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April 25, 2008
Paper Proves Resilient
There’s little question about the long-term profitability and growth potential in helping customers alleviate the pain of paper. But paper isn’t dead yet.
A reminder of this came recently from the U.S. Census Bureau and its parent, the Commerce Department. The agencies had been pushing to replace paper forms with handheld computers for recording addresses during the upcoming 2010 census. But a series of nagging problems are causing the people counters to reevaluate this strategy, according to Federal Computer Week.
Even the watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office has taken note of danger Census faces if it gives up paper too quickly. The GAO designated the 2010 Census as a “high-risk area.”
FCW says the handhelds performed well in pilot tests, but rising costs are a problem. Updated estimates put the price tag to taxpayers at $11.8 billion, but even this could spike much higher. FCW quotes a GAO executive saying, “At this point, there’s an awful lot we don’t know.”
Which leaves the Bureau considering other alternatives, including using paper to backup handhelds or relying on the computers for collecting a subset of census information.
Organizations like the Census Bureau still use paper for a variety of reasons, not just because they resist changing entrenched ways. So for the time being, most organizations will straddle the paper and electronic worlds as they gradually transition to more efficient systems. Solution providers can play an essential role in this transition, if they’re able to not only draw on their established experience in printing and imaging solutions, but complement that with newly minted expertise in electronic documents. Come to think of it, few companies are better positioned to exploit this opportunity than solution providers.
Posted by ajoch at April 25, 2008 10:37 AM
