Paperless Governments: Moving Towards Sustainability

Abstract

This chapter explores the exciting opportunities for local and state governments to continue to move in the trend towards paperless operations, which improve efficiencies, reduce long-term costs and promote greater sustainability. In addition to pointing to examples of how governments across the country are engaging in the quest to become less reliant on paper, the chapter demonstrates how governments can easily comply with record keeping laws, access to government requirements, privacy laws and e-signature and e-notorazation laws in the process. Finally, this chapter shows how electronic records management for both record keeping and for communication is on the doorstep.

Keywords: paperless, sustainability, government operations, local government, FOIL, record keeping, records retention, privacy, electronic records management

JEL Classification: H70, K9