Amanda Taylor

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Keep taking the tablets … council papers on electronic devices?

by admin on 26 February, 2010

Along with other city councillors, I was asked if I would like to read my council agenda and papers on a ‘tablet’, with the aim of saving paper (and therefore money) as well as carbon usage.

We often have agenda papers of 500-1000 pages for some of our meetings, particularly the one I chair, where we scrutinize twelve different departments of the Council. An electronic tablet would certainly be lighter to carry, although I would still want to be able to scribble notes in the margin and use Post-It notes as navigation markers. And what if they were stolen or got damaged?

Given the inbuilt obsolescence of technical gadgets I fear that a tablet might be upgraded or become outdated before it paid for itself in terms of saved paper costs.

Any advice welcome! Thanks to those who have commented, who are confirming my scepticism…

Salah at CouncilUPDATE

My colleague Cllr Salah Albander, councillor for Trumpington, already has one of these devices, an I-pad brand, which he purchased second-hand, doubtless from someone who found it less useful than the marketing hype would suggest. I took the opportunity at last night’s council meeting (25th Feb) to photograph Salah using it and now add it here, to pacify those amongst my readership who require pictures to accompany the text.

   4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. Cllr Taylor,

    If there’s some technology you think will help you perform your role as a councillor better then I’d be very happy to see you using it.

    I don’t think you ought be asking me, and other tax payers, to buy you the latest shiny gadget though.

    I’ve written more about this on my website at:

    http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/should-we-buy-our-councillors-ipads.html

    Richard Taylor
    Cambridge
    http://www.rtaylor.co.uk

  2. Chris Rand says:

    Hi Amanda

    The problem is, while we’d all like to cut down on the paper consumption, there are loads of problems. The cost of a council-supplied computer (as with any IT in the public sector) would be many times the sticker price, with all its training, maintenance and other requirements. Paper documents would be produced anyway, as I’m sure many councillors wouldn’t want to use electronic technology (and nor should they be forced to), so we’re only talking saving run-on costs. If a council-supplied £500 iPad ended up costing the taxpayer as little as £1000 a year (and I bet it’d be a lot more), each one would probably have to “save” 100,000 sheets of paper a year to be cost-effective. Sadly, I doubt it could do that.

    And this is the worst time to bring up the issue. Suitable pieces of IT equipment for showing electronic documents (including simple netbooks) have been available for years. I think the average taxpayer would go mental if they saw councillors being issued with a certain new device which is sure to inspire considerably above-average levels of envy from those who don’t own one. And it’ll only take one councillor to say “I don’t know why they’ve given me one of these, I don’t even know where the ‘on’ switch is”, and there’ll be a riot. Or there ought to be, anyway.

  3. John Lawton says:

    Hi,
    I came to your blog via Richard Taylor’s site: http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/should-we-buy-our-councillors-ipads.html

    I think that more IT might be useful to councillors like yourself, and also to the public, but would need to be more comprehensive than it is at present. For instance I attended the West/Central area committee on 04/02/10 that Richard referred to, and while most information on items on the agenda was available from the council website, a drawing of an item on the environmental improvements section was not available online, (nor for that matter as hardcopy at the meeting), nevertheless councillors were given copies. This is not very good, but is unfortunately all too common, my point is that everything needs to be available online, and in open-standard formats such as HTML and PDF, and editable formats e.g. ODT but NOT in Microsoft proprietary file formats, DOC, DOCX.

    Don’t get too excited by the iPad! Time will tell how good it will turn out, at present it is only an (yet unavailable) fashionable item. You will need to wait for the (more expensive) 3G version, or you get NO INTERNET outside wireless hot-spots!

    Also, I have great misgivings over displays on most IT equipment, they are not able to display a page of A4 text clearly enough to read without zooming and panning. Something like the newly announced larger screen Kindle might be more appropriate for reading documents.
    http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/02/02/review_e_book_reader_amazon_kindle_dx/

    In any case I think that it should be up to individuals to purchase their own devices rather than these being supplied and funded directly by the council. Try using a normal laptop as an experiment and see how you get on. You will need to get an Internet connection, so invest in a Mobile Internet usb dongle too.

    Best wishes,

    John Lawton

  4. Thanks for your website ! I’ve just subscribed to your news feed.

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