Audit Determines In-house Printing is Cheaper

Outsourcing state printing work is officially a waste of money in Wisconsin. That was the result of an audit of the Wisconsin Department of Administration, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month.

The Legislative Audit Bureau determined that the state was wrong when it insisted it could save money by outsourcing printing. In reality, according to the audit, the state could save up to $616,500 by hiring 35 state workers instead.

The Department of Administration has been contracting with Spherion Corp. for printing and mailing services. It conducted a cost-benefit analysis and calculated it would save $950,800 over five years by continuing this contract. But the Legislative Audit Bureau said the administration used outdated data (from May 2007) to reach that conclusion, the Journal Sentinel reported. Replacing Spherion workers with state employees would actually save up to $616,500 from mid-2009 to mid-2014, auditors wrote. Contracting would cost $10.2 million over five years, while using state workers would cost $9.6 million, auditors estimated.

In January, the Journal Sentinel wrote, Spherion workers failed to detect a folding error that led to Social Security numbers being visible on 5,000 tax mailings from the Department of Revenue.