Introduction: Paying to Store Yesterday
Walk into many government buildings in the Philippines, Sri Lanka or Maldives and you will find:
- Whole floors full of boxes
- Corridors lined with steel cabinets
- Separate buildings used almost exclusively for storage
These are not museums. They are archives of paper: tax returns, land files, case records, personnel records, contracts.
Storing them is seen as a necessary overhead. But for countries facing tight fiscal space, debt pressure and climate risk, these archives are a silent, recurring drain on budgets.
1. The Cost Structure of Paper Archives
The true cost of paper archives has several components.
a) Land and Buildings
- Dedicated archive buildings, especially in capital cities, sit on valuable land.
- Construction, renovation and maintenance require capital expenditure.
- Even leased storage space is a recurring cost.
In small countries like Maldives, where land is scarce and expensive, dedicating buildings to storing physical paper is particularly inefficient.
b) Operations and Utilities
- Electricity for lighting and climate control
- Security and access control
- Shelving, boxes, pest control and fire safety measures
These are recurring operational expenditures that do not directly improve service delivery.
c) Staff Time and Productivity Loss
- Records staff to file, locate and transport documents
- Frontline staff waiting for files to arrive
- Multiple visits by citizens or businesses when files cannot be found on time
Case studies on public records management in developing countries show that paper-based systems lead to delays, misfiling and difficulties in locating information, which directly affect implementation of transparency and Right to Information laws.
d) Disaster and Degradation Losses
Floods, fires, mold and pests can destroy archives partially or completely. Reconstructing lost information—land rights, tax histories, social benefit records—is often impossible or extremely expensive.
For disaster-prone countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and low-lying Maldives, this is not a theoretical risk.
2. Country Contexts: Why the Cost Hurts More Here
Philippines
The Philippines faces persistent budget pressures and high infrastructure needs. Maintaining large archives of paper in national and local offices:
- Uses space that could be redeveloped for productive public use
- Increases operating costs for local governments
- Slows down key processes like land registration, tax administration and justice
The opportunity cost is real: every peso spent on storing boxes is a peso not spent on climate adaptation, health or education.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is going through fiscal consolidation and public sector reform. Projects designed to strengthen public sector efficiency explicitly target better information systems and transparency.
Persisting with large paper archives:
- Adds to operational costs for ministries already under pressure
- Reduces the effectiveness of new digital tools if historical data remains locked in paper
- Slows audits, evaluations and investment decisions
Digitisation is directly aligned with the country’s need to do more with less.
Maldives
Maldives combines:
- Small land area
- High exposure to climate risk
- Vulnerability of public finances as a SIDS
Spending scarce resources to maintain physical archives—often in vulnerable coastal locations—compounds both financial and climate risk. Moving to digital archives frees space, reduces risk, and supports better planning.
3. From Cost Centre to Asset: The Economics of Going Paperless
Global evidence on digital government shows that well-designed digitisation can:
- Reduce administrative costs
- Improve transparency and oversight
- Increase efficiency in service delivery and decision-making
For archives, the economic case includes:
- Avoided Capital Costs
- No need to build or expand archive facilities
- Potential to repurpose or dispose of existing storage properties
- Reduced Operating Expenses
- Lower utilities, maintenance and security costs
- Fewer staff required for manual filing and retrieval
- Productivity Gains
- Staff spend less time searching for documents
- Citizens and businesses spend less time navigating bureaucracy
- Loss Avoidance
- Digital backups dramatically reduce risk of total records loss in disasters
- Stronger audit and compliance reduce leakages and fraud
For fiscally constrained countries, these factors can add up to significant medium-term savings.
4. Building a Country-Specific Business Case
To convince ministries of finance and cabinets in Philippines, Sri Lanka and Maldives, Enadoc and its partners should quantify:
- Current annual direct costs:
- Archive leases or building operating costs
- Staff time dedicated to records management
- Paper, printing and related supplies
- Estimated indirect costs:
- Delays in investments or projects due to slow access to records
- Legal disputes and compensation due to lost or degraded files
- Extra spending caused by disaster-damaged archives
- Potential savings:
- Space freed and avoided future construction
- Time saved per transaction after digitisation
- Reduced risk of fraud and error in financial and administrative processes
Link these savings to priority policy goals:
- More fiscal space for social programmes or climate investments
- Faster justice and service delivery
- Better ratings on governance, transparency and digital government indices
5. How Enadoc Should Present Its Value
Rather than promising generic “efficiency,” Enadoc can frame its offer as a fiscal and governance reform tool:
“Enadoc helps governments in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Maldives convert expensive, fragile paper archives into secure digital assets—freeing budget, protecting records, and improving accountability.”
Key components:
- Comprehensive digitisation and indexing services
- Compliance with records management and data protection standards
- Analytics and dashboards that show:
- Paper reduction over time
- Space and cost savings
- Retrieval times before and after
This moves the conversation from IT procurement to investment with measurable ROI.
Call to Action
If your ministry budget quietly pays for warehouses of paper, you are funding a problem, not a solution.
For the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Maldives, digitising archives is a practical way to reduce waste, strengthen governance and redirect scarce resources toward development priorities.
Enadoc can be the partner that designs and delivers that transition.
References (Article 3)
- World Bank, Sri Lanka Public Sector Efficiency Strengthening Project and related documentation on transparency and efficiency reforms World Bank
- World Bank, A Case Study of Public Records Management System (challenges of paper-based records for RTI and service delivery) World Bank
- World Bank and related analyses on records and archives management in international organisations unjiu.org
- World Bank and analytical work on SIDS fiscal and climate vulnerability, including debt and resilience challenges World Bank
- UN DESA, UN E-Government Survey 2022 (digital government’s role in efficiency and accountability) publicadministration.un.org
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