City Governments Go Green with Electronic Document and Agenda Management
A study of how government agencies are taking the lead in becoming more responsible for the environment through the use of technology
In recent times, there has developed an increasing urgency at all levels of society to “go green,” to reduce, to reuse, to recycle. But more than that, many citizens are demanding that their government take steps to be greener, to assume more responsibility and to take the lead for becoming more environmentally conscious.
Many government agencies are taking measures to encourage the reduced consumption of electricity, water, fossil fuels and are stepping up recycling efforts. However, there is a new, exciting trend within government that is proving effective at eliminating the need for vast quantities of paper altogether.
This trend includes using technology to provide citizens with access to their government from home or work. By accessing information and assistance online, citizens are able to conserve by eliminating the need to drive to government offices. With thousands of fewer citizens being required to drive to their local government offices every day, this shift in moving information online can have a dramatic impact on the environment.
The average city or county office consumes literally millions of paper per year in fulfilling its obligations. Advancements in technology from leading companies such as SIRE Technologies are making it possible for government to replace physical documents with electronic documents. This trend is driven by new, affordable software tools that provide benefits including:
- Replacing paper documents with digital documents – complete with the ability to do everything one would do on paper, including adding, deleting or modifying text, stamping and annotating the document.
- Ability to collect signatures on documents electronically.
- Routing documents to the appropriate personnel / departments electronically.
- Web forms that replace thousands of paper applications and other data collection documents.
- The ability to capture documents from other software applications without needing to print the document.
- Self-service portals where citizens can quickly fill out forms or applications from their home or office.
- Allowing citizens to participate in Council or Board meetings live from their computer, or to look up specific topics discussed after the fact from their home or office.
This might sound simple, but the savings, both in terms of dollars spent on paper and for the environmental impact can be substantial.
The following four cities have utilized SIRE to help them save time, money and paper.
Moving Online to Save Trees
City clerks know that it is the agenda that manages the legislative process for the city council and other departmental meetings.
The City of Temecula, Calif. is nestled in the wine country between Los Angeles and San Diego. The average length of Temecula’s city council agenda is usually 400-500 pages long.
Besides printing hard copies of the agenda for the city council, 50-100 additional agendas were printed and mailed every two weeks to individuals at attorneys’ offices, home owner’s associations and so on. With each agenda packet consisting of 400-500 pages, that adds up to 50,000 pages EVERY MEETING. With meetings held twice monthly, that brings the total to approximately 1.2 million pages per year!
Temecula implemented SIRE Agenda Plus making it possible for the city clerk to create the agendas without the use of paper and make them available online.
The paper savings coupled with eliminated postage fees and the time it took for an individual to print and stuff envelopes, has proven to be a significant value for the city. The Clerk also says her agenda preparation time has been reduced by at least 30 percent.
Citizens are able to search through meeting minutes online instead of going to the city office to submit a request for the minutes, pay a fee and wait for it. This is a more responsible use of taxpayer dollars. The city is not just using less paper and saving trees, they are saving the citizens themselves money as taxpayers.
Green Thinking Saves Green Backs
West Valley City in Utah implemented SIRE Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), which ended up providing an unexpected boost to the growing city’s bottom line.
For every accident, the WVC Police Department was required to print a copy of the accident report and then either fax or mail it to the insurance company. Now, SIRE has enabled the City to create and send the report electronically; saving labor hours, not to mention the reams of paper eliminated because they no longer have to print the document before sending it off.
They are working to automatically upload traffic tickets directly into the SIRE system - straight from a police officer's car-mounted computer. This system will enable practically zero paper used.
The city issues an average of 4,500 traffic citations per year. Over five years, that comes to an average between 45,000 to 112,500 pages that no longer need to be printed (or between 90 to 225 reams of paper). This translates into an estimated savings between $4,500 to $11,250 of taxpayer dollars.
Award Winning Environmental Thinking
Huntington Beach, Calif. recently won The 2007 Environmental Board Award because of the city clerks’ outstanding efforts to reduce paper usage through providing documents and data electronically with SIRE. They city quantified their paper savings as follows:
- Reduced production of the City Council/Redevelopment full agency agenda packets from 55 copies to 45: Saved 12,000 pages
- Reduced production of City Council/Redevelopment agency agendas from 150 copies to 100: saved 1,800 pages
- Reduced production of City Council/Redevelopment Agency Final Action Agenda from 25 copies to 5: saved 600 pages
- Reduced the number of annual Municipal and Zoning Code hard copy subscriptions from 17 to 9, and making it available on the Web: saved 2,800 pages
- Moved 14 free annual subscriptions for Municipal and Zoning Code hard copy material online: saved 4,900 pages
- Reduced the number of paid and free agenda and Minute subscriptions from about 44 in 2005 to one in 2006, offering Web availability: saved 26, 600 pages
- Distributes City Council/Redevelopment Agency Agendas, Action Agendas and Minutes electronically to an online subscriber list of 91 citizens: saved 70,000 pages
- Currently distributes City Council/Redevelopment Agency Agendas, Action Agendas and Minutes electronically to an online subscriber list of 197 staff and City Council members: saved 151,300 pages
- Decreased Municipal and Zoning Code shelf copies from 200 to two per Ordinance codified: 63,000 pages
- City Council follow up items are distributed to staff electronically, eliminating paper copies that used to go to 40 staff members for at least 24 meetings per year: saved 5,760 pages
- Total paper saved per year: 338,760
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Cape Coral is one of the largest cities in Southwest Florida. It has about 170,000 residents and when the “snowbirds” come south to enjoy the warmer weather in the winter months, the population swells to 220,000. The community is expected to continue growing even more quickly as the Baby Boomers begin to retire and settle in Cape Coral.
This city was concerned that they were becoming inundated with paper due to the building site plan requests that were being filed. This city was the first in the nation to develop a program (with SIRE) that moves the very paper-intensive and very expensive process of printing and filing site plan requests to an online, automated format. Doing this saves some citizens and businesses $1,000 in printing costs per application.
Through this and other digital programs the city has been able to recycle more than 18.5 tons of paper this year alone.
Trees are an important part of our environment; they absorb carbon dioxide and other pollutant particulates, and emit pure oxygen. Temecula, Calif., West Valley, Utah, and Cape Coral, Florida and other government agencies are leveraging technologies offered by SIRE to take a leadership position in eliminating excess paper usage wherever possible. And every piece of paper saved takes society one step further along the path of protecting and healing the environment for future generations. SIRE is proud to work closely with its clients to help find ways to reduce, to reuse, to recycle.
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