Why Printers Are Still Mission-Critical for Federal Agencies

The Department of Justice and the Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, have engaged Xerox through General Services Administration procurement vehicles to deploy printers and document services with large-scale contracts.

Additional vendors such as Brother offer printers that are custom-built for the unique requirements of the federal government, which comply with the Trade Agreements Act and are equipped with advanced security features to safeguard sensitive information. The Defense Logistics Agency’s Document Services division alone produces 40,000 or more jobs each year, adding up to millions of pages, with print jobs including banners, training manuals, certificates, targets and maps. In 2022, Xerox inked a $194 million contract to supply DLA with A3 and A4 multifunction devices.

“We’ve been talking about the paperless office for 50 or 60 years,” says Keith Kmetz, program vice president for the Imaging, Printing & Documents Services program at IDC. “It’s not happening. On an annual basis, hundreds of billions of pages are printed annually in the U.S. alone. That’s not an infrastructure that is disappearing. It’s maturing.”

Taking Notice of Print Material

While it is faster and far less expensive to share information digitally, Kmetz notes, people tend to pay more attention to printed materials.

“Printed information is typically something that is of value,” he says. “That piece of paper that sits in the printer or the fax machine, it bugs me and calls me to action. I get tons of emails every day, and they’re easier to ignore, so print helps get the response or action that you’re looking for.”

Kmetz notes that many workers continue to print out emails and spreadsheets for reasons including signature requirements, travel and external communication. 

Valerie Alde-Hayman, a senior analyst for OpenBrand, says print has become a workflow solution that helps “bridge the gap between physical and digital workflows.” While page counts have declined over the past couple of decades, she says, that has incentivized vendors to help organizations drive efficiencies in document management workflows.

For instance, Alde-Hayman says, agencies might use multifunction printers to scan paper documents such as invoices, digitize them with optical character recognition and bring the information into their business applications.

“What agencies want to do is look for document workflows that can be automated,” she says. “Manufacturers and their channel partners have worked hard to drive awareness of workflow automations, and the narrative around print is now less about speeds and feeds and more about alleviating customers’ pain points.”

Optimizing Print Environments

Agencies must strike a balance that recognizes both the continued importance of print and the need to manage costs and sprawl, Kmetz says. Recently, he spoke with leaders at a large agency where each employee had a desktop printer.

“That’s a very expensive way to operate,” Kmetz says. “The cost per page for those small devices is more expensive than if you had a centralized device that several people could use. But if the infrastructure is not broken — or not perceived to be broken — a lot of organizations aren’t going to act.”

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Agencies must also be mindful of security as they optimize their print environments, Kmetz says.

“Print is an endpoint on the network. If a hacker or malicious actor wants to do something, a printer is a way to get into the network and then go from there. Even the physical information — anything left in an output tray — can be a vulnerability. You have to have security measures in place.”

While offices aren’t eliminating print, Alde-Hayman says, many organizations are being more mindful of cost than in years past.

“Government is a cost-conscious vertical,” she says. “Organizations are increasingly finding that an A3 no longer suits their needs or budget. The market is moving toward A4 devices that are a better fit within their environments.”

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Critical Nodes on the Network

For federal IT leaders, Arrieta says, the key is to view printers not as legacy infrastructure they need to support but as business-critical systems they need to modernize.

“There needs to be a new approach to printer-based services,” Arrieta says. “Even in a digital-first government, printing remains a vital layer of security, serving as a trusted air-gapped checkpoint where humans can verify and preserve sensitive data before it enters or leaves AI-driven systems. Properly modernized, print infrastructure reinforces zero trust principles by ensuring accountability, continuity, and control over classified and high value information.”

Leaders must start seeing printers as intelligent, business-critical nodes in an artificial intelligence ecosystem.

“Print is now a verification layer that supports trust, continuity and cost efficiency,” Arrieta says. “If you are a CIO in a federal agency, modernizing print services can reduce risk, enable your workforce and strengthen your security posture in this new environment.”