British Govt Debates Swapping Printers For iPads 237
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 ..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Politicians Choice (Score:2, Interesting)
"with politicians already starting to choose to use tablets rather than bundles of papers in debates."
Research shows that when "debating" a political opponent, hitting them up side the head with an iPad is 55% more effective than hitting them up side the head with a bundle of paper.
Justifying shinies (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Nice (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:another try at the paperless office (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly - they have ignored the TCO of iPads and compared only the initial purchase cost with the assumption that every civil servant with an iPad will never use a printer again! What about support, administration, setup of wifi networks or 3g costs, software and security updates, replacement of broken hardware etc.? That will be outsourced to some big corporation like Accenture, which will easily triple the initial purchase cost; the civil service apparently pays upto 10 times the commercial rate for IT systems [bbc.co.uk].
This is the same civil service that has consistently refused to upgrade from IE6 [eweekeurope.co.uk], and which their own MPs report said "The lack of IT skills in government and over-reliance on contracting out is a fundamental problem which has been described as a 'recipe for rip-offs'". Maybe they should fix the existing problems before they embark on a whole new IT rollout? And why iPads or Android tablets? What can a civil servant do with an tablet that they can't do with a cheaper laptop or netbook? And why dismiss the obvious solution to expensive printing costs - buy cheaper paper and ink? Or charge the users for each page printed? I have seen a per-page charge for printer use instigated at an institution and the change in user behaviour was fast and cut costs more than any large IT project every would. When printing is free it will get abused - people were printing out non-work-related manuals, books, home photos, stuff for their friends etc. Charging for printing stopped that overnight.