Pam Walsh is the Deputy Clerk for Blind River, Ontario, and has been with the city since September 2011. Before switching to eScribe in 2020, the clerk’s office at Blind River used a paper-based meeting management process. This meant that a great deal of time and resources went toward the administrative work of simply keeping up with producing and compiling paper meeting packets, physically chasing down stakeholders to follow up on task deadlines, incorporating last-minute changes into the paper meeting packets, and getting those packets delivered to meeting participants on time. Below is a transcript of a conversation eScribe recently had with Pam to talk about her city’s switch from paper-based meeting management to eScribe’s digital solution.
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eScribe
So, prior to adopting eScribe, you’d been doing paper-based meeting management for quite a while. I imagine those were some hard years, right?
Pam Walsh
Yes. Essentially, somebody would send us an email with an item they wanted on the agenda. Then I’d have to print it, and I’d end up with a great big stack of paper. I’d then have to send it through our copier, but if something was double-sided, I’d have to copy that to make sure it was single-sided so that I could copy the whole agenda. And if something got jammed or two pages got stuck together, I had to rip all of the agenda packages apart to fix it, then staple them back together.
eScribe
That sounds like a nightmare! And I’m sure it was difficult to make any changes at that point.
Pam Walsh
Yes, and it’s not like you can really check, right? It’s not uncommon for us to have 300-page agendas.
eScribe
When did you decide that something had to change?
Pam Walsh
When Covid hit, we’d already been moving toward switching to a digital meeting management solution. We’d just had the budget passed, and we were ready to go through with it. Some of our councilors took a little time to feel comfortable without a paper copy of the meeting packets, but we noted that we had a hard deadline after which we’d stop making paper copies.
eScribe
And what were some of the main benefits you saw after moving away from a paper-based system and embracing a digital solution?
Pam Walsh
Being able to build the agenda and collaborate on it in real time has been great. If someone sends me a new item or a change, I can very easily add it to the agenda in eScribe. And if someone says, “Hey, can you remind me to submit a report for such-and-such committee agenda,” I can go in and drop that placeholder into eScribe. So then, when I’m reviewing what I’m missing prior to posting, I can just follow up with those people. It helps keep us accountable and ensures that all reports are being submitted on time.
Additionally, the clerk’s department usually writes all of the resolutions. When we get letters of support, they’re added as an action item, so I can go in and draft a resolution right then and there. Plus, there are templates for things that usually don’t change, so instead of starting from scratch I can go in and just tweak them a little bit. And with the reports, stakeholders draft their resolutions, so I just have to edit it. I’m not drafting it from scratch–which I used to have to do. And when there are 30 or 40 resolutions for a single meeting, that’s a lot.
eScribe
How has your process changed when it comes to preparing minutes?
Pam Walsh
It’s way faster. I keep my notes as verbatim as I can, and then they become my pre-meeting minutes. And then the post is what I edit for posting to the website. So I can take my notes on the discussion and note any action items, or if there’s no action item I can refer people to watch the video of the meeting to see how the discussion went.
So, the only time it takes me to do the minutes is simply putting in the resolution numbers. Then I just have to adjust the formatting a bit (removing extra pages, adding page headers and numbers), and that’s all I do. It’s great.
eScribe
Do you happen to know, on average, approximately how much time you get back per meeting to be able to spend focusing on other priorities?
Pam Walsh
I’d say probably a day, at minimum. Eight hours.
eScribe
That’s a lot! I’m sure that time savings is super valuable for your work in the clerk’s office, where there are so many different projects going on at any given time.
Pam Walsh
It is. It would not be uncommon where on agenda packaging day–the day the packet has to go out–we’d have to spend a lot of time pulling it all together. Of course, we still have that, where we’ll still be waiting on a report or waiting for someone to edit a report or waiting for an attachment to be added; however, it’s easy with eScribe. Because now, it’s just a matter of creating your PDF, posting it, and then you’re done. It’s nothing like it was before, where I’d have to stand at the copier for hours and hours–and it wasn’t uncommon to have to work overtime.
eScribe
It definitely sounds like switching to digital has made things a lot easier! Thinking about the benefits you’re experiencing now, can you remember what it was like to obtain the necessary buy-in from stakeholders to actually be able to implement a digital meeting management solution?
Pam Walsh
We implemented eScribe in 2020, but we’d approached the Council years prior to request digital meeting management software. At the time, it wasn’t approved in the budget. But then we’d have new council members, we’d hand them a stack of paper (like, a ream thick!) and say, “Here you go, read this over the weekend.”
eScribe
Here’s some light reading, ha!
Pam Walsh
But then we got some new council members who were more open to embracing technology. When we finally did implement eScribe, a few council members held on to their paper copies of meeting packets for a month or so, but then we set a hard deadline of when things would go completely digital, and everyone got on board when the time came.
eScribe
So, on the whole, how would you say leveraging technology has improved your meeting process as a whole?
Pam Walsh
Our prep time, of course, has been significantly shortened, which has allowed us to spend our time on other priorities and find efficiencies in other places. But the most important aspect to us was the accessibility component. Now, our agendas are accessible for posting to our website and meeting AOD requirements for screen readers. And now, anybody with a phone or a laptop can look at our agenda.
eScribe
That’s so important. Are there any other features of eScribe that have had an especially positive impact on your city (or on your own day-to-day)?
Pam Walsh
I don’t know–I love it all!
eScribe
Is there anything about eScribe that could be better?
Pam Walsh
The only critique I have is that there’s sometimes a lot of clicking. (There are many “Are you sure?” prompts to click.) So when I’m onboarding new administrators, I’m like, “It’s lovely, but sometimes it’s a lot of clicking.”
eScribe
Do you have a favorite feature in particular?
Pam Walsh
I don’t know that I really have a favorite feature, but I do genuinely love the platform. I do have some features on my wish list, but I have communicated them to eScribe. (So I hope I get to see those one day!)
eScribe
Was there anything that stood out about eScribe compared to other vendors?
Pam Walsh
We really had no point of reference, as I hadn’t used a digital meeting management platform before. But I really like the price point, ease of use, and the whole dashboard. (And Mike is awesome!)
eScribe
Are there any pain points you’ve experienced since implementing eScribe?
Pam Walsh
If I had one or two, I’d love to see permissions for an administrative assistant. Right now, there are administrative permissions only for myself and our CIO. If I’m ever away from the office for whatever reason, it would be nice to be able to have specific permissions for an administrative assistant.
eScribe
So, something where it’s not full access, but still has some basic administrative capabilities.
Pam Walsh
Yeah, then I could give them access to the open part of the council agenda, but not the closed. That would be ideal. It’s not a deal breaker, but if you can figure out how to make that work, I’d be happy!
eScribe
Noted! Well, Pam, thank you for joining us for this discussion. We appreciate it and are glad to hear that eScribe is making your life easier!
Pam Walsh
Thank you, we appreciate you!