Paperless. It’s a buzzword you hear more frequently from local governments but what does it actually mean for your organization? I’m going to outline some of what to expect when making the transition. The bottom line is this – in a world that’s becoming more digital, mobile and environmentally conscious, it’s not a nice to have, IT’S A NEED TO HAVE. The good news is the processes and solutions have been trialed now for years. You’ll find that after making the move it’s going to be huge money saver and aid open government initiatives.
1) Get Rid of Paper Agendas
Solutions have been developed that are basically like MS Word but tailored specifically for the creation, publishing and storage of agendas and minutes for local governments and school districts. That means the approval process for a recommendation, and storage for reports are included and automated. That means you won’t have to push paper around the office looking for signatures. When it comes to elected officials, they don’t get a 300-page document in the mail, instead, the finished document is published to an application on their iPad, or other tablet for annotation. This process saves more paper then you actually probably realize and the job gets done way faster as well. You can also still print out a few agendas for the public, should they want to follow along while attending a meeting.
2) Paperless doesn’t mean goodbye to all paper
Most organizations have paper records archived from decades ago filed away in some dusty corner. The process of scanning all of these documents is utterly frightening. The good news is solutions designed specifically for local governments can store, track and schedule the destruction of paper and digital documents. Again, it’s automated and can be configured to work so that documents from meetings can be stored and organized pretty much instantly. Security is a concern, but I don’t think the lock on your filing cabinet will keep the bad guys out. We have discovered it’s best to store critical data on the cloud. If your whole computer system crashes your documents stay safe. You can also configure security settings within your organization to determine who has access to what.
3) Lines of communication enter the 21st century
It’s time consuming and inefficient to scan documents for your website. Going paperless means you’ll have the tools to engage with your community online as staff work throughout the day. A task only needs to be completed once, and a recommendation, public hearing notice or event notification can be posted and shared in a click. You essentially build a mobile City Hall on your website, but it’s done by using the tools you have implemented across the organization. That’s really the beautiful thing; with an integrated, paperless system the different departments at City Hall work better together.
If you are looking for a high level intro to how a paperless agenda management solution can impact your Clerk's Department watch thisshort video.
