The City of Lenexa Paperless Packet Project Report

Background
The City of Lenexa is a community of approximately 40,000 persons, which encompasses nearly 31 square miles and is located in Johnson County, Kansas, approximately 12 miles southwest of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The City operates under a Mayor and Council form of government with the addition of a City Administrator.

For many years one of the goals of the City has been to "use technology to work smarter." To help meet this goal required the complete endorsement and cooperation of our progressive thinking Governing Body, which included the budgeting of appropriate funds and the commitment to promote and embrace technological usage as a means to improve functionality and be more efficient.

The City first became network capable in 1985 within the City's Fire Department. Network capabilities evolved over the years and in 1992 the entire City organization was connected to the City's network. Today, the City's network has evolved extensively. Network performance has been enhanced providing superior network throughout. The adoption of a new file server standard has produced overall network availability. Implementing Windows 2000 and Office 2000 at the desktop has increased employee creativity and productivity.

Although, there have been significant accomplishments in information technology within the City, no other accomplishment has provided more benefit to the organization than the Information Systems strategic plan. The strategic plan was developed by partnering with all areas of the organization, and provides a detailed roadmap of our technological future. The strategic plan provides standards organizational-wide for desktop applications, including 300 plus users throughout the City offices. These standards include word processing, e-mail and calendar software, and voicemail software usage, which were viewed as the eventual primary means of communication within the City and with the Governing Body.

In March of 1997, laptop computers were budgeted, purchased, and provided to the Governing Body members in May. These more updated portable computers provided faster more expedient access to the electronic packet, e-mail communications and calendar software, and also provided the Governing Body a means of accessing their packet remotely and while at council meetings. This took the City further toward our goal of going paperless.

After receiving extensive individual and group training on the use of their laptops and new software, the Governing Body eventually felt that they were ready to go paperless. At the October 7, 1997 council meeting, the Governing Body set the date of January 1, 1998 for going to a paperless council meeting. City staff worked towards this goal and with the acquisition of upgraded software, were able to put together an electronic council meeting packet that is easily accessible, can be downloaded on to their computer, and can function just like a paper packet.

Part of the process of compiling the electronic packet included scanning documents received by outside agencies and some internal plat maps and plans. The City purchased scanners for all pertinent departments that generate packet material. Although scanning saves time and allows the department to include some of these documents and images in the electronic packet, it isn't feasible to scan some of the large plat maps and plans due to the size of the image file, and the readability of the files when reduced down to an 8 1/2 x 11 view. Therefore, some of these documents are either made available to the Governing Body in paper form, or available for viewing at the Council meeting.