With the ability to use .pdf + digital signatures, docusign, etc. I'm not sure it's needed anymore but it's the way it's always been done so that's the way we do it 
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I'm genuinely surprised by that as we do all that stuff electronically so we can search it, tie it to other well documentation properly. It's pretty useles on paper
Large public sector organisation. The only paper I can think of is log sheets in vans and pool cars.
The lack of paper doesn’t mean a lack of tedious ‘paperwork’ though and many of our systems are painful and annoying. We have gazillions of awful massive spreadsheets and multiple data entry into parallel systems that don’t talk to each other.
Personally, never. I also don't remember the last time I wrote anything work related down in a notepad or similar. The last holdout was interview notes, but even those are all online now.
The lack of paper doesn’t mean a lack of tedious ‘paperwork’ though and many of our systems are painful and annoying. We have gazillions of awful massive spreadsheets and multiple data entry into parallel systems that don’t talk to each other.
One of the unintended consequences of paperless (and, in local Government systems, exacerbated by austerity) is the sheer number of third party software providers who pop up with "digital solutions", hawking their wares to councils in particular who are often only too happy to offshore their HR, finance, payroll, legal etc to these providers and they then end up with massively clunky unwieldy systems that won't talk to each other, were never really designed for that purpose, are unique to that council, and only about 2 members of staff actually know the full details of the system in question.
I work in A GP practice, what d'you think?
Though I did hear recently the last office fax machine was only turned off last year!
At my old place, we sold (amongst other things) MFDs - big office photocopier printer things. They had the ability to phone home (ie, us) when supplies were running low so that they could automatically be reordered. The modern machines were, well, more modern but the older ones were set up to do this via fax. Last I heard this is still a thing, they come in of a morning to a batch of overnight orders sitting on the printer.
I work in A GP practice, what d'you think?
Dunno. should be paper free. My GPs is pretty much paper free
Yes as above loads of documents get printed out filled in and scanned, however currently moving away from 'A-Site' IMS which is shite, to new system (slightly better). We print out loads of permits to give to teams on site ( heavy civils) so that always available at the point of work if inspector types turn up. we have found tablets /phones etc to not work in the rain,mud etc. also in remote places connections can fail. it wont be long till each work location has cameras up to control things
My GPs is pretty much paper free
By paper free, if you mean letters and appointments notifications and 'scripts and so on are electronic, then yes of course we do all those things, I doubt any of our GPs/Nurses have printed a 'script since COVID, but paper-free internally? I'd bet money that every GP practice in the country has a sizable cost line that includes print and stationary consumables (and most of that is going to be reams of A4).
Small company and we only stopped using triplicate carbon paper with a dot matrix printer two years ago.
The downside is we now have to manually fill in all the site details, which used to be printed out. Because the office don’t/won’t.
So last visit reports get duplicated and edited. Leading to errors. As it’s a pain in the arse/slow to do on a tablet at a job site.
On a similar note, due to a pain in the arse bit of test software about ten years ago, we would have to print certain certificates out, the office would scan them, then shred them.
Small/medium manufacturing company, pretty much everything is digital in the offices, but works orders, etc. are printed and issued. Mainly due to the number of machines and people that would all need some sort of digital access. The works orders also contain the routing instructions so they need to be available at each machine (over 100 machines). Paper also means I can walk into the factory and read what a machine is doing because the order is there and visible.
There are plans to change this, but it's challenging, even simple stuff like getting working wi-fi into the factory turns out to be not simple.
Local Authorities have senior personnel who have some sort of app ADHD. We'll expect everyone to fully commit to the next shiny app that only does 75% of the day to day job for 75% of the people. Then 12 months down the line when the free trial is over it's onto the new app.
sometimes... based in US and certain contracts and NDAs, etc have requirement for wet ink signature! print, sign, scan, email for counter-sign... lunacy!
In fact I lie. Some of the sub contractors use paper timesheets that I scribble some signature on.
IRATA are trying to move away from paper logbooks onto digital logbooks to record worked rope hours.
Started a new job in further education this week. Everything is on the computer. Then we have to print everything out when meeting the Learners for them to read and sign.Then the paper goes back to the office to be scanned and saved on the computer. Apparently it is possible to do it all online on a tablet, but the program will not work on laptops as it requires an network connection, the tablets have a sim card so can work pretty much anywhere. I've asked for a tablet rather than a laptop, there is a long waiting list, so the printer and scanner are going to be working all day for a while yet.
I'd bet money that every GP practice in the country has a sizable cost line that includes print and stationary consumables (and most of that is going to be reams of A4).
well i dont know for sure but i see no evidence of that at all.. What would they use that paper for?
Yes; a few reasons. More and more of our internal processes are going paperless, either horrible .doc or .xls to fill out, save, and email, but increasingly MS Forms (however, where does the data collected go and who uses / accesses that data for what and how - we don't have a massive BI team and have fallen foul of creating an updated form for a process that we then have to put the report into the backlog)
A lot of our external though remain paper based, at least at the end - we're the ultimate calibration lab and that means some of our calibrations are done on equipment that is decades old (the process to change the way you measure a base unit takes agreement from literally the whole world and years or decades to verify, so doesn't happen fast). So while we can (and are) working to digitise the workflows some kit just doesn't do that, it relies on reading numbers and creating a record of them.
And then also some of our customers are not yet ready for digital certs, in the main a pdf of the cert is being accepted but some still want wet signed paper that sits in a file with the others from the last umpteen years. If that's what the quality process says, we can't change unilaterally.
well i dont know for sure but i see no evidence of that at all..
I don't know, so it can't be true?
thats not what i said. when working in the community more than 10 years ago i was in multiple gps and saw virtually no paper printing then.
Im interested in what you use a printer for so much
Everything form prescription for foiks who're not smart-phoned (still a sizeable bunch of folks), documents, legal forms that are processed by GPs, printed letters SR1's FIT notes (probably the thing our GPs print the most), every blood/urine sample has a printed label attached to it, death certs are still a big book, GP1 - people registering, I have to have copies of IDs and certs... posters, notices (sometime legal ones that we're obliged to stick up (even scottish GPs) . All the things that a normal small business would use paper for.
Just because something is outside your experience of a thing, doesn't mean it still isn't true. OK?
Oh yeah and once it's rubber stamped and wet ink signed. What do we do with it. - scan it into the client's online system for record keeping.
It's the like the dark ages.
TBH I don’t think it’s that bad, you’ve delivered a contract to the client and they’ve sign it.
Not everything has to be electronic end to end and I expect it’s not for small sums of money.
Fire Service here. Not really, pretty much everything is delivered electronically via email, Teams or Powerpoint.
TBH I don’t think it’s that bad, you’ve delivered a contract to the client and they’ve sign it.
But - 400 pages. I get why they have done it to ensure the tpi physically has to at least look at each page and see it exists as opposed to asking Adobe to watermark each page with a stamp then using e signatures......
Funnily enough never bothered me when the QA dept took care of it....:)
'High performance' manufacturing. High variation, low volume manufacture for military/nuclear/oil and gas etc. Many of our clients actively WANT wet signatures on paperwork steps so yes we still have paper based systems to some degree.
We do digitise where we can though.
