Paperless offices - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

To start with, there is a lot of talk of paperless, but in reality we are talking of paper-less. Here at Stroud we have implemented a service wide electronic document management system, but through multiple suppliers. We use Unifom and IDox for DM work, but Limehouse for policy. In both cases the official file is always the scanned version. We have provided dual screens to all staff so that they can see the image and any reports they are writing, or system they are inputting into. We do not expect Building Surveyors or Planning Officers to take laptops out on site with their drawings on, so paper still exists, but that’s about it... all other documents are scanned and discarded, or taken directly from their electronic form straight into the system, PDFs Word, Excel, emails JPG (officer photos) are all simply filed on line and made instantly available to the public. Down side is that many morn the loss of paper, and crave its touch. You can never underestimate the ingenuity if your team to find a reason to have an old copy of RPG10... it has all my notes in the margins... It is a long haul, but the savings are available. You could not maintain a planning applications website with out one, and in considering Core Strategy submissions, the savings in shelf space makes it affordable. But mine is only one opinion... I have quite a unique team of "early adopters" who embraced the opportunities and reaper the benefits… other teams my find it more daunting Phill

Phil, Many thanks for sharing your experiences. Paper-less is a good way of putting it! We use Northgate iLap in DC and policy use Limehouse for policy document authoring and consultation. We do scan applications and representations submitted for policy consultations, but we tend to end up with both an electroninc and a paper copy of documents - the best of both worlds but not cutting down on shelf space much! Has anyone seen any good assessments of the cost / benefit of "paper-less" offices, in particular in planning? I would guess that there may not be a big financial saving initially, if at all, but there could be added benefits such as having a secure backup of all documents, enabling access from multiple locations to files and the ability to index files for searches?

Implementing EDMS, requires you to review how the job is done, how the working environment is structured, and this tends to show up opportunities for automation. However, DC managers need to get tough. Mr Parish Councillor CAN use the online list, we WILL NOT post him his own personally deciduous rainforest every month, for the one comment he makes! This can amount to a serious saving in paper each year. (£10k’s) One authority saved 1 mile a year of A0 plotting. (not just by weaning the PC's off paper) In terms of staff buy in, if you turn up the day before “go live”, and tell the staff they will be using the new system tomorrow with no training, they will hate it, regardless of how good it may be. As an old hand project manager, my advise is get the staff involved on day one, and don’t skimp on the training (increases confidence and reduces staff stress levels). This way the people who have to use the system on a daily basis will own it, and will have helped configure it into the most useable way attainable. CBA for DC, tends to be particular to each authority, although the places to look tend to be the same. (1) How much printing are you going to be doing before and after (can you do online consultations?) (2) How much is the storage going to cost (electronic) and save (physical) (3) License fees and hardware for the new system (remember to include replacements over time) (4) Staff productivity increases with automation (5) Work shifting savings, e.g. officer to admin, admin to public self service (6) Etc. Cost benefit analysis should be over a sensible period for example 3 to 5 years. If you can, include a pay-back period calculation, and always include in one place all the assumptions used to calculate the CBA, with justification and explanation if the assumed value is not obvious. This latter saves a lot of pain and arguments later, and can be very useful to focus the project board on what should be in and out of scope. PS Failing the above you can always hide the printers, or put the office dragon next to the only printer left in the department!

Thanks very much for that. Given the cost savings to certain councils of Parish Councils going “digital”, it makes sense to at least provide training, perhaps even contribute towards their purchase of computers. Good point about staff buy-in. Thanks for those Cost Benefit Analysis pointers. Our team is fortuante to have a decent sheetfed scanner and networked multi function devices that can scan to searchable PDF/A and that all staff have access to. We do not have dedicated software for indexing or for establishing a workflow for dealing with correspondence. However, our existing correspondence database, filing of correspondence in folders as searchable PDFs and the use of Windows Search, should cover this. The main cost seems to be staff time. To guarantee 100% capture of all incoming paper seems to require dedicated clerical staff to open, scan and assign all incoming mail. Given current limited resources, it will be difficult to justify. It seems that making an easy to use “self service” system available to planning officers to manage their own paper is the only real option at the moment.

I've only just read your post and i think another area you could consider it a Bureau to handle the incoming mail, scan, index and make it available for you. The CBA for that will depend on the volumes involved (it's often a case of higer volume lower cost) but given the current economic climate i guess there are some deals to be made out there. We have used one such compant in teh past and my previous employer (Financial services) used the same supplier for all there new mortgage applications and loved it. Hope this helps, good luck.

At Harrow we went paperless a couple of years ago, for DM and BC. Like Philip Skill's authority we have dual screens and we have installed a large screen in one of our meeting rooms for case conferences and meetings with applicants. In practice, however, officers still print off plans for site visits, and for major cases, with the number of associated documents, large site plans that are not easily readable even on a large screen. For this reason we are looking at keeping on paper copy of the plans (but not the rest of the file which will stay electronic). This is still a massive improvement over the traditional paper file system. It has also allowed us to move towards mobile and flexible working. As Philip says, this is a long haul, and there are still some 'technical' issues surrounding compatibly of systems that we are addressing, as we cannot yet undertake electronic consultations and the planning system (MVM) does not sit entirely comfortably with the document management system. Teething problems, but still an overall improvement. My advice in terms of staff buy in would be to involve them in designing the systems and processes they are going to use. If you have any specific questions about this, please me know.