EDITORIAL - Can the line be drawn on paperless sessions?

Vice mayor-elect Joy Augustus Young, who will be the presiding officer of the incoming city council, is expected to implement "paperless" sessions despite the seeming preference for some councilors to keep on holding on to paper documents.

Young, who has been immersed in modern technology, has rightly foreseen that "paperless" sessions are the way to the future and that sooner or later, whether they like it or not, city councilors will have to eventually keep up with emerging trends.

So, according to reports, Young will insist on his "paperless" sessions. Such sessions are not exactly new as a similar initiative was implemented previously by providing councilors with laptops to do their work.

But for one reason or another, according to the reports, most councilors promptly reverted to using paper instead of the computers. Now Young wants to reintroduce the same initiative again.

With a city council composed of members of the same party, Young may not be expected to encounter rough sailing with his initiative. The entire city council is expected to toe the line. The question, however, is for how long.

Filipinos, after all, are notorious for back-sliding. The Tagalogs have a term for it: "Ningas cogon." In Cebuano, the term is "maayo lang sa sugod." It seems that Filipinos mostly do not have it in them to finish what they started.

And a big stumbling block to the Young initiative is the fact that councilors are elected officials, not ordinary employees. They did not apply for a job and got accepted on condition they perform according to certain specifications, such as using computers.

Councilors are vested with a mandate that did not require them to be computer literate. When they campaigned for public office, it was never part of their platform, which the public had to consider before voting, that they bring sessions to a higher level by going "paperless."

It would therefore be interesting to see if, despite the clear merits of his initiative, Young can demand compliance from those who, to put it simply, just do not see things his way or are just uncomfortable with the new technology, and have the mandate to back their intransigence.