This just in: the White House will not be printing a federal budget this year.
Don’t panic. There will still be a budget. But it’s going to be electronic! The article says the move will save 480 trees. Not bad. Not something I expected out of this administration… but not bad.
The one thing that bothers me about this article is this quote by Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and IT at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB):
“From an e-government perspective, this is one of the final steps of the modernization process,” she said. “You are not truly modernized until you turn off all your legacy systems.”
Why is it that the government views modernization as a task that can be completed? Shouldn’t we be constantly upgrading, constantly improving? Yeah, it’s great to get rid of the old and bring in the new, and that deserves a lot of praise. But modernization, by its very nature, is never complete.
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Scott Ableman.
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Electronic dissemination of reports and manuals is good, but from my short time working for the government, frugal use of paper is anything but a reality.