The Paper Tax on Public Sector Productivity

The current state of government administration is often defined by document-driven accounting. In this model, every transaction creates a digital artifact, from a PDF to a scan, that must be stored, double-processed, and manually reconciled.

The scale of the digital paper problem is quantified in a report by The Dais, which found that while many services have a website, only 23% of federal services are available online end-to-end. This means the vast majority of interactions still require a physical form, manual phone call, or paper-based back-end process that prevents speed, transparency, and worker efficiency.

According to a Macdonald-Laurier Institute study, this lack of efficiency has a staggering cost. If public sector productivity had merely matched the private sector over the last decade, Canada’s GDP would be $32 billion higher today. Instead, we are seeing a government gap where employment has jumped 30%, but overall efficiency has actually declined.

"The true cost of digital paper isn't just the processing fee; it’s the massive support shadow it creates," explains Sanam Basirian, Regional Sales Director, Public Sector at Workday Canada. "When you look at legacy ERP environments in the federal government, you often see hundreds – sometimes upwards of a thousand – people dedicated just to keeping the system running.” That is a staggering amount of human capital tied up in maintenance rather than mission-critical service delivery. And in the 2026 fiscal environment, that's a luxury no department can afford.

Comba points out that this drudgery saps the energy of the workforce. "A human shouldn't have to go to a calculator to see if an expense report hits a $100-per-day threshold," he says. "A system should flag the exception instantly, allowing the human to focus on the outlier rather than the routine."

His focus on the drudgery of manual calculation is backed by the Canada Revenue Agency’s own feasibility research. The CRA found that while a traditional emailed PDF still costs roughly $20 to process due to manual handling, a true e-invoice – where data flows directly between systems – slashes that cost by up to 80%, bringing it down to under $10 per transaction.

This shift yields both hard cost savings and soft cost benefits, like reduced employee burnout and faster vendor payments.

From Filing Cabinets to Raw Data

Transitioning to a paperless government requires more than just shredding the relics of the past. Comba recalls early in his career helping a school board remove a mainframe and clearing out rooms of filing cabinets. While those physical relics are disappearing, their digital equivalents – fragmented, siloed systems – remain.

Bridging this definition gap is where enterprise platforms like Workday have shifted the landscape. By replacing fragmented, siloed systems with a single, unified core for HR and Finance, the platform allows data to move seamlessly through a department without the friction of manual entry or reconciliation.

"The hurdle isn't just moving to the cloud,” says Basirian. “It’s moving to a single data model." Legacy systems were often a collection of separate modules for HR and Finance that required constant, expensive integration to talk to each other. “Workday was built as one,” says Basirian. “When a new hire is made in HR, the budget in Finance is updated instantly, and not because the systems talked, but because they are the same data point.” That is how you eliminate the friction that creates that $32 billion productivity gap.

The hurdle to a paperless government goes beyond technology; it's a definition problem. A CRA study revealed that most organizations believe they are already digital because they email PDFs. However, the CRA defines true e-invoicing as the automated exchange of data that requires zero manual entry. This is a distinction that Comba notes is the difference between memorializing paper on a screen and actually accelerating the speed of business.

"True transformation requires more than just speed,” says Lev Sugarman, Senior Public Policy Manager at Workday. “It requires a foundation of trust."

In the Canadian context, moving to raw data means ensuring that digital assets are governed by a platform that understands federal security requirements and data residency from the ground up. “We are in a pragmatic era of digital sovereignty where we protect Canadian data while accessing best-in-class tools,” says Sugarman.

To move forward, the government must prioritize raw, healthy data. When data is captured in its most basic form, rather than being memorialized in a static document, it becomes a foundation for the next generation of tools. This aligns with the 2023–2026 Data Strategy for the Federal Public Service, which emphasizes that data should be a strategic asset from the moment of entry.

Replacing Manual Work with High Value Outputs

The ultimate goal of removing paper and manual friction is to empower workers. Comba is quick to note that this isn't about job takeouts, but about supporting workers in the public sector.

"If a weekly report currently takes four hours to write, and with AI it takes four minutes, you’ve just gained nearly four hours of capacity," Comba explains. "The challenge for leadership is: what high-value service do we fill that time with?"

Basirian emphasizes that this shift is essential for meeting the government’s new mandate for speed. "Modernizing the back office isn't just an IT project,” she says. It's a talent strategy. When we move to a true SaaS model, we aren't just giving them a new tool. We are removing the set-and-forget mentality that has plagued procurement for 20 years.”

This transition is particularly vital for the digital natives entering the workforce who expect streamlined, digital-first workflows from day one. With Workday, government employees can use a platform that evolves every quarter, ensuring that the Canadian government can move at the speed of the citizens it serves.