“City councils in the southwest Valley are moving to electronic tablets such as iPads to save on paper and copying costs, to improve their digital mobility and to change the way members navigate agenda packets,” David Madrid reports for The Arizona Republic.
“The Litchfield Park City Council voted last week to spend up to $9,800 to buy iPads, one for each of the seven council members, the city manager, the assistant city manager and the city clerk,” Madrid reports. “Tolleson is already buying iPads for its seven City Council members and five managers. It will cost the city $9,648, said Steven Baumgardt, the city’s finance director.”
Madrid reports, “The Goodyear City Council will consider moving to iPads at a later meeting, either this year or early next year, said Nora Fascenelli, a spokeswoman for the city. Buckeye would like to have iPads available for the City Council when it is sworn in in June, Town Clerk Lucinda Aja said.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike Young” for the heads up.]
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US Department of Defense gets new weapon for securing Apple iPhones, iPads – September 6, 2011
North Carolina town buys Apple iPads to save taxpayers’ money – July 28, 2011
U.S Department of the Interior staffers to get Apple iPads – February 3, 2011
The governments are really slow to do simple math and find out how quickly investments in iPads fully reimburse back and start to generate huge net savings for the budget comparing to current status of spending loads of money on paper as well as on printing/copying devices and their maintenance.
Imagine how many local and bigger levels of governments still use paper today worldwide. Millions (yes, literally millions) of trees could be saved if all of them would switch to iPads.
Especially, if you disable printing on them 😉
They would still print things.
If computers and email did not stop people from using a printer I don’t see how an iPad would go any further.
It’s much more difficult to implement new technology into governments than a small business because you have to change so many processes about how things are done, plus the mindsets of the employees. It’s starting to come faster, but governments will always lag behind.
Plus, do you really want your local government spending your tax dollars on brand-new tech before having the time to see just what the tech can do in other industries first? You could wind up with a lot of local small tech companies selling virtually useless tech to local governments who jump at the latest and greatest. Better to let them be slow adopters and hopefully get it right.
“Such as iPads”. Come on, why suggest that they also purchase anything else. Misleading title.
The media can’t seem to get their heads around the fact that iPad stands alone in its market and calling it “tablets” doesn’t tell the whole story.
It’s wishy-washy, everyone must be a winner journalism rather than news reporting. There are three specific city councils reported on, and each of them has purchased, or is planning to purchase, iPads — nothing else. Ladies and gentlemen if the press: it’s OKAY to report just the facts in a NEWSpaper. Everything doesn’t need to be a STORY.
I miss Walter Cronkite…