GPO has statutory responsibility for producing Government information products and for disseminating government information to the public on behalf of all three branches of the Federal Government, per Title 44 of the United States Code.
Federal content creators submit content to be preserved and made accessible by GPO. GPO's preservation repository follows archival system standards to ensure long-term preservation and access to digital content.
Digital Stewardship and GPO
Digital Stewardship is defined as the collective acquisition, management, organization, preservation, and provision of access to digital objects, including data products, for use and re-use by a variety of interdisciplinary and heterogeneous communities over time. Digital stewardship requires preserving and providing access to content with the expectation that community needs change over time, as well as technologies. The Digital Stewardship Vision of FDsys is to operate a standards-based preservation repository and to implement user-friendly, responsive, and innovative technologies to ensure that all archived content information can be obtained, rendered, used, and understood by the designated community into the future.
Digital Preservation Strategies
In order to ensure that content information is able to rendered and understood well into the future, the repository focuses on the following objectives:
- Administration of repository architecture in compliance to the OAIS Functional Model (ISO 14721:2012)
- PREMIS, MODS, and METS metadata persisted within archival packages
- Active monitoring of file formats
- Preservation of at least two archival copies of all information content in two separate geographic locations
- Weekly backups of content over a redundant array of independent disk storage systems
- Secondary standby disaster recovery instance
- Virus-scanning of all submitted content
- File fixity checking
- Secure systems certification
Trustworthy Digital Repository Audit and Certification
The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is preparing to become the first Federal agency to be named as a Trustworthy Digital Repository for Government information through certification of its flagship system under ISO 16363.
The ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories standard will be used by an accredited outside organization to assess the system against 109 criteria covering Organizational Infrastructure, Digital Object Management, and Infrastructure and Security Risk Management. While a number of digital repositories have already been certified as TRAC-compliant, none of them are operated by Federal agencies. A certification under ISO 16363 will reinforce GPO’s commitment to its mission of ensuring effective public access to Government information through its assured preservation in digital formats.
To begin the audit process, GPO was selected by the Library of Congress and the National Institute of Museum and Library Services as one of 5 institutions to receive a resident through the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) program. Under this program, host institutions are provided with a resident for one year to work on a significant digital stewardship project. GPO’s NDSR resident will work on preparation for the audit and certification of GPO's system as an ISO 16363 Trustworthy Digital Repository.
Read more about GPO's historical digital preservation practices in "Digital Preservation at the U.S. Government Printing Office: White Paper." (PDF)