County legislators looking to go paperless

County legislators in Genesee County, N.Y., recently kicked off efforts to reduce their reliance on paper during meetings by investing in tablets. However, the county doesn't see a completely paperless meeting hall occurring for some time.

"It's new. We're learning,"  Chairman Ray Cianfrini told The Batavian. "Everything I'm seeing, though, this is going to transform the way we do business and it will save money. I think it's great. I've been advocating for us to go paperless since I first came on the Legislature when I saw how much paper we generate."

Cianfrini told the news source that the county spends about $35,000 on paper-related supplies every year, more than five million sheets of paper. By investing in tablets, the county leaders hope to stem that tide and put the resources toward more important county needs.

"We don't have any choice," Bob Bausch, one of the legislators, said. "We have to go this direction just because of the amount of paper we push every week. There's just some fine tuning to work on managing it."

In order to make any paperless efforts successful, government leaders, businesses and other organizations need to ensure they are investing in the appropriate document management software and conversion services to streamline the transition from paper to digital. Migrating records, eliminating incoming paper sources and improving access to information take some time, and high-quality support from the right paper conversion services will help ease the transition and promote productivity and efficiency as the move occurs.

While making the initial jump to paperless may seem stressful, seeing piles of paper diminish and a neater, well-organized workspace evolve from it can be incredibly rewarding.

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