Vancouver City Council adopts iPads, saves 50K pages a year
The US city of Vancouver, Washington has seen its City Council adopt iPads this January in an experiment to test out the effectiveness of a paperless workflow. After two months, the touchscreen tablet is an early success as the Council has seen a 40 percent reduction in the number of printed pages it uses for meetings. It does more than just save paper, too.
In a statement, the City Council describes how the iPad lets council members easily view documents stored on a local server. They can also visit websites mentioned during a meeting. Despite the high up-front cost of the iPad, it's saving the city money.
Council leadership had been using BlackBerry devices for email and mobile document review, but the smartphone screens were too small for effective use. Vancouver was paying US$71 per month for each BlackBerry and is now paying $43 monthly for the iPad. Between printing and data costs, the city could save up to $500 per year by switching to the iPad.
