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By John Perry

Can you imagine a paperless city?

Most city documents would be stored electronically on nifty little computer files with only a few printed documents stored in Neolithic filing cabinets.

The paperless city isn’t here just yet, but it may be closer than you think.

Finance and Administration, which manages records for various departments, has already made sizeable strides in that direction.

“We were handling about 700,000 pieces of paper a year,” said Louis Aulbach, records management. “And then archiving them into file boxes.”

The standard 15½ by 12 by 10-inch record box holds 2,000 pages.

“We were filling something like 350 of those each year and returning them to the corresponding departments,” said Aulbach, a 17-year F&A veteran.

“You can imagine how much space they were taking up,” he said. “Then to retrieve a file, their staff would have to rummage through all those paper documents to find what they were looking for, and just hope it hadn’t been misfiled.”

Aulbach said their “biggest customers” were the Solid Waste, Information Technology, Public Works and Library departments.

Now, a more efficient system has come into use that condenses time and spatial considerations: high-speed scanners that allow images to be scanned into computer file folders instead of space-gobbling cabinets.

One CD disk holds 10,000 pages, or five storage boxes, of information that can be retrieved many times faster from a desktop computer, Aulbach said.

“After making sure they’re scanned properly, the generating departments can get rid of the paper copies,” Aulbach said. “And they don’t have to worry about misfiles.”

On average, about 6,000 documents are scanned each day, Aulbach said.

“I’d like to think we took the first big step toward paper reduction,” said Aulbach, who’s had 33 years of record retention experience. “

New technology, new way
“We’re going to use technology to help us meet some of our most important goals: making City Hall more efficient and responsive, making it easier to do business here, and improving Houstonians’ quality of life,” said Mayor Bill White.

That includes the city’s hiring system, which steps into today’s digital world via the Internet.

“Technology is a tool that allows our business units to perform with greater efficiency,” said Janis Jefferson, Information Technology deputy director. “NEOGOV is a good example. It will significantly streamline the city’s hiring processes.”

“I am excited about it,” said Rod Newman, Human Resources division manager. “It’ll reduce the mountain of paper we handle and eventually eliminate it.”

Newman’s selection services division handled 111,763 applications with resumes in FY2005.

The user-friendly software is designed to improve the citywide recruiting, hiring and retention processes.

The automated hiring process should provide quicker service for applicants while attracting better-qualified candidates, Newman said.

“Reviewing and accepting job applications online is going to be a time-saver and make the actual hiring process easier for applicants and department hiring managers alike,” Newman said.

Departments can create and post job openings online quickly. An applicant can login, register, receive a user ID number, and submit applications to the city’s Web site 24/7.

Already in use at Aviation, NEOGOV has proved its worth.

“I was being smothered,” said Art LaBorde, human resources supervisor and staff analyst at Aviation. “Shuffling papers was eating away time I wanted to spend on recruiting, screening and hiring.

“NEOGOV enabled us to reduce the hiring time from 120 days to 35,” said LaBorde. “We can make job offers to the best qualified candidates quicker without losing them to other hiring entities.”

The system will prescreen applicants automatically, and issue a scorecard with the candidate’s rank such as best qualified, qualified or minimally qualified.

Should a candidate be unqualified, the system will automatically reject the application before it can clog the hiring process.

“We’ll have to redesign our applications lobby and add computers for walk-in candidates for those who don’t have access to a desktop computer,” Newman said. “Two staff members will manage lobby applications.”

Newman expects to be receiving online applications by September 2006.

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