Some noteworthy news today on the long and winding road to a paperless government: As of the end of fiscal 2012, all Treasury Department bureaus will have to use electronic invoicing.
The move is expected to cut the department’s processing costs by about half to $7 million annually and will also mean faster payments for government vendors, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said in a news release. At the department, the Bureau of the Public Debt and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing already use electronic invoicing; the IRS, the Office of Thrift Supervision and a number of other offices will now have to get on board.
A handful of other federal agencies already use the online approach or are pursuing it. If adopted government-wide, it could eventually save up to $450 million annually through lower manpower costs, according to an official estimate.
The approach is one of a dozen proposals from the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation intended to streamline financial management government-wide. “It’s available today; it’s ready to implement,” the office’s director, Adam Goldberg, said today at an Association of Government Accountants’ meeting inAtlanta.
