The government could save up to £70bn by 2020 if it shifted away from paper and digitised its activities, learned to work in new ways but with fewer staff, sought out for the best procurement deals, and made use of data and analytics, according to the think tank Policy Exchange.
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In a report, called 'Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger', the think tank aims to show how the government continues to waste billions of pounds by relying on paper-based public services.
For example, the Crown Prosecution Service prints one million sheets of paper every day, while the Passport Office also uses paper in instances where digital services would be better, the report suggested.
Last year, Computing found that the DVLA would be cutting 1,213 jobs as a result of embracing the government's 'Digital by Default' agenda, through which the government aims to deliver "digital services that are so straightforward and convenient that all those who can use them will choose to do so while those who can't are not excluded".
Despite this move, two articulated trucks loaded with letters and paper work continue to pull into the DVLA every day, the report said.
The think tank went on to say that everything that the government does "should be online, unless a face-to-face interaction is essential". It said that about 60 per cent of people in the UK access the internet using a smartphone, and people are now expecting government services like tax returns or driving licences to be online.
The Policy Exchange commended the government for its moves to become digital and make use of more online services. Strategies including the government ICT strategy, digital strategy, shared services vision, Civil Service reform plan and open data initiatives were all moves in the right direction, it said.
But the think tank said that although much progress has been made in recent years to become digital by default, many of the deeper ways in which government operates have not changed in any substantive way for many decades.
It recommends that the government should adopt electronic purchasing to make procurement more efficient, and should issue electronic proofs instead of paper certificates. It should also expose application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable developers to write apps that can communicate with government systems.
