Leicester Council's iPad can chair meetings

A rattled Leicester City Council has reassured its staff that no extra cash has been splurged on iPads for its councillors because the four currently in use were paid for out of existing annual support packages. In an internal email dated 4 August and seen by The Register, the council’s boss Sheila Lock tried to draw a line …

[Anonymous Coward]

i detest the iPad

But if it the shove to get people of printing then good on it !!

I have a co worker that prints every email to proof it before sending !!!!

*anon cause im dissing people who mayy read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Laptop

You, and indeed Leicester Council, should try one.

[Anonymous Coward]

@laptop

Oh fully agree with you But you know opening the lid to use it is so tiring on my arm ....

;)

But no seriously if it created a paperless office I would grudgingly accept it !!

Damn i hate posting as AC

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like proof reading

is a bit of an issue at your workplace

[Ascylto]

Ignorant Coward

*anon cause im dissing people who mayy read this

NO! It's because you ARE a Coward! And there should be an apostrophe with 'Im'! I'll take the 'mayy' as a typo.

An ignorant coward then.

[Ally J]

what a crock....

"he was able to chair a major council meeting just by using his iPad"

Absolute meaningless bow-locks. He may very well have had all the relevant documentation transferred to his iPad, but the implication that this somehow 'enabled' the councillor in question to chair the meeting is tosh.

I've chaired 'major council meetings'. Depending on the meeting, you need to look at lots of paperwork. I can see how a connected-up iPad would be useful at, say, a planning meeting, or any situation where a quick answer is required that can be sourced from the intra/internet. But then so could a laptop/netbook/smartphone/tech-savvy intern.

I'm dying to know just how the iPad was able to provide something more to enable chairing this meeting than any of the choices I've suggested.

Really, this is meaningless.

[Anonymous Coward]

love the triple negative

"Equally, if we are not convinced that new devices like the iPad won't deliver improvements, we won't buy them"

This equates to saying that they'll only buy things that they are convinced don't deliver improvements.

I wonder where I will be placed in the list of dozens who point this out though...

[Loyal Commenter]

Good spot

Have one of these

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasteful and unjustifiable. Typical councillors.

Having worked support these people, I can assure you that councillors waste public money and are not bothered about cuts because no matter what is said, they get what they want and we pay for it.

Just look at the poor, feeble excuse given, "he was able to chair a major council meeting just by using his iPad, thus avoiding printing off dozens of pages of reports"

What? Like a £200 netbook would not allow him to do the same thing?? Of course it would. But he couldn’t pass documents by "flicking" them to other iPad users, or show off with some other just as ridiculous function. It's just "I want", that’s it.

And some poor sap like Sheila has to put a "face" on it. It Stinks!

[EvilGav 1]

Really ?

One ream of paper (~500 sheets) < £5

One iPad ~£500

One lost report to replace, pennies.

One lost iPad to replace ~£500

It takes somewhere in excess of 50,000 printed sheets of paper for the cost of a single iPad. The paper copy will always work, never runs out of power, can be used in direct sun-light, has no learning curve and needs no support.

Saints preserve us from techno-wannabies.

[Ian Yates]

Cost effective?

Well, paper + ink/toner can't be as high as 1p a sheet, but let's use that.

1p * 36 ("dozens", generously) = 36p a meeting (although, "dozens" may have meant all meetings).

Excluding the cost to charge the device and any repairs/support, the cheapest iPad is £429 with VAT. Let's assume the govt circumvent that, so say £363, or 932 meetings, assuming all meetings have roughly the same number of pages that would have been printed.

That's a meeting a day for almost three years.

Very cost effective.

What solution does the iPad solve for them that a cheaper laptop would not? For a start, they can't really request any custom development for the iPad.

[LinkOfHyrule]

Enjoy your iPad - you'll love it!

I was under the impression windows tablet computers had been available for donkeys. Yes I imagine they are probably crap but surely they are compatible with their current systems (It;s a council so its probably running something old like win 2000) and are cheaper than Jobsian roofing slates?

I think she is making up excuses. I don't believe her. I'm not saying she is lying or anything so her and her chums can get free iPads though. I wouldn't even dream of saying that actually. When she reads this, I hope she dose not think I am saying nasty things about her. Please don't think that when you read this.

Sony for calling you "she" a lot, it's just that I cant remember your name, it's not very memorable. If you worked for my local council though, I would make a point of remembering it! And probably writing to you, annoyed that my money was being pissed up the wall.

