Sunday, June 28, 2009

It Would Be Funny If It Didn't Spend Public Funds

It appears the phrase ‘Double Dutch’ is back, as we read that Amsterdam is one of 20 cities participating in a pilot aimed at replacing all paper documents with electronic ones. Does this mean that they will be issued with netbooks, iPhones or laptop tablets? No, Binnenlands Bestuur reports, that council members are already being issued with an e-reader, and that after the 2010 election, all council members in the participating municipalities will get one.

We know the strong ties that Holland has to eInk, but at a reported cost of around 700 euro this hardly looks a smart move. The readers will obviously be grey, have no wifi and still need to be attached to a PC to move documents and have limited capability compared with a host of cheaper options. So we can safely say a complete waste of their taxpayers’ money and obviously driven by a misguided bureaucrat who didn’t realise the restrictions of these devices or doesn't understand the word hype.

No comments: