Switching from Paper to Digital - How do you convince the boss?
Last week, we had a discussion with the GovLoop communications facilitators and one issue that came up was the switch from paper to digital.
A number of members had mentioned that while they'd like to make the switch from costly print statements, magazines, flyers....that still senior leaders had a strong attachment to the original paper products (plus an argument about the audience-like retirees- not being online).
If you've been in these shoes, how did you convince your boss to move digital?
Tags: digital
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Kanika Tolver on -
Let's go green and save some trees!
-
Permalink Reply by Peter Sperry on -
Keep in mind that you may be dealing with leaders and managers who have had painful personal experience of what can happen when hardcopy documents are unavailable. Many in DoD continue to deal with the aftermath of the great St. Louis records fire. Back in the 60s the military records center went up in flames, the physical equivilant of electrons disappearing into the ether. DD-214s burnt, so did pay records, and military birth certificates (my own included), discharge records, retirement records etc. The immediate impact was bad enough but as veterans aged and began to claim benifits based on prior service which could no longer be documented, the problem snowballed. I have known of veterans as recently as 2007 who were trying to retrieve W2s through the IRS in order to document their service in the 50s. However, there are always those who carefully collect and save every paper document they ever recieve. Trust me a veteran walking in with an original copy of a DD-214 issued in 1964 is a whole lot better off than one hoping the IRS scanned his W2.
We all drink the kool aide regarding electronic record keeping but I still have paper copies in a fire proof lock box of every critical financial document, including monthly pay statements. It systems crash and government records burn. Do you want to walk into an OPM office in 40 years and try to prove your eleigibility for the pension you live on for the rest of your life based on their computer records or your paper documents?
-
Permalink Reply by Tom on -
This depends on what you are trying to communicate. There are areas where going to paperless is definately the way to go( and this is coming from a guy who has 30 plus years in the printing industry) in certain instances and that you have enough back up that if one set of servers burn down, get fried, you have backup to retrieve the original. It was hard enough for people to recreate records when they kept paper records, but if all you have is digital and all that gets lost, what can you do? If it is stored on an older server, can you retrieve those records. I am not digitally savy, but I know that I cannot open a windows 95 program with my current software. By the way, paper is getting less expensive, and there are many ways to reduce the production cost of print. Print production prices have been going down, and your printed products should be less expensive today than even one or two years ago.
-
Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on -
Here's one of the problems. Unless one medium can COMPLETELY replace another, there's little cost reduction, and in fact there's a tendency for costs to actually go up to convert, and continue both. It's the same concept as adding channels -- social media -- without them replacing existing high cost contact points.
There's lots of exceptions, of course, and government has made some huge strides in paper reduction and convenience by making forms available and even fillable online (pdf).
The real payoff comes down the line if and when the paper steps can be completely skipped.
Think also about digital vs. analog tv. It's a good example of how transitions are challenging, and don't immediately produce cost savings if you have to run two different "methods".
-
Permalink Reply by Justin Kerr-Stevens on -
Oddly enough - I had to make a case the other way. When the Coalition came to power in the UK there was a moratorium on UK Government printing. This wasn't so difficult with things like annual reports and we made the transition quite easily. We did have a legislative requirement to remind people of things like breast cancer testing and this was, and continues to be, done through a paper based mechanism. Without a change in the legislation we couldn't action a digital solution so the paper based pamphlets had to stay.
-
Permalink Reply by Lauren Hersh on -
While I first had to convice my boss, we then had to convince a board of 15! I began with a cost/benefit analysis- how much we were spending on printing and mailing 85,000 24- page newsletters three times a year. The savings from mail alone could fund other desired projects, and the savings was in keeping with the Governor's charge to smart and green projects. Since we were already assessed fees every year that covered publication design services from an award winning design team we were hardly using, I presented samples of other newsletters produced by the team. After consulting with our in-house publications layout person who was more than happy to let go of the responsibility, I factored the reduction in staff-hours into the equation. My boss and the board bought into the change, although one or two board members insisted we continue with hard copy mail-out for the first few editions. So far fewer than 2,000 of 85,000 subscribers have opted-in to receive the paper copies.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- Next ›
Tools & Resources
© 2012 Created by GovLoop.
