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Policy

Chinese city embraces paperless culture

By Captain Wang | 15 September 2009

The Office of Chengdu Environmental Protection Agency in Sichuan Province in China is pushing for public sector agencies to embrace paperless office culture. The idea is to improve operational efficiencies and reduce the government’s impact on the environment.

Wang Yabin, Office Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, told FutureGov that a more modern approach to information management was needed to simplify systems and processes and make cost and energy savings.

In the past, notices for meetings, memos and other non-classified government information had to be printed off, copied and delivered by hand to different departments. The old system was inconvenient, inefficient and expensive, according to Wang.

The new system is expected to save 120,000 pieces of paper every month, which amounts to monthly savings of RMB 14,920 (US$2184).

“We have developed information management software, which has improved operational efficiencies so that all the complicated, time-consuming messiness of paper is a thing of the past,” said Wang.

The new system is part of a campaign known as “Sunshine government”, a push by the local authorities to be more open, transparent, efficient and of greater use to the public.

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