Vernon Hills to give trustees tablets
Vernon Hills' village government is Facebook friendly and uses quick response codes to promote local restaurants, but officials' technological focus is now shifting to internal communications.
In a move that is becoming more common among local governments, village trustees will be equipped with tablet computers to access information regarding village business electronically as a replacement for bulky paper packets.
“We've been thinking about it off and on for a couple of years — to see if there was some type of technology application to bring information to the village board,” Assistant Village Manager John Kalmar said.
The move is part of an effort to become more efficient and reduce the use of paper. Village trustees every month each receive about 500 pages of various communications, such as letters, emails, articles of interest and supporting documents for board meetings.
Besides the cost of paper, printing and copying, assembling the documents takes a lot of staff time, according to Will Rockwell, the village's GIS coordinator.
“We're just trying to make the best use of technology,” he said.
Rockwell last week took delivery and began programming 10 Lenovo ThinkPad 16 GB Wi-Fi tablets. The village bought the tablets for about $6,000 and eventually will give them to trustees to use wherever they want. Mobile security allows the village to track the tablets by GPS and erase information remotely if they are lost or stolen.
The tablets will allow trustees to receive and download large documents from a secure website established by Rockwell, and edit and write notes on the tablet that can be retrieved later as if it was paper.
“You can save the doodles if you like,” Rockwell joked during a recent demonstration.
Trustees will be able to receive and read the information anywhere Wi-Fi is available, receive and send village-related email and have access to the village website and Facebook page.
Rockwell and Kalmar said Lenovo was chosen over the iPad and other devices because it is one of few with a stylus, and provides more business applications such as plug-in capability and USB drives.
A roll out date has not been set. Trustees first will receive training during a public meeting not only on tablet operations, but from the village attorney regarding legal aspects involving open meeting and freedom of information laws.
“You can't video conference with another couple of board members to talk about things no matter what,” Kalmar said. “You can't email each other during the public meetings.”
Buffalo Grove officials began using iPad 2 tablets last summer. Five of seven trustees bought their own and two went with village-supplied models, according to Village Manager Dane Bragg.
“Anything that goes to the device is being pushed across our servers,” he said. “We need to make sure we have a way to capture that information ingoing and outgoing.”
He said officials appear pleased with the move, which the village estimates will save about $5,000 in paper and copying costs.
“It's much more efficient. It's much quicker to review items and make modification,” he said.
In Vernon Hills, Trustee Jeanne Schwartz was one of two board members who tested the tablet. She admits she likes to physically flip through paper documents, but also enjoyed being able to sit anywhere to read through information with the tablet. She said it will take some getting used to but should work pretty well.
“It might be interesting the first meeting or two,” she said.