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NYT interviews "iPad town" officials

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Last month we told you about the North Carolina town that's gone all-iPad for its municipal meeting agendas and reports. The New York Times has now published a brief interview with the town manager and police chief of Cornelius, NC, Anthony Roberts and Bence Hoyle.</div>
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Both officials cite the potential cost savings of the iPads versus printing and delivering 4,000 pages worth of agendas for a meeting. They're anticipating about an 18-month horizon before the iPads pay for themselves in reduced dead-tree expenditures, not counting the goodwill benefit of not weighing down the town board with overloaded binders. They also noted that since the iPads are town property, they expect the commissioners to comport themselves appropriately when it comes to inappropriate websites and games.</div>
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The police chief even noted that iPad-related mistakes can sometimes work out in the town's favor; he "hit the wrong button" and brought up a webcam feed of a local park, where he spotted a potential nogoodnik roaming about after closing hours. He emailed his deputies and they tracked down the trespasser.</div>
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NYT interviews "iPad town" officials

Last month we told you about the North Carolina town that's gone all-iPad for its municipal meeting agendas and reports. The New Yo...

North Carolina town goes paperless, embraces iPads

<br/><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" class="aligncenter" height="135" src="http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/8141/usingipadatwork.jpg" width="279" /></p><br/>The town of Cornelius, NC has launched a new program designed to cut down on paper use in the town's government facilities, and the linchpin of this program is none other than Apple's tablet, the iPad. According to the local Herald Weekly paper, the town passed out iPad 2s to commissioners at a recent board meeting, and plans to use the devices for sharing agenda packets, budget information, and everything else you need to run a small town, without printing any of it out.<br/><br/>The whole plan seems surprisingly well thought out -- the town actually ran a trial of the program with just three iPads, and the paperless agenda plan has been set up for quite a while now. It was relatively cheap, too -- the town has only spent $5200 on the iPads (not counting some document sharing software previously purchased), and fully expects to make that money right back up in saved time and paper costs.<br/><br/>Pretty impressive move, and of course this means the town commissioners also get to use Apple's magical and revolutionary device during meetings (though they should probably keep the Angry Birds off of government property, just in case). We've seen iPads used in a professional setting before to great effect, and here's another situation where Apple's product is not only better for a few reasons, but actually cheaper as well.

North Carolina town goes paperless, embraces iPads

The town of Cornelius, NC has launched a new program designed to cut down on paper use in the town's government facilities, and the linc...