Enjoy your iPad after the "sucessful" trial period when you get one yourself, you'll love it! You can even play Plants vs Zombies on it during important meetings if you get bored!

[Rob Beard]

Councils

I did a bit of contracting for a council up in the East Midlands a few years back (probably about 6 to 7 years ago now) and they had some HP Compaq Tablet PCs, they did the job perfectly well and okay they were damned expensive but they could be used as general purpose laptops too so in theory it was only slightly more than what a laptop cost them.

I wouldn't be surprised if Leicester Council will want two machines, an iPad for looking at forms etc (why won't a cheaper Windows or Linux based netbook spec touch screen machine work?) and a laptop too for those things that they can't do on the iPad.

I see too from the BBC video, the smug councillor was still using the on screen keyboard to type while the iPad was sat on a table, so why can't they do that on a laptop?

Wouldn't be so bad if the councillors were paying out of their own pockets.

Rob

[GWhizz]

Theres not even an app for that!

So I wonder who is paying for all of the iTunes acquisitions of both music and applications.

I find it shocking and disappointing that as a tax payer, I am helping to line the pockets of Jobs. It's bad enough that my taxes help towards buying Microsoft licences, but adding this to the mix just makes me sick. I've never wanted to spend any with either Microsoft or Apple and I now I don't have any choice in the matter. I may have to move out of Leicester just on principle.

I wonder how my missus will react when I tell her why we are moving.

[Squirrel]

why not kindle?

£109 vs £429

I'd think they'd say anything to keep their expensive toy. I'm quite sure they can 'chair' using just about anything that can display a PDF and make notes on. It'd be interesting to see if they still used pen and paper to make notes with...

A netbook with Office and Outlook on would still cost less, be more manageable (domains/GPO etc) and more secure (the ipad has none). Their reasons for an iPad are hogs wash.

[Rolf Howarth]

The problem with the iPad...

... seems to be that it's both fun and useful.

If Leicester City Council had spent £500 on a Blackberry or corporate PDA of some type (for which the cost would no doubt have been much higher, having to go through approved suppliers and appropriate procedures and what not) then no one would have batted an eyelid.

Clearly, what Apple need to do to crack the corporate and government market is create a special ugly-as-a-brick version, double or triple the price, and prevent it from running normal apps from the App Store (only running apps from a special corporate store) and they'd sell millions.

[Anonymous Coward]

saving paper

Very commendable .... however wouldn't the new Kindle allow the same and only cost £109?

Reminds me years ago when part of our marketting department decided that as "portable computing" was listed in the target application area for our new chips then they ought to all equip themselves with Apple Newtons so that they could research the market (though, admittedly, the architecture team setup a network for playing Doom with a similar justifiation of gaming being mentioned as a potential market as well)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

@Cost effective

Of course if the council staff are doing that many meetings - and no other work, somebody might suggest a more realistic way of saving 90,000

[KevinLewis]

Council toys..

Next they'll need an iPhone obviousily for phone calls and dictation, and iTouch's for secretary's to type up the dictation. Maybe each to have segway's to cut down their carbon footprint between walking too the desk in the office to the meeting room....

...and then a laser... what for? Who knows, but every evil son of a gun wants one in the movies!

Maybe a fountain that spews out liquid gold would be a good idea too?

iPad's for the office? What a frigging joke. Like previousily said you can get a cheap netbook, with touchscreen and spinning screen, and then can at least connect it up with a projector for the mass audience.

EPIC FAIL

[LinkOfHyrule]

I don't know about lasers/lazers

ooh, I don't know about lasers/lazers and Segways - you've got the wrong Apple founding Steve there - it's the other one (the nice one) Woz who has the lasers!

Mines the one with the red light shining out from the top pocket/nipple area

[Fab De Marco]

Where would we be without Steve Jobs

Wow.... Apple invented the mobile phone... for before the iphone we all had to make do with pieces of string and tin cans... just like that Apple also invented Tablet PC's For before the iPad there was no keyboardless computer device.

My guess would be that the council uses some implementation of Windows for their network (if they use Mac's then they really do have too much money). So if the councillers really want to have some form of keyboardless device then they should really use a Windows based tablet PC, this will have maximum compatability with the business network and will really ramp up productivity.

This would actually work out much more expensive than the iPad as tablet PC's can go into the 1000s. But then a Tablet PC doesn't impress the guys at the conservative club now does it.

In addition to this if they went down this route it wouldn't have caused a media storm, seeing as more people know what an iPad is than what a Tablet PC is.

