Paperless City Council session to start in July

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City Government is expected to save on the cost of papers and inks for the agenda of the members of the City Council as the legislative department is set to go paperless beginning July this year.

Councilor Roberto Cabarrubias said that by then, all 20 councilors will not have to carry with them thick agenda during sessions because everything will be computerized.

This is part of the council’s campaign to go paperless for the preservation of the environment and to save the cost of producing over a hundred page-agenda per councilor every week.

Cabarrubias said that once everything is digitized, they will be able to save on the cost of some 200,000 sheets of paper a year plus the cost of the toner and the electricity consumed in operating the Xerox machine.

He said that each councilor will be installed a Thin Client in their respective places.

Thin Clients are centrally-managed computers with limited capabilities to only essential applications. Cabarrubias said that the main server will be at the radio room.

The agenda will be on-line based and will have a link at the city government’s official website so the public will have access to it.

The system, currently being created, will include an archive that will allow them to access past agenda or a specific document.

He said that tracing old documents introduced in the previous sessions is a common problem among councilors.

Cabarrubias said that the plan for a paperless session has been floating since his first term as a councilor when he was still the chairman of the committee on information technology.

He said that he started the digitization of agenda where he scans all documents and attachments and sends a copy to all councilors since all of them are issued their own laptops.

But he said only few councilor adopted the method because most of them still prefer to bring thick books during the session. (FREEMAN)