He talked about the state budget, he talked about the tunnel, he talked about booze, but when the SECB asked Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48) at the end of his interview if there was anything else people should know about him, he said this:
- Ross: Huntin’ paper.
I want the state to go paperless. There is an army of people who all they do is move paper. I don’t want checks, I don’t want paper bills. You won’t get there day one. I want us to be systematic about moving away from paper.
It means we stop having all these forms that someone then back in Olympia types into a computer. Go to a library and enter it.
While I like the idea of going paperless, I think it would actually be very expensive (including in terms of resources expended), attempting to make Government paperless records as difficult to corrupt, falsify or destroy as the paper we push now. I also doubt the “paper-pushers” would become redundant just because they were no longer actually pushing paper.
Bill Gates predicted the paperless office at the advent of the desktop PC “revolution”. What happened? We use six times more paper than before.
Going paperless sounds great in theory, but dubious in practice. There are plenty of folk who are still confused by computers, and many who don’t have home access to them and don’t have the time to go to the library to fill stuff out because they’re working two jobs.
Also, you may reduce some of that “army” of people handling paper, but you’ll likely have to hire more techies (at higher wages) to keep the systems running well.
Paper trails are such a pain in the ass to wipe out if you’re trying to hide something. I don’t blame him.
Ross Hunter is fucking awesome.
@4 – It’s even harder to get rid of a soft copy.
I like Ross Hunter in many ways, but I get the feeling he’s using paperlessness not to free state workers to do more important parts of their jobs, but to cut them off the payroll entirely.
There’s this whole class of person that bases their self esteem around their ability to navigate meaningless bureaucracy. They are the ones that cling to paper, not because it’s paper, but because changing the bureaucracy forces them to revalue their self worth.
I’ve worked for several companies that were working to go paperless or at least reduce the volume of paper wasted. Every time I’ve reduced paper, there’s an army mean fart faces claiming that going paperless will destroy the world. Then everything works out perfectly, and they rebel quietly by wasting as much paper as humanly possible.
Certain departments with little oversight hold on to their carbon paper transfer forms in triplicate completely filled out for every shipping label also in triplicate. I am not exaggerating.
Paperless would be easy, and much cheaper in an office where there are already computers. But most of the people in charge of offices cling to their paper based processes and then just add more processes with computers, and by doing so create nearly twice the work for the same result as either paper or computer alone.
@6 That is the point of becoming more efficient. If we still used old technology we would have a quarter of our workforce working to grow, process, and weave cotton all day just so we can have the basics like clothes.
@2 The techies cost more because you can justify hiring them by saving more money than they cost.
Thumbs down. Classify this as yet another guy who likes good things and opposes bad things.
Complaining about paper in general is like complaining about pollution in general, or energy waste in general. Or crime, or violence, in general. Just being against wasteful systems doesn’t mean much unless you have a lot of specifics in mind. And you’ve got some reason why you think now you can implement those specifics in a less wasteful way than the last reformer who came along and implemented whatever our current system is.
In short, easier said than done.
Why does he hate Weyerhauser so?
That said, electronic sounds fine, until you realize the paperless revolution has actually Increased usage of paper.
Where I work, the IT guys just configured all the printers to default to printing double-sided and saved the company a lot of money. Seriously.
DAMN YOU, PAPER!!!!!!!!!!!
Of course, he doesn’t mention anything about actually funding libraries so that everyone could be assured of access to computers/internet.
@11 we did that at the State a long time ago. Think it was back in the 90s.
The Northgate library branch is closed on Sundays and Fridays. There is going to be a furlough at the end of august.
Can we aim to have the best of both worlds? An instant change does not seem practical. Once all the little babies of 2010 grow up they will prolly be more apt to use online forms than my aunts and uncles right now. Can we identify most timely forms for WA employees to input (by length and or sheer volume) and offer those online first?
He didn’t say no paper now, he said he wanted to move away from it. I think that’s a great fucking idea. EVERYONE should be moving away from paper – that includes you local utility!! i HATE WRITING CHECKS!
How about a fucking link to the interview?