In my position, I have the privilege of speaking to municipal clerks and managers across the country about their process for handling public meetings.  From creating the agenda to taking the minutes, there is so much that goes into deciding who speaks when and on what topic.  Although paperless technology has made it a breeze for some, it's traditionally been a time-consuming process - one clerk I spoke with had two people dedicated in their office to the agenda packet process spending roughly 20 hours a week a piece on it.  Ouch!

If the public were aware of that burden, they might see that as an inefficient government that's backwards and just can't get with the time.  With an inside perspective, I can tell you it's pretty much the opposite: the few dealing with what they're given (or not) by cash-strapped localities.  

So, in honor of all those who've wasted hours printing a word document so you can scan it in to convert it to pdf to just print it back out for the agenda packet, this haiku goes out to you.

all day binder builds
the trees for goodness sake, people
i need more coffee

tradition matters
but my sanity does, too
is that a line item?

#govtech sounds fancy
our board is too old for that 
they lived the red scare

cheers to retirement
one day we might have nice things
til then: scan and print.

If this resonates with any of my local government folks, know that I feel your pain!