Auditing highest office

That bastion of UK democracy, the Palace of Westminster, has not yet shown an inclination to join the ranks of those using the banner of progress to ditch print for digital media, and that’s just fine by Steve Powell.

Powell is the publications manager at the National Audit Office (NAO), the body charged with scrutinising the spending of Government departments to ensure that the tax payer’s pound is being well spent. It’s a role that involves working alongside TSO (the old Stationery Office) to produce regular reports that could well be the subject of internal partliamentary commissions, and frequently become a big story – especially if the report is into matters of public health.

These commissions don’t accept electronic copies of reports though. They have to be printed. “They’re still running a very old system at the House,” smiles Powell. “It’s a statutory requirement that these reports are printed. They won’t take electronic copies, so we can never move away from print, or not at the moment anyway, which is good because it keeps printers busy.”

Powell is a former printer himself, having worked as a press minder, book binder and estimator for a small litho print company straight from school, before progressing through print buying roles within the financial sector (Save & Prosper) and then government publishing (with TSO) to his current position.

At TSO he worked on a huge range of different publications and high profile reports, and became accustomed to the vagaries of government publishing. Part of the role also involved working with the production team to streamline black and white printing workflows. His experience as a production controller at Save & Prosper before that gave him knowledge of high volume mailings and variable data.

All of this has proved useful to Powell’s work at the National Audit Office, which he joined in 2001 after three years at TSO. He explains: “An opportunity came up here as a print buyer. I wanted a role where I had sole responsibility for the print being produced and the Audit Office did not have that skill set in their armoury at the time. Designers were buying print and dealing with printers. I had that experience of parliamentary publishing from TSO to bring here as well, and I was able to streamline lots of processes.”

Promotion to publications manager followed, with overall responsibility for print buying, negotiating with TSO, and for a period also having responsibility for running the NAO’s in-house studio. A reorganisation has removed that last part of the role, and Powell now works alongside a dedicated print buyer and an administration and helpdesk assistant in his small team.

Trafficking of projects now forms a big part of the job. The NAO produces around 60 “Value for Money” reports and about 40 Financial Audit reports annually. While the latter are simply black and white documents composed of line work, the Value for Money reports are rather nicer pieces of print to work upon.

Powell flicks through an example – the catchily titled “A Second Progress Update on
the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency”. It has a solid grey/blue cover and alongside the black and white text and numbers on the inside 36 pages are colour charts and diagrams. The inside back cover carries the FSC Mixed Sources logo, and states that the report was printed on Consort 155 paper. It also cites that design and production was by the NAO Marketing & Communications Team

Flicking to the front, the page facing the inside front cover bears the words “Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 14 October 2009”. It then specifies the House of Commons session in which the report will be dealt with, and has the publishing date of 15 October 2009.

All of this is important in the grand scheme of parliamentary publishing, Powell explains. “In government publishing, before our reports can be published to the world, they have to be laid down before Parliament, which means we send it there with a messenger and they stamp it to approve it. Then the press office can kick off with publicity, and we have to get so many copies into the Parliamentary estate.

“These aren’t massive runs. On average it’s around 500-750. A Department of Health report might be 1500-2000. That date is really important though. If we get it to them late they would not read it. If there’s a mistake within it, the job will have to be reprinted and relaid.”

This means that accuracy must be 100%, without any question. Trafficking projects through teams of people that include chartered accountants and auditors as well as production staff calls for special personal skills. “Clients can be quite demanding, and I have my own unique ways of working with them,” says Powell with a smile. The requirement for accuracy means that the workflow involves “proofing, proofing, proofing” he says.

Although the run lengths are relatively small, these reports are still printed by litho print suppliers. Powell has three that he uses regularly, but declines to name them because of their security classification. All three, however, are UK printers, and all are “within striking distance of Central London”. This is important because the turnaround time is short. A report may be two years in the researching and writing, but the print and publish dates are almost simultaneous. Indicating the particular report already discussed, he says the files were sent to the printer at 6.30 on a Tuesday night, and the printed reports were delivered back at 8am the next morning.

It might be thought that digital print was the best option for fulfilment, but Powell doesn’t see it this way. Not yet, at least. “It’s still not viable to do these digitally,” he contends. “Digital is not reliable enough to turn these around quickly enough, as opposed to putting them on a litho press. Technology has not been able to provide us with the quality, up until the last 18 months probably, to provide a good enough solid. Now we are starting to see digital giving an equally good solid, but these are our flagship documents. What people see of the NAO is this report. The last thing we want is banding. In the last 18 months we’ve found people that can achieve these solids digitally, but with these quantities and the economies of scale, it still works better with litho at the moment.”

This doesn’t mean that the NAO has not used digital at all. On the contrary, Powell describes with some pride a variable data print initiative that the Audit Office has carried out, in which health trusts are sent variable data booklets showing their spending performance set against national averages and those of other trusts of a similar size. These are typically 16 to 20 pages with variable content on each.

“I’m really interested in exploring VDP because it makes an impact at high levels in the health trusts,” Powell continues. “We’ve had feedback that these booklets are really helpful. They are digitally printed and we send them out with a copy of the Value for Money report and any other material that we might be sending them. We can produce them in PDF format as well. It takes a lot of management because of the complexity of the data sets, but it is much more tailored information and that helps the trusts improve their services and performance.”

The creation of these variable pieces does require a considerable task in collating information and getting it in the right place and shape for production however, and Powell says that he is looking at investing in some form of more sophisticated templating technology that will make this easier and give the creative staff more time to be more creative.

“The challenge is to be able to streamline the variable data aspect in a more efficient way,” he notes. Aside from that, he seems quite content with the way things are working. He knows the schedule of reports being published in advance, so can plan accordingly. There is a costing matrix for the half dozen print suppliers that NAO uses, and Powell values his personal relationships with those suppliers. The production team preflights all files using OneVision Asura before the PDFs go to the printer. Colour management has been tackled some years ago using the services of Paul Sherfield’s Missing Horse Consultancy. Colour consistency for brand purposes is considered important, but not more so than delivery.

“I come from a printing background, so I know it’s difficult to achieve colour quickly, but if it’s only 700 copies on press it’s more important to get the job delivered than for the guy to spend all night trying to get the colour right. That’s a diplomatic way of saying it’s fit for purpose. We give them a good file in the first place and we get back what we sent 99% of the time. Occasionally it’s slightly out but the delivery is most important for these kinds of reports.”