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In December 2008, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine took off Renew Virginia, a year-round series of legislative and administrative activities promoting renewable energy, creating green jobs and encouraging environmental protection. A noble goal indeed, and how many such initiatives are usually more difficult to achieve than a decree. Protecting the environment is everyone’s concern today, and rightly so. As we believe the world is now home to over 6 billion people, we must all remember our shared resources.
One of the key environmental areas that government agencies in particular can focus on is reducing paper in their processes. Over the past 10 years, many of these organizations have embraced the idea of ??moving away from paper and have implemented electronic document management systems that allow paper to be stored electronically for easy retrieval and sharing without creating additional paper. Many of them even took the extra step of “digitizing” or converting their older, historical paper and microfilm records to digital formats and were able to “reclaim” the very costly space they previously used to store these documents.
One of the most overlooked areas of significant improvement, however, is when citizens actually interact with or contact these agencies. Today, many Commonwealth municipalities have on their websites a set of necessary forms that citizens can find, print and fill out on their own, without interacting with workers. This is a step in the right direction, but somewhat limited in its efficiency and green power. For example, if I want a garage sale in my hometown of Chesapeake, VA, I can go to the city website, open the permit form, fill in the required fields (so far all right …) but THEN, I need to print the form (waste paper and ink), write a check (waste of expensive paper and ink) and either drive to the tax commissioner’s office (waste of gas and time) or mail it to the KR office (waste of envelopes, stamps and postage gas and time). Once the Commissioner’s office receives my license application and checks, the paper form (which was originally an electronic document) now needs to be digitized and entered into their document management system for validation and archiving. The check also has to be deposited (and someone has to check if it has been cashed …) The inefficiencies are monumental!
Doesn’t it make much more sense to eliminate the waste that arises between the original electronic form on the website and the completed electronic form and deposit in the Ombudsman’s system? A cursory overview of the City of Chesapeake’s forms page shows over 140 forms! How much paper, gasoline, and manpower could be saved by eliminating “waste” in the process? Multiply by the number of municipalities in the entire community? Or maybe a country?
So congratulations to the many Virginia government agencies that have embraced electronic content management systems … you’re halfway there. You have “green” the background of your process. Let’s start focusing on the front-end and move on, and the reality of “Renewed Virginia” may be much closer to all of us.