The problem with this kind of initiative is that it uses humans difficulty with recognizing the scale of large numbers.
We see a savings of $400 million and think "we should do this!" But it's a drop in the bucket even if it were that much of a savings.
If each government employee needs to change their font, or needs to set it as the default font, or needs technical support to configure the defaults in their word processor. If IT needs to modify images to use this font as a default. Just these actions are going to cost a significant portion of that $400 million when you consider it across the millions of federal staff.
This also assumes things like the government is actually paying for ink or toner in quantity, instead of, for instance, holding a contract with Xerox who charges per impression rather than based on how much ink you use.
It also assumes that there is no difference in legibility between the fonts. That people with vision impairments will not have difficulty with reading the document.
An easy way to think about whether an initiative like this is reasonable is to think about whether it makes a lot of sense for any individual to do. Do you think you, individually, could realize any significant savings by changing your fonts? If it only makes sense when millions of people do it at once, and even then only when certain assumptions are met, and then only saves a few dollars per person per year, then it actually is more likely to cost a lot more in overhead to make sure it happens than it will ever save.
"But it's a drop in the bucket even if it were that much of a savings."
Yes, everything is a drop in the bucket when looking at the Federal bugdet and the current debt of 17.5 trillion [1]. However, a 14 year old kid has a well thought out and proven plan to save money. Where do you recommend we start? The drops fill up the bucket faster than you think.
Actually there's a small handful of things that are the drivers of the debt: stupid tax cuts, stupid wars, issues with Medicare and a few other things; the drops don't add up, they just distract
- It's not just that it's a "drop in the bucket", but that the savings will just be spend on some other frivolous project when Congress looks at the budget. (It ain't going to science grants, I can tell you that.)
Drops in the bucket can at least accumulate, and then grow exponentially over time (when applied to debt). But when you just blow any savings, that doesn't work.
- You don't even need to jump to legibility or vision impairment problems: simple "weirdness" issues will balloon the cost. Politically influential benefit recipients might not like "everything looking different" on their Social Security check statements, and push back.
An example of something similar that actually happened: tax in the UK was temporarily lowered from 17.5% to 15% or something and it cost more to reprogram cash registers and computers than the 2.5% savings.
“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
-David Mitchell
If it is possible reduce costs in many different areas of Government spending, wouldn't the savings add up to a significant amount?
I don't know if this is a minority viewpoint, but I believe that constant improvement is necessary for the betterment of our society. It's definitely a slippery slope, one could argue that rehashing the same things leads to beating a dead horse - but as technology changes and improvement happens in a multitude of different fields, the overall savings of this improvement would be unknown.
While human beings are fallible, I don't see why this suggestion isn't something to look more closely at from those with authority in the matter.
We see a savings of $400 million and think "we should do this!" But it's a drop in the bucket even if it were that much of a savings.
If each government employee needs to change their font, or needs to set it as the default font, or needs technical support to configure the defaults in their word processor. If IT needs to modify images to use this font as a default. Just these actions are going to cost a significant portion of that $400 million when you consider it across the millions of federal staff.
This also assumes things like the government is actually paying for ink or toner in quantity, instead of, for instance, holding a contract with Xerox who charges per impression rather than based on how much ink you use.
It also assumes that there is no difference in legibility between the fonts. That people with vision impairments will not have difficulty with reading the document.
An easy way to think about whether an initiative like this is reasonable is to think about whether it makes a lot of sense for any individual to do. Do you think you, individually, could realize any significant savings by changing your fonts? If it only makes sense when millions of people do it at once, and even then only when certain assumptions are met, and then only saves a few dollars per person per year, then it actually is more likely to cost a lot more in overhead to make sure it happens than it will ever save.