In an effort to strive towards environmental sustainability, the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works (Public Works) embarked on a Paperless Office Initiative (Initiative) beginning in November 2009, which continues today. The Initiative consists of two main components: 1) developing a customized electronic system to manage landfill documents, and 2) converting voluminous landfill documents into digital format.

As of December 31, 2010, the document management system (DMS) had been newly developed and implemented, providing for 134,000 pages of documents (or 40 percent of the inventory) being digitized and stored. Benefits of this Initiative include preserving valuable historical records; streamlining records retrieval processes thereby enhancing the quality of public service; maximizing office space by replacing paper documents with digital files; and implementing environmentally sustainable business practices in local government.