eGov? States print 21million pages in six months

Friday 28 April 2017

The scale of the task facing the team trying to get Jersey's government 'digital' was laid bare after it emerged the Island's government printed more than 21.7 million pieces of paper in just six months.

The figures have come out following a request under the Freedom of Information Law and relate to the period between July and December last year.

In that time, States employees printed 4,488,958 colour sheets of paper, whilst black and white printing came in at more than four times this figure at 17,211,579.

With trees able to produce around 8,500 pieces of paper each, that’s equivalent to over 2,553 trees.

The actual number could be even more, however, as the figures only covered pages printed via the States of Jersey controversial Managed Print Service (MPS) contract.

21,700,000 pieces of paper equates to 217 for every islander based on a population of 100,000 and 2,893 for each States employee based on a States workforce of around 7,500. 

Nigel Jones of environmental campaign group Jersey In Transition, told Express: "More than 20 million pages of print in six months, just in Jersey! There are barely enough people in Jersey to read all that if we all stopped doing everything else, and just sat down to read printed States paperwork full time! Surely they must have heard of websites, emails, PDFs and ebooks by now."

"They should do everything possible to reduce this," he added.

Express have contacted the Environment Department for comment.