[Rolf Howarth]

Tablet PCs

What I said above. Tablet PCs would cost more but no-one would bat an eyelid. So why all the fuss about an iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Conservative Club?

"But then a Tablet PC doesn't impress the guys at the conservative club now does it."

Leicester City Council is Labour run...still pissing money away. Old habits etc...

[Eddie 4]

Feckin Jobs-worthies

Laughable excuses of councillors caught bang to rights - with such poor quality excuses it makes you wonder how dim Leicester's councillors really are, or how dim they think we are.

From a Leicestershire resident .....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all about being open

With no ability to apply stupidly restrictive group security policies like you can with BES and Win, then the meeting documents will be available to anyone with an iPad, thus achieving open government at a stroke. Bring it on. (I dont live in Leicester so am happy for the great experiment to start there.)

[TeeCee]

"....paid for out of existing annual support packages."

Ah, a capital aquisition made from the operational budget then?

If the voters or the staff don't nail 'em to the cross, their bean counters will.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems a good swap to me...

1000 workers in leicester for an iPad, sounds like a fair swap to me :D

mine the one with only joking in big letters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Toys= Efficiency

If we fit out the entire council offices with a windy and convoluted Scalectrix track and fit each car with a letter rack we could save untold amounts of money on internal mail and the like.

Oi, that's my Schu-Mack-er.

[John Brookes]

@mark149

Not necessarily. Instead of meaning:

a) They will only buy things that they are convinced will not improve performance

they might mean:

b) They will only buy things that they are not convinced will improve performance

or (and this is my personal favourite):

c) They definitely won't buy things that they are convinced will improve performance.

As you say, got to love triple negatives :-))

Anyway, it's half six

[Sooty]

Well I'm convinced

“Their iPads are being funded from each individual councillor's existing annual support package, so we are not spending any extra money on these devices."

So taxpayer money is still being used to fund them, but instead of a specific budget being allocated, the cost is being taken out of the existing budget, ie money already earmarked for something useful, one would hope anyway. Probably not as reassuring a statement as they intended.

[Qu Dawei]

They'd be better off spending some of the money on braces for their mayor

Having lived in Leicester for many years up to 2002, and having kept in touch with events there subsequently, it doesn't surprise me that insufficient justifications (possibly post hoc) are being given for some toys some councillors think are necessary for them to use. My only comment is that they would have been better off spending some money to help prevent the "wardrobe malfunction" that the mayor suffered from a short time ago: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/Lord-Mayor-s-trousers-fall-children-s-event/article-2360982-detail/article.html

[Ascylto]

Mwahhhhhhhhaaaaa!

"It may have improved the way that we work as councillors but I've got to be aware of how it appears to taxpayers. I've asked the IT department to look at more cost-effective ways of helping councillors to work efficiently," she said.

Efficiently! They don't know the meaning of the word!

Mwahhhhhhhhaaaaa!

(I've got an iPad and I DON'T think it's good for the Council)

[George 24]

Rate payers foot the bill...

for fat cat councillors toys. No matter what country you live in it is the same, politicians are abusing the system for personal gains....

Paris because she would get Apple to pay for her iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thought

If you make technology palatable then people will use it. If you want staff to stop printing tons of stuff you don't give them some half hearted device and then tell them freedom of information says they can't print anything any more just incase they put the print out in the non-secure paper bin.

Tablets of old were utter gash, take a poor OS, hamper it with even worse hardware.... that at the end of the day costs more than a laptop.

Sure netbooks are good devices, its still easier to hold a tablet and read from it during a meeting. What i've personally observed is if its got a keyboard attached it tend to get left in the office in favour of a notepad (which is my prefered note taking device).

Currently Apple have the jump on easy to use, light enough, big enough tablet PC's. Sure they are pricey, but other brands will challenge that market soon enough.

I actually think its pretty forward thinking of a Local Authority to be looking at new technology for a change. From my experience we're often lumbered with aged equipment, outdated systems and IT actually has very little money to innovate we're too busy keeping creaky old systems up and running for services unable to pay for replacements.

[Tralala]

wrong saving...

Town councillors? So, are they a target market?

Not exactly renowned for their sense of style or good judgement.

A bit of a backhanded advertorial.

These things are so laden with aspirational PR guff that one way to save money might have been to ask the company for a fee NOT to disclose this little nugget.

[Mike Flex]

Re: Really ?

> The paper copy will always work, never runs out of power, can be used in direct sun-light, has no learning curve and needs no support.

Unlike the printers required to produce the paper copies.