Guest Column - Hampton's experiment with iPads draws attention of national media, other cities
By John C. Eagle
Assistant City Manager
When the story broke in June that the City of Hampton was piloting the use of iPads for city council as a way to save on paper, it didn’t take long before the calls started pouring in. Williamsburg was the first to jump on the bandwagon and also take advantage of this technology, followed by inquiries from the City of Norfolk and Chesapeake City schools. Calls also came in from cities across the country, including none other than Palo Alto, California, usually known for being on the cutting edge themselves.
Then inquiries started coming in from national media outlets including USA Today, which ran on a story on August 10, followed by a piece two days later on ABC National Radio, and even an inquiry from CNN. It seemed wherever you turned, people were asking, “What is Hampton doing with these iPads? What’s all the ruckus about?”
Apple has apparently tapped into something that maybe even they hadn’t foreseen – the iPad is so user friendly as a reader, and so versatile with its many available applications and communication features, that it just happens to dovetail nicely into a niche that no other electronic device has been able to fit into – the legislator’s agenda nightmare.
Council members in Hampton, like in most governments the world over, receive what are called agenda “packets,” large three-ring binders that contains all of the legislative requests with background information and reports needed for a single legislative meeting. The packet is bulky, heavy and cumbersome. The cost to produce the dozen or so that are needed for both council members and senior staff is expensive – about $18,000 for Hampton last year, not including the staff time for assembling them.
In order for the agenda packets to be usable they must also include tabbed separators in order to be able to navigate from item to item, which adds additional cost. The packets must also be delivered or picked up, adding transportation costs to the mix. On top of that, packets are not very green from an environmentally conscious point of view, and are certainly not effective as a reference tool given the enormous amounts of information that must be absorbed by council. In any given year, Hampton council members are presented with about 10,000 pages of information, much of it technical in nature, and not including the minutes from previous meetings.
The City of Hampton has already been a leader in providing government information digitally. The agendas themselves, along with the minutes and meeting videos, have been available in digital format since 2005. Citizens can go online, read what was said, link to the video and do searches today. The agenda packets have also been available in digital form as a PDF file (a common electronic format used on PCs).
To view or read a PDF, however, a laptop or PC is required. Unfortunately a laptop can also be bulky and cumbersome, and the marathon meetings that Council usually engages in require that they also not rely on batteries and instead must be tethered to a power supply and a convenient electrical outlet. The laptops are also obtrusive in the sense that they must be propped up in front of each member.
Add to this the total cost for each unit which requires technical support, anti-virus and other software, and the unappealing way in which PDF readers require users to use them, much less annotate on them, and laptops quickly lose their appeal (anyone who has ever read a 500 page document from a laptop knows that you’d rather have a printed copy). Just the logon process for a PC is cumbersome compared to the easy “flip-open” ease of use of a printed document.
Enter the iPad. Similar to a Kindle and other readers, the iPad doesn’t require a logon, doesn’t require anti-virus software, and requires little to no overhead for support. The iPad is small and lightweight, but has an ergonomically designed screen that makes reading on the device easy and with little to no eye strain.
Unique features to the iPad allow the reader to easily adjust the size of the text or images on the screen, and “apps”, as they call them, are available for less than $10 that let the reader to make notes and also highlight and bookmark pages. The iPad also has battery technology that easily gets the device through one of those marathon meetings without a power cord, plus an unobtrusive portfolio style case that allows it to be referenced at the dais inconspicuously.
As council members prepare prior to the meeting, they can carry the agenda around with them as they would a small notebook, easily being able to slip it into a small briefcase, a purse, or just carry in your hand. As they read about a project awaiting their approval they may come across a technical word they are unfamiliar with. No problem – they can simply open the built in web browser and use Wikipedia to research a topic. Or download the WordWeb app for an on the spot dictionary. They can also use to the web to research previous council meeting minutes or perform other research.
The iPads communication features also allow them to use the device to maintain their calendars and contact lists, and it also serves as an e-mail communication device, allowing them to stay in touch with citizens at the touch of a button. And again, it requires no logins, no software installs, little to no support and almost no training. The iPad’s software is so intuitive and versatile that users rarely need to refer to help screens. They just follow their instincts.
The iPads also come with lots of built in memory. Although the agenda packets are quite large in size, in digital form they take up about 30 megabytes (the equivalent of about 10 MP3 songs). Doing the math, a 32G iPad is capable of storing over 1,000 3-inch thick 3-ring binders! That’s a half-million pages of information. This is also convenient and a real time-saver, allowing a council member to refer back to previous agendas with a simple click. Full text searches are also supported, allowing them to search on specific items of interest going back several meetings.
One of the storylines the national media has picked up on involves the issue of transparency in government. Apparently there is some concern from advocates of open government that the iPad might somehow impede transparency.
Actually the iPad adds nothing to the mix that is not already available. Text messaging and e-mail have already been available for years (as has the simple art of note passing just like kids do in grade school). The technology doesn’t make it any easier for public officials to break the public trust, and those of us working in government in Hampton hope our track record for openness demonstrates a commitment to use all technology in an appropriate and ethical way.
Hampton already broadcasts council work sessions and makes those recordings, as well as searchable minutes, available online. Email in city accounts and on city servers is already subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws.
Although there will always be the potential for some to misuse technology, the iPad doesn’t make it any easier. If one wanted to hold side conversations electronically from the dais, it would be simpler to text message (and text messages would also not be as easily tracked as e-mails). So in a way, the iPad actually poses less of an opportunity. Still, where there’s a will for mischief, they will find a way. Hampton’s track record demonstrates the opposite.
Council members are still getting used to their iPads and personalizing them to their preferences. Because of the many apps that are available, some prefer one reader over another. Some prefer to use a stylus while other prefer the fingertip. The iPad is a very personal device, not unlike a PDA or smartphone - just on steroids.
So far the iPads have been a great success. The city expects them to pay for themselves sometime during the current fiscal year or sooner, as savings are already being realized. Savings on the cost of printing, the time required to assemble them and the conveniences of technology are demonstrating that the iPad has definitely struck a nerve, and the City of Hampton is on the crest of this latest wave.
John Eagle has been an assistant city manager since 2006. He has a background in technology with a passion for making government less bureaucratic and more customer friendly. His areas of responsibility include administrative departments, recreation, the arts and libraries. He was previously the city's director of information technology and has worked for Hampton for 25 years.
