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British Govt Debates Swapping Printers For iPads
An anonymous reader writes "The British government is examining whether it could save money by getting rid of its printers and giving civil servants free iPads instead. The head of the UK government skunkworks told silicon.com that if he got rid of all of a major government department's printers and gave staff iPads, the savings on printing costs would pay for the tablets in less than 18 months. The UK parliament has already let tablets into the debating chamber, with politicians already starting to choose to use tablets rather than bundles of papers in debates."
Ex news of the world journalists ..... prime your friendly hacker, you could be getting the story of the century.
As I see it, there are two serious problems with this effort. First, sooner or later someone is going to want a hard copy of a document, if only because a software copy can be altered and is impermanent. Second, once you get away from paper, you lose one of the current fundamental obstacles to increasing the extent and power of bureaucracy, namely, that someone has to keep track of all the paperwork and some place has to be found to store it.
I dread to think of the makework that they'll have all those freed government employees doing in order to keep government rolls at current levels of employment and how much extra work it'll mean for anyone having to interact with that bureaucracy.
Not that I'm suggesting my very poor government tries to build it's own device but surely a tablet sized kindle would be better? Some of those documents must be pretty bug, surely e-ink is the way forward in that regard?
Am I just being naive?
And it just HAS to be an iPad. No cheaper, faster, better tablet will do. I am loving all these justifications we're seeing from different people as to why the iPad is the golden ticket they have been waiting for. Problem is no one is going to steal hard copy. People are going to steal iPads. No one will take hard copy home with them unless they absolutely have to (eugh who wants to do government work at home? I work from 9 to 5 only!). People will take iPads home with them, and they will be used by the wife and kids and family friends. Hard copy stays at the office, probably in a file somewhere. iPads will be traveling and vulnerable to being accessed by anyone - they seem to have a tendency to get left at bars.
And the government suddenly realized that it could do all this with $800 iPads but absolutely could NOT do it with $500 laptops. Just, wow. Tell me why we need government again?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You need both, online access _and_ paper copies. As soon as you want to mark and highlight, paper beats all other options by a large margin. iPads should be regarded as low-reliability, high-maintenance, read-only and possible insecure alternative for document access.
This is the stupid idea of somebody that did not even try to understand the issue. The paperless office is a myth.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
if he got rid of all of a major government department's printers.
That's the only way to get to the "paperless office" ... remove the ability to use paper.
Keep any around, and it won't work. Lots of people with kick and scream and need to be drug into this. There are lots of things tablets and the like suck at that paper is good at. To move forward we have to find alternatives to those things that do work well in a paperless environment, but there are lots of people (I used to be one of them) who will decry that "your tablet sucks at " and use it as a reason to use paper.
The British government is examining whether it could save money by getting rid of its printers and giving civil servants free iPads instead.
You keep using that word, I don't think you understand what it means. The sentence would have worked fine without it.
I fail to see where a government issued iPad is free. The article didn't use that word.
Maybe they should decide on the form factor before deciding on the manufacturer. It's like saying, "Hey, our staff could use some Toyota Yaris! It would cut down the time they spend using the bus!"
Awesome :-) I look forward to a steady stream of cheap iPads appearing on eBay, ideally loaded with sensitive documents ...
Which one?
Samsung - Same price
Blackberry Playbook - Same price and it doesn't do email
LG - More expensive
Some crappy Chinese thing with a resistive screen
Think of the jobs.
First you have the people that make the paper. Then you have the people that sell and fix the printers, then you have the people that make and sell the ink, then you have the people that do the print runs, then you have the people that deliver the printout, then you have the people that collect the print outs, and then you have the paper recycling.
It will never fly. They will just add iPads as an option and still do all the printing.
If you don't believe me let me just put this in as proof.
Nimrod AEW, Nimrod MRA4, and A400m
Sir Humphrey: You see minister if we provide iPads and the printed records we shall have all the advantages of portability and the accountability of a paper audit.
PM: Do we want accountability?
Sir Humphrey: We like to say so.
PM: So we get all the advantages of increased efficiency with no job loss?
Sir Humphrey: Precisely Minister and paper is cheap just a few pennies a sheet and you can not put a price on accountability.
PM: Well that sound prefect.
Sir Humphrey: Yes Prime Minister.
Bernard: Sir Humphrey we spend three hundred million Euros a year on printing, supplies, paper, and personal. That does to be lot more than mere pennies.
Sir Humphrey: I never said how many pennies where in a mere.
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I've seen nonsense idea's like this rolled out before. Looks great on paper, until an inevitable stream of people start chanting "I've lost my iPad again!". For some reason, it seems to be much harder to lose the office printer. Can't think why?
Have you ever tried getting files onto the iPad in a useful, orderly way. I have thousands of documents which are synced with a land and cloud server. Often, it's faster to walk to my desk, navigate to the file, and print it out than it is to find it on the iPad.
Also, until they get a real stylus interface (and not the ones with the 5mm tip; 0.5mm would be more appropriate) you will never be able to make decent notes in the margins.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As we say in my office - we won't get paperless data processing soon, but we rock at dataless paper processing right now!
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The reason why is that tablet are not being used (for the most part) as productivity devices. The vast bulk of tablet use is for light, non-business email and web surfing, music and video playing, and light gaming. Apple definitely has a much larger mind share among the general population than Android does.