Electronic publishing is a major activity in the context of FAO's communications. It is managed through a decentralised approach, whereby Departments are responsible for their content production and management. Each Technical Department has a Departmental Communications and Publishing Committee (DCPC) to plan and discuss publications and related matters.

The standard workflow for electronic publishing in FAO can be summarized as follows:

1. A publication is proposed by a technical unit and approved by its respective DCPC.
2. Printing is managed by the Publishing Group in OCP.
3. While the publication is being printed, the electronic files are processed by the Document Repository team in OEKM to publish them online as HTML and/or as a PDF version.

Various exceptions can occur in the workflow, according to the type of publication, the choices made by the Department (e.g. outsourcing) and the origin of the document (some publications are prepared and printed by decentralized offices).
Even if the standard workflow is not followed for each publication, it is important to remember that a copy of each publication produced by FAO should be provided to the David Lubin Library for archival and institutional memory. It is also mandatory that electronic files be provided to the Corporate Document Repository (CDR) for dissemination purposes (see Corporate Document Repository - A Guide for Users).