Biggest Benefit of Going Paperless? Saving on Salaries

Government agencies have been talking about going digital for decades, but most don't actually know how much paper they're using, an IDC report concludes. 

IDC analysts found that most federal agency employees interviewed didn't know the quantity of the paper, nor the cost of maintaining paper-based processes. Their report encourages agencies to think about the long-term return on investment on going digital, even if the cost of software licenses initially bump up administrative costs.  

Government employees also didn't know "whether gathering all of that data was necessary,” analysts Adelaide O'Brien and Alan Webber found. 

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Transitioning from paper-based processes to digital realizes the most savings in salary spend, the analysts concluded. How? Most employees have to fill out paper forms as part of their job, which then needs to be reviewed by quality-control teams. Administrative teams then transfer information to digital systems.

However, it generally takes less time for employees to perform quality checks on digital materials than paper. Starting processes as digital-only would save time and therefore salary, according to the report. 

"Additional savings will come through reduced storage and maintenance costs such as space rental and maintenance of the documents,” the report said.  

A law enforcement agency with about 100 officers could save tens of thousands of dollars over a few years by transitioning a single form from paper to digital, the analysts concluded in a hypothetical calculation.

For instance, a department might spend $500,000 on paper and the labor costs for employees filling out and later quality-checking officers' shift reports. Making that one process digital might be expensive up front—maybe $670,000 in total considering software licenses, implementation and one-time technical costs—but because a digital system wouldn't require employees to manually upload paper forms, the department would start saving after about two and a half years, the report concluded. 

The analysts also suggested government organizations let go of paper processes because records take up physical space and can be difficult to navigate. Digital systems with encryption or digital rights management can be more secure than a box of papers, and it's "much easier to enter a query into a system and receive an answer back ... than it is to wander through a set of filing cabinets looking for the correct drawer, the correct file and the correct form."