In Star Trek, people are often handed PADDs holding various bits of information and told to take them to one place or another, which seems awfully inefficient. Why is it done that way? Specifically, I know it happens a lot in Voyager. (Sometimes, people enter information into a PADD and then take it elsewhere themselves, but for the purposes of this question, that is essentially the same thing.)

They have the ability to transfer information from one computer terminal to another (I don't know *how* many times it's said on the bridge to "transfer the coordinates to the helm", and occasionally entire function areas are transferred between workstations), and essentially everything is connected to the same (set of) computer core(s) anyway, so how come the transfers shown as people carrying PADDs around aren't done by just tapping a few controls?

Is it only Plot Device, or is there an actual in-universe explanation that I simply fail to see?