The report ‘Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger’ asserts that government could save as much as £70bn by 2020 by eliminating paper for interactions within and between departments and switching exclusively to digital channels for public services that don’t need face-to-face interaction. Specific areas highlighted were the ‘waste’ created by the Crown Prosecution Service printing one million sheets of paper every day, and the printing of online forms and posting them back for signatures. While conceding that “in reality we live in an increasingly digital world where electronic and paper based communications coexist and are often complementary”, Two Sides’ response stressed the need for caution in the Government going ‘paperless’. A key reason cited was the continued “digital disenfranchisement” of many UK households. The response pointed to the fact that, according to ONS 2013 data, 7.1 million UK adults (14%) have never used the internet and 17% of UK households do not have internet access. It also highlighted the issues of consumer choice and the important role of the print and paper industry to the economy. Cited statistics included the fact that, according to a 2011 IPSOS survey, 80% of UK consumers prefer reading from paper than a screen, and 58% of consumers prefer to keep important documents as paper. The response also challenged the report’s use of the term ‘paperless’, highlighting that 26% of UK consumers print up to 20% of their important documents at home. Two Sides director Martyn Eustace said: “There’s an automatic assumption that digital is better. In many situations it can be – it’s incredible what we can do these days with digital information. But you have to recognise that paper-based media and printing is still an absolute necessity for a whole raft of people, and also the medium of choice for many others.” On why it was critical for Two Sides to formulate an official response and the impact the organisation is hoping to make, Eustace said: “Quite clearly any report that says there could be potential savings of £70 billion is going to be leapt on by government as incredibly attractive. We just hope people take our response into account.” The Two Sides response has been sent to the authors of ‘Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger’ and Minister for the Cabinet office Francis Maude. Commenting on the publication of the report on Monday (2 September), Maude said: “We estimate shifting government transactions to digital channels can save £1.2billion by 2015….This will deliver better value for hardworking families and better public services designed around users’ needs. In future, all government services will be fast, convenient, agile and digital by default.” The Two Sides response can be read in full at www.twosides.info....

CMYUK, which employs 11 staff, will offer the complete range of printers from Mimaki’s industrial products range, including the UJF-3042 and UJF-6042 flatbed LED UV-curing printers. CMYUK Digital supplies a range of digital machines, including printers from EFI and HP and Zünd finishing kit, and will start selling Mimaki equipment with immediate effect. Sales director Sarah Fenna explained that the UJF-3042 and UJF-6042 machines were a key focus for CMYUK. These machines offer affordable high-quality printing on a wide range of substrates and 3D objects. “It’s not entry-level kit. These are very dedicated machines for a specific niche – if you want a short run of personalised golf balls, acrylic blocks or awards trophies, for example. “A printer would have one of these machines alongside wide- or super wide-format kit.” Hybrid Services national sales manager John de la Roche said: “CMYUK Digital presents us with a team of extremely experienced print professionals to supply and support Mimaki’s versatile industrial printers. New customers can be assured of receiving expert knowledge and support from this appointment.”...

CMYUK, which employs 11 staff, will offer the complete range of printers from Mimaki’s industrial products range, including the UJF-3042 and UJF-6042 flatbed LED UV-curing printers. CMYUK Digital supplies a range of digital machines, including printers from EFI and HP and Zünd finishing kit, and will start selling Mimaki equipment with immediate effect. Sales director Sarah Fenna explained that the UJF-3042 and UJF-6042 machines were a key focus for CMYUK. These machines offer affordable high-quality printing on a wide range of substrates and 3D objects. “It’s not entry-level kit. These are very dedicated machines for a specific niche – if you want a short run of personalised golf balls, acrylic blocks or awards trophies, for example. “A printer would have one of these machines alongside wide- or super wide-format kit.” Hybrid Services national sales manager John de la Roche said: “CMYUK Digital presents us with a team of extremely experienced print professionals to supply and support Mimaki’s versatile industrial printers. New customers can be assured of receiving expert knowledge and support from this appointment.”...

