IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

"We pay 11 cents a page every time we Xerox a piece of paper," Roberts said. "With 300 cases going on at one time every day, there's a lot of paper being printed and thrown out immediately."

The Government Printing Office is ready to test the ambitious Future Digital System, a content management system designed to handle the many documents GPO publishes and posts for the rest of government.

In August 2006, GPO awarded Harris Corp. a four-year, $29 million contract to build out the initial capabilities of FDSys. The company will put the first elements into operation this month for internal testing.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Bristol-Myers Squibb are using digital certificates that have been cross-certified by federal and industry public-key infrastructure bridges to take the paper out of paperwork in a cancer treatment evaluation program.

The program to enable digital signatures on electronic documents, which began this spring, could dramatically reduce the cost of clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry and allow NCI to make fuller use of the government’s Personal Identity Verification card.

And like health care, document management systems can be expensive. But that's not necessarily a set-in-stone cost. For example, Corpus Christi, Texas, CIO Michael Armstrong believes document management can be cheaper by utilizing companies that combine free open source document management software with traditional maintenance support -- a hybrid solution that can yield bargain-bin prices.

Switching from paper to electronic transactions will save more than $400 million and 12 million pounds of paper during the first five years alone, the Treasury Department said.

The new eGovernance initiative will replace the old and costly method of compiling, printing, binding and distributing paper agenda packets by hand. The remarkably powerful, easy-to-use solution will enable the district to maximize the effectiveness of their board meetings with increased transparency, providing a basis for better and more open communication with the public, while dramatically increasing productivity and saving thousands of dollars annually.

All ministries and relevant government agencies and the people’s committees of provinces and cities nationwide have been requested to use email to exchange documents such as invitations, reports, announcements and other official papers.

The PM also asked for the digitisation of archived documents and material to help civil servants search for and deal with information via the internet.