STATE OF WASHINGTON SPENDS $ 38.8M A YEAR ON INK AND TONER

[Anonymous]

STATE OF WASHINGTON SPENDS $ 38.8M A YEAR ON INK AND TONER

Auditor wants state workers to hit print less
Watchdog journalists love to dig, and few things are more enticing than a big pile of public records containing information originally intended for only a select few. Oh, the joy of ripping into such documents. There’s almost a prospector’s certainty that pure gold is just the turn of a page away.

Documents are the lifeblood of government. The State of Washington cranks out so many it has its own printing department. There also are free-standing print shops at some of the state’s biggest agencies, including the departments of transportation and corrections plus the attorney general’s office.

How much does it cost to print, collate and bind Washington’s documents?
State Auditor Brian Sonntag has the answer: $77.3 million per year. In a performance audit released in late April, he suggested some steps to make printing more efficient and perhaps $13.6 million a year cheaper.

By allowing private industry to compete for the state’s in-house print jobs, up to $1.1 million a year could be saved, the auditor calculated. Consolidating print shops, meanwhile, could save another $2 million.But the biggest savings — an estimated $10 million a year – could come from tackling office-based printing costs, the audit suggests. The state now spends $38.8 million a year on desktop publishing. That’s a lot of ink cartridges."Nearly half of the state’s printing expenses are for equipment and supplies to support office-based printing, such as paper, ink and toner," the audit found. "The state lacks a management strategy to contain these costs."

Deep in the report is this revelation: the state’s colleges and universities accounted for $30.7 million of the office-based printing costs. That means nearly 40 percent of the state’s total printing costs can be traced to institutions of higher education. Holy handout!

The audit doesn’t dig into the specifics to explain the big print bills on campus. It does suggest state government’s lack of policies and standards for office printing are driving up costs. Some agencies have one printer for every fulltime employee; more efficient operations run with about one printer/copier for every eight employees.

State agencies already are under orders from the Legislature to reduce printing costs by $1.5 million. The state Office of Financial Management has identified "managed print" as the way to make that happen. That means having experts assess an agency’s printing needs and then provide the right equipment and support to track and control use. The state Department of Ecology fully embraced that strategy in 2005. It has reduced reliance on printers and focused on sharing more information in electronic formats. Savings are topping about $300,000 a year, the audit found.

It’s time to consider change, Sonntag wrote."Certainly, desktop publishing and technology have changed the nature of printing since the State Printer was established 78 years ago. And the same printing services are available from private businesses."

[Author]

June 21, 2011 at 9:41 AM