The report ‘Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger’ asserts that government could save as much as £70bn by 2020 by eliminating paper for interactions within and between departments and switching exclusively to digital channels for public services that don’t need face-to-face interaction. Specific areas highlighted were the ‘waste’ created by the Crown Prosecution Service printing one million sheets of paper every day, and the printing of online forms and posting them back for signatures. While conceding that “in reality we live in an increasingly digital world where electronic and paper based communications coexist and are often complementary”, Two Sides’ response stressed the need for caution in the Government going ‘paperless’. A key reason cited was the continued “digital disenfranchisement” of many UK households. The response pointed to the fact that, according to ONS 2013 data, 7.1 million UK adults (14%) have never used the internet and 17% of UK households do not have internet access. It also highlighted the issues of consumer choice and the important role of the print and paper industry to the economy. Cited statistics included the fact that, according to a 2011 IPSOS survey, 80% of UK consumers prefer reading from paper than a screen, and 58% of consumers prefer to keep important documents as paper. The response also challenged the report’s use of the term ‘paperless’, highlighting that 26% of UK consumers print up to 20% of their important documents at home. Two Sides director Martyn Eustace said: “There’s an automatic assumption that digital is better. In many situations it can be – it’s incredible what we can do these days with digital information. But you have to recognise that paper-based media and printing is still an absolute necessity for a whole raft of people, and also the medium of choice for many others.” On why it was critical for Two Sides to formulate an official response and the impact the organisation is hoping to make, Eustace said: “Quite clearly any report that says there could be potential savings of £70 billion is going to be leapt on by government as incredibly attractive. We just hope people take our response into account.” The Two Sides response has been sent to the authors of ‘Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger’ and Minister for the Cabinet office Francis Maude. Commenting on the publication of the report on Monday (2 September), Maude said: “We estimate shifting government transactions to digital channels can save £1.2billion by 2015….This will deliver better value for hardworking families and better public services designed around users’ needs. In future, all government services will be fast, convenient, agile and digital by default.” The Two Sides response can be read in full at www.twosides.info....

“There have been several major iterations of XMF since we introduced it, but this is probably the biggest technology step-change for three or four years,” said Fujifilm Europe ESBU workflow business strategy manager John Davies. XMF Workflow v5.5 uses Adobe’s new Mercury RIP technology, which was officially launched yesterday as part of the latest Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE 3). Fuji said it worked closely with Adobe on the integration of the Mercury architecture in XMF 5.5. Among the headline upgrades to XMF 5.5 are a raft of variable data and productivity enhancements that optimise print production on Fuji’s digital inkjet presses, the Jet Press 720 and 540W. According to Davies, when XMF was launched in 2007 as the first APPE-powered workflow, it signalled a new era in workflow technology. “But the latest digital print technologies, predominantly web fed, have created a whole new dimension of productivity, speed and processing pressures and the new Adobe Mercury RIP architecture allows XMF to automatically scale its capabilities depending on what work is coming at it.” He said that the XMF 5.5 added a “huge amount of processing power” for ‘regular’ printing, but with Mercury’s parallel processing, multi-tier caching and dynamic load balancing v5.5 also has the flexibility to cope with data-rich variable data printing (VDP). The latest version also boasts a new database and users can also prioritise jobs, enabling the RIP to automatically weight its processing power towards these jobs, while others are still processing in the background. “We’ve known for a while that printers are having to handle more jobs, with shorter run lengths, which means more jobs going though the RIP. So now if you have 30 or 40 jobs all turning up at once you can deal with those and get them out,” said Davies. “For VDP, what the new system also does automatically is recognise every pixel area that doesn’t change and intelligently only renders the areas that are different – not just text, but image blend-wise too.” While the variable data functionality is primarily targeted at Fuji’s Jet Press 540W, Davies said it also potentially applied to the sheetfed Jet Press 720. He added that v5.5 is also ideally suited to hybrid litho and digital environments. MIS integration has also been boosted in the latest incarnation of XMF, with v5.5 securing full CIP4 certification for the first time. XMF’s flagship 3D proofing functionality has also been upgraded, with 3D proofs now generated automatically. Version 5.5 is available immediately, having been in beta with a number of undisclosed companies. According to Fuji, v5.5 pricing is “on par” with XMF v5....