The idea of saving money through better management of printing assets is catching on — it’s even reached the bureaucrats in the U.S. government.

The GSA (General Services Administration), the agency that takes care of the day-to-day office needs of other government agencies, has finally gotten on the warpath about dealing with federal office printing expenses, which total well over a billion dollars per year.

According to an article in the Federal Times, the GSA has targeted initial savings of $300 million over the next few years. This being the government, they are moving slowly: They aren’t getting into the program until 2011.

The biggest part of the strategy is what GSA calls “strategic sourcing.” The idea is simple enough — to consolidate buying within an agency and between agencies in order to use the purchasing muscle of the government to get better deals for machines and consumables, negotiated by professionals.

This all sounds pretty obvious, but even corporations that pride themselves on cost cutting often lack strategic buying plans for printing in place. The GSA plans to negotiate on total cost of ownership rather than the cost of hardware alone, as has been the custom in many government departments.

Meanwhile, the GSA is conducting an audit of current printing assets — with an emphasis on reducing the number of personal printers on user desktops. The aim is to move to fewer, more economical printers, with more modest energy consumption and a common set of consumables, in order to simplify inventory.

Finally, the agency is setting up training to reinforce such issues as duplex printing, printing drafts of color documents in black-and-white and other paper- and consumables-saving tricks.

The GSA has already rationalized other areas of related office expenses, using its strategic sourcing program on purchases of cell phones, office supplies and delivery services, while saving the government hundreds of millions of dollars already.

These are steps that any company should be taking.

Tags: cutting costs, government, printer management