointment
In April 2010, the White House announced that President Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
would nominate Boarman as the 26th Public Printer of the United States
Public Printer of the United States
The title of Public Printer of the United States refers to the official head of the Government Printing Office . Pursuant to , this officer must be nominated by the President of the United States and approved by the United States Senate...
, succeeding the Honorable Robert C. Tapella
Robert C. Tapella
Robert C. Tapella was the 25th Public Printer of the United States, the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. Government Printing Office , an agency that produces and distributes information products for all branches of the Federal Government....
. Boarman’s nomination for this position was endorsed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
Steny Hoyer
Steny Hamilton Hoyer is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1981. The district includes a large swath of rural and suburban territory southeast of Washington, D.C.. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
(D-Md) who said: "As a practiced and knowledgeable advocate for the GPO and its employees, Bill Boarman is an excellent choice to lead the GPO. I am pleased that the administration recognizes Bill’s talents and am confident he will attract bipartisan support in the Senate."
The United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is responsible for the rules of the United States Senate, with administration of congressional buildings, and with credentials and qualifications of members of the Senate, including responsibility for dealing with contested elections.The committee...
met July 20, 2010, to discuss Boarman's nomination, and
voted to report favorably out of committee. The next required step would have been a Senate floor vote. On December 29, after the Senate failed to hold that vote, the President made Boarman the Public Printer by a recess appointment. The Washington Post announced that Boarman officially "took the helm of the Government Printing Office" on January 5, 2011, "returning after 37 years to the agency where he began his career as a proofreader."
Responsibilities
The Public Printer serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Government Printing Office, the agency charged with keeping the American people informed about the work of the federal government. GPO is one of the world’s largest printing plants and digital factories and is one of the biggest print buyers in the world.GPO disseminates the Congressional Record
Congressional Record
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
and the Federal Register
Federal Register
The Federal Register , abbreviated FR, or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains most routine publications and public notices of government agencies...
, and numerous other products and services in both print and digital form. The agency has been tasked to build its digital capability into a state-of-the-art operation to improve transparency and citizen access to government documents and reports.
Testimony About Future Challenges for GPO
During Boarman's confirmation process, he stated in his testimony to the Senate committee that, if confirmed as head of the GPO, he would face the challenge of maintaining traditional printing skills of an aging workforce while helping a 150-year-old organization adapt to a world in which most documents are "born digitalBorn-digital
The term born-digital refers to materials that originate in a digital form. This is in contrast to digital reformatting, through which analog materials become digital. It is most often used in relation to digital libraries and the issues that go along with said organizations, such as digital...
":
- “The GPO today is a substantially different agency compared with the one I left many years ago,” Boarman said. “It employs fewer personnel but is significantly more technologically advanced, and it is responsible for a range of products and activities that could only have been dreamed of 30 years ago: Online databases of federal documents with state-of-the-art search and retrieval capabilities, passports and smart cards with electronic chips carrying biometric data, print products on sustainable paper using vegetable oil-based inks, a management infrastructure supported by the latest IT enterprise architecture, and more.... We have an aging workforce, and this is going to be a critical issue in the coming years.... We need to develop a program to recruit and replace the people we are going to lose in the next three to five years.”
Boarman noted that Congress needs to revisit the 1962 law now covering the Federal Depository Library Program, in which 1,200 libraries throughout the country hold official documents from GPO. “Their walls are bulging now with books,” and the program will have to adapt to deal with material that increasingly is being produced and accessed electronically.
Statements during swearing-in ceremony
At his January 2011 official swearing in ceremony, Boarman said that "Keeping America informed is a function rooted in the Constitution, and it's one of the great national purposes served by this agency." He referenced the 1923 poem by Beatrice WardeBeatrice Warde
Beatrice Warde , was a communicator on typography. She was the only daughter of May Lamberton Becker, a journalist on the staff of the New York Herald Tribune, and Gustave Becker, composer and teacher.Beatrice was educated at Barnard College at Columbia University...
, "This is a printing office," which concludes: "From this place words may fly abroad, not to perish on waves of sound, not to vary with the writer's hand, but fixed in time, having been verified by proof: Friend, you stand on sacred ground," and then continued:
"We still print—using processes that are thoroughly computerized—but we also use digital technology in new and exciting ways. The forms and capabilities of that technology continue to grow, and we embrace them to carry out our job.... But we never forget that the principles of our work are enshrined in Warde's poem, and whether what we do is in print or in bits and bytes, and whether in the long run we call it a printing office or an information office, we never forget that we stand on sacred ground, and that we are here to serve."
Achievements
Because efforts to control the Federal deficit were of such importance during the time Boarman began serving in this position, he "imposed changes to cut costs and rein in GPO's spending, particularly in overhead costs." In addition to specific cuts, he "realigned management to have the Chief Financial Officer report directly to him, and implemented a task force to recover outstanding payments, known as 'chargebacks,' from Federal agencies."Additionally, he started a series of meetings with Senators and Representatives to study the information product needs of Congress, including a survey of the need for hard copies of products such as the Congressional Record
Congressional Record
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published by the United States Government Printing Office, and is issued daily when the United States Congress is in session. Indexes are issued approximately every two weeks...
. Under his leadership, GPO launched a Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
page and increased publications available online, including those available through GPO's partnership with Google Books.
Keeping America Informed
Under Boarman's leadership, the GPO published Keeping America Informed, an official history of the organization on the occasion of its 150th anniversary—and the first such publication since its earlier 100th anniversary volume. In the final paragraph of the foreword he wrote for this volume, Boarman shared his vision of the organization and the men and women who work and worked for it:"Keeping America Informed is a portrait of the generations of men and women who have worked here as compositors, proofreaders, platemakers, press operators, bookbinders, printing plant workers, librarians, engineering and maintenance staff, accountants, information technology technicians, personnel specialists, police officers, and all the other functions required by GPO. Few Federal agencies can count as their heritage the scope of the work GPO has performed, ranging from the first printing of the Emancipation Proclamation to providing digital access to the Government's publications today. The mean and women of GPO are responsible for that heritage. Keeping America Informed is a new telling of their story and their enduring achievements."