Soon after Hampton, Va., Mayor Molly Ward bought an iPad for her personal use last spring, she started thinking of an application of her own — one that might save her town both paper and money.
Ward decided it would make both environmental and fiscal sense for the Hampton City Council to switch from paper to iPads for conducting official business.
The council agreed and last month made the move that Ward says will save $18,000 annually in paper costs. The devices for the six other council members totaled $4,200, she says.
Hampton joins a growing number of municipalities — from Williamsburg, Va., to Albertville, Ala., to Redwood City, Calif. — that are turning to iPads to conduct government business.
The move that is helping cash-strapped municipalities trim expenses is also raising concerns with government transparency advocates.
Megan Rhyne of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government says iPads make it easier for council members to e-mail, text or chat during a meeting without those conversations becoming part of the public record.
“Records generated are subject to disclosure, but we don’t have a mechanism for getting those records from an iPad,” Rhyne says.
“Citizens are going to want to be able to see that the iPads are being used as they are touted — as a cost-efficient way to keep track of the documents being discussed during the meetings and not being used to subvert the open meetings and open records requirements,” she says.
Ken Bunting of the National Freedom of Information Coalition says data from the council members’ iPads should be public record, although the law varies by state.
“They shouldn’t be conducting public business out of public view,” he says, “and if those are government devices they’re using, that ought to be public record.”
Because technology is changing rapidly, states are still trying to catch up with various laws,…