In Farmers Branch, TX, thousands of pages of agenda documents have disappeared. However, that is a good thing as volumes of City Council information packets for each meeting of the Farmers Branch City Council, measuring hundreds of pages each, have been replaced by single, wafer-thin, compact discs. 

Taming the paper tiger came with a considerable amount of research for Farmers Branch, a first-ring suburb of Dallas. Each of the 24 City Council meetings scheduled each year came complete with an agenda packet that averaged 200 to 500 pages with copies made for City Council and senior-level city staff. The toll quickly became 4,000 to 10,000 pages in total copies for each meeting – an estimated cost of approximately $22,200 per year.

With a resident population of about 27,000 but a daytime business population in excess of 80,000, Farmers Branch deals with much more government than most cities of 12 square miles.

A determination was made that not only would a paperless agenda system save money and resources, it would streamline operations and afford all stakeholders a much more efficient and thorough way to access and use the City Council agenda.

But rather than rely on software already in existence that may, or may not, support Farmers Branch specific needs, the city’s Information Services Division developed its own automated agenda management system.

Farmers Branch Finance Director Charles Cox said the challenges faced by the city in resolving the agenda management issue included the need to streamline staff collaboration on the agenda and include associated documents.

“We wanted to improve our internal agenda preparation procedures while developing this system to enhance the document’s work flow and centralize management of the agenda process,” he explained. “Additionally, we wanted to allow multiple levels of administrative approval and security to be implemented.”

Mr. Cox said that the final product developed by the Information Services Division accomplishes all goals in that it centralizes the agenda preparation process, in one networked location; generates an Adobe pdf document for city staff to access through the network and for City Council to utilize via CD on city-issued laptops; and allows citizens to view, search and archive the entire packet and background documents online at the city’s Web site (www.farmersbranch.info).

Farmers Branch Information Services Manager Hong Sae said development of the system began in the summer of 2000 when the city reviewed many paperless strategies and solutions from different agencies and vendors and, in turn, decided to develop its own application.

“By December of 2000 the city had deployed a combination initiative which included the installation of a wireless network in City facilities, programs written in a relational database for agenda item depository and conversion to Adobe’s Acrobat document management system for reviewing the final packet,” he said. “In May of 2002, the ‘FB Agenda’ system was copyrighted in the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress.”

Mr. Sae further explained that other cities have taken advantage of the Farmers Branch lead, installing the “FB Agenda” system for their own use. First was the city of Grand Prairie, TX in March of 2003, followed shortly thereafter by Sherman, Texas, in June. Since then, Farmers Branch has partnered with a private company to market, install, and maintain the agenda software purchased by other cities.

Benefits and cost-savings of the FB Agenda system are plentiful:

·         Time reduced in making copies.

·         Wear and tear on copiers.

·         Digital editing and time stamp (instead of scanning entire paper copy for editing and approvals).

·         Centralized copy of agenda information for access by all stakeholders.

·         Digital record storage/indexing (all documents are text/www searchable, providing better records  management and records that are more quickly and readily accessed).

·         Consistent method of posting agenda items – full agenda on web site satisfied many citizen requests.

·         More efficient use of staff time (enables staff to better handle other projects).

·         Last minute changes are more easily handled and agenda can be re-formatted easily and quickly.

For more information on the FB Agenda system, check out the Farmers Branch homepage at www.farmersbranch.info or call 972.919.2563 or email hong.sae@farmersbranch.info.