John's Jottings for November 2004

John Ward

Please note: these Jottings are purely personal comment, and do not necessarily or directly represent the policy of either the Conservative Party or the Conservative Group on Medway Council.

The Paperless Councillor

Those who know me will be well aware of my long-term environmental stance. For years before I stood in any election I had been a strong supporter of green spaces (as mentioned in recent Jottings), an advocate of recycling, and also shunning production of avoidable pollution—which is why I have never had a car.

What fewer people know is that for over a decade I have operated in effect a "paperless office". Now I realise that I cannot stop paper items being sent to me (though I have had a number of successes in achieving just that in specific situations) but at least I generate very little paperwork myself—generally only for others who have no other method available to them.

For some time I have been determined to become Medway Council's first "paperless councillor" and have recently achieved this by means of a portable computer. Portable? Well, it's big, it's heavy, but it does give me enough screen area to display several documents at once—for example, an agenda, a report and a map or plan.

I have lugged this machine all the way to several council events now, including two planning (development control) meetings and, last night, full Council for the first time. This rather ghastly picture of me was hurriedly taken by one of my colleagues just before the meeting started, and shows the portable sitting a little precariously on the terrible furniture in the Council Chambner at Gillingham.

The Paperless Councillor Not only does this very publicly show that we really don't have to use up all that forestry on agenda papers, as has been the norm for so long, it also gives me a number of advantages:

I have full-colour, top-quality versions of the documents, including clearer charts
I can magnify the scale (useful with my poor eyesight!)
I can have multiple views on the same document, each at its own scale setting
All the council and other resources (e.g. constitution, Local Plan, planning guidance) are instantly available
I can write or edit speeches and make notes as I go along
It doesn't matter how many documents I have, they take up no extra physical space and are all filed so I can get at anything quickly
Everything is backed-up on my main computer at home and in other ways, so nothing is ever lost.

Overall, this whole idea has worked very well. I have the tremendous advantage of working with an uncommon (British) computer system, originally created in Cambridge by a company called Acorn. The sheer flexibility and user control that this RISC OS system has always offered makes it easily the best around for this kind of work—and for many other serious tasks, for that matter. As I might put it: No Microsoft, please, it's British!

There has already been interest in what I have achieved by a web-based news site and portal (Drobe UK) who are currently preparing an article on it; and it is possible that the local media might follow it up as well, which would be helpful in spreading the word. I can only "lead by example" and it will take a widening of my approach to turn councillors everywhere from paper-bound to paperless.

Next time: Foot-in-Mouth Disease