U.S. FEDERAL WORKERS THROW OUT MILLIONS OF PAGES A DAY

[Anonymous]

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/12/paper-trail-58836910/
Federal workers throw out millions of pages a day
Federal
employees every day print millions of pages that are instantly
discarded or recycled, costing the government an estimated $440.4
million each year, a study released Tuesday said.The federal government
spends nearly $1.3 billion annually on employee printing, of which
roughly one-third is dubbed “wasteful printing,” according to a survey
of 380 federal employees conducted on behalf of printer maker Lexmark
Inc.The figure, Lexmark contends, is “more than $1 million per day and
more than four times the amount President Barack Obama recently called
upon agency chiefs to eliminate from their administrative budgets.”

An
official of one federal watchdog group said the survey – even if a
computer printer company sponsored it – rings all too true.”It makes
way too much sense,” said David Williams, vice president of policy at
Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based think tank.”We
see a culture of bureaucracy. When given a choice, even with these huge
technological advantages, you don’t see the government taking advantage
of this. Private industry and business has taken advantage, but this
government hasn’t,” Mr. Williams said.”President Obama has called for
fiscal responsibility, and identifying and eliminating unnecessary
printing is a simple first step,” said Marty Canning, a Lexmark vice
president.”Clear, standardized, and enforced agency printing policies,
as well as increased reliance on secure digital records, will help
change the employee printing habits that have become so ingrained in
the government ‘corporate culture’ and enable agencies to decrease
their carbon footprint,” Mr. Canning added.Despite claims of a growing
environmental consciousness among younger federal employees, the
so-called “Generation Y” workers, the survey indicated they were on a
par with their older colleagues who may have entered federal service
before the first Earth Day.

According to the survey, Gen Y
employees print nearly the same average number of pages per day as baby
boomer employees, a total of 29 pages versus 31 pages respectively.
Both groups toss out almost the same amount of freshly printed pages,
31 percent for Gen Y and 34 percent for boomer federal workers.The
online survey by O’Keefe & Co., an Alexandria public relations
firm, canvassed 380 workers in March.The majority, 53 percent, held
jobs at a rank of GS-12 and below, while 56 percent classified
themselves as civilian federal workers. Of the rest, 42 percent said
they were Department of Defense employees and 2 percent said they were
involved in intelligence.

While 80 percent of respondents said
they were “responsible” in their printing use, this came up against a
finding that 92 percent of people responding said they do not need all
the documents they print in a day, noting as one reason the common
statement that “most of my printing is distributed to colleagues who
prefer to have a hard copy,” the survey reported.Mr. Williams said the
report’s conclusion that one-third of all federal desktop printing is
wasteful “ties into the mentality of ‘use it or lose it’ when it comes
to [an agency’s] funding.””We’re having a huge expansion of the federal
government,” he added, “Few voices are telling the government to save
money. There’s not a sense of frugality in Washington, D.C., not a
sense of need right now for the government to save money.”

The
survey’s conclusions suggest implementing “automatic duplex printing”
to save paper cost by printing on both sides of a sheet; putting a
“clear printing policy in place”; converting more documents to digital
files as substitutes for paper; and holding employees accountable for
their printing habits.

[Author]

May 15, 2009 at 2:58 PM