Stop the presses on the reports, brochures, blah, blah
In the event anyone in state government hasn’t noticed, there’s a small budget problem right now. While it is a tiny, trivial and extremely silly issue, I would respectfully suggest that every single state agency, university, college, school district and other entity relying upon public dollars should STOP printing fancy brochures, reports, documents and other ridiculously wasteful materials. It’s painfully embarrassing to see this waste.
Unless it is ESSENTIAL to front-line, hands-on delivery of services to citizens, make an electronic version only. Many of the four-color reports, materials and publications are vanity projects anyway. The private sector embraced this idea a long time ago by eliminating fancy annual reports. While it’s not exactly a bold systems reform, it does fall under the common sense category. We also might find that the environment actually appreciates the reduction in printing materials that are read by virtually no one.
The amount of money spent on printing ALL of the publicly funded reports statewide is not trivial. We’re a $35 billion, 100,000 person, statewide organization. I guarantee it is much, much, much, much more than the $1 million slashed in the Governor’s budget for Educational Advocacy for Foster Youth, a Treehouse program that literally saves lives by providing tutoring, mentoring and educational support for foster youth.
Like everyone, I’m still digesting the reality of the Governor’s budget and the implications for our revenue, spending and government reform efforts.
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
Great idea. If the public saw the state take more common sense measures to cut waste, they might actually support additional taxes. Right now, the trust level seems very low.
Gov. Gregoire’s budget representatives were on TVW. Everything the host proposed to reduce spending and streamline service delivery seemed to be off the table.
Your ideas are more than welcome, too! It’s ‘all hands on deck’ time.
Print print print, meeting meeting meeting….
Get rid of all printers, State and local office ones as well.
Farm out the printing that is neccessary to the private sector and let’s focus on our core services.
The life of a State Employee in Olympia!
An endless array of non-productive meetings. No time to think.
Meetings are scheduled without any prospect of results other than to have more meetings.
Printers are constantly producing captured screen-shots of web sites or information, so they can be carried to a meeting where no decision is made.