Paperless board meetings / commitees - any recommendations ?

[bigdannyb79]

Hi,

just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for tools to support the the paperless operation of governance proceedings etc. There's a fair few about but few have transparent pricing and most are very pricey so interested if anyone has had joy in a school scenario with a product with pricing to fit.

 

I know you can utilise things like dropbox and sharepoint from the document storage angle but with the wide range of directors etc within our MAT I think we looking at more user friendly tool built for the purpose. A director who also sits on a committee for a uni recommended BoardPacks Board Portal - Improve Governance With Software but I'm just waiting on a price - many are several thousand pounds per annum which even offset against printing costs looks a bit beyond us.

 

thanks,

 

DB.

[TechMonkey]

Have you signed up to O365? You could use OneNote. Simple to use, fairly friendly and easy to share.

[bigdannyb79]

Thanks - its just not structured enough for the variety of people we have - some of our directors will struggle with not getting a paper pack in front of them so it has to be really structured and tailored to login which providers like Board Pack do.

 

You log in and see you committees and your diary, can look at a meeting and get the previous minutes and then upcoming agenda and supporting docs - it makes it very easy and smooths a transition away from printing half a tree.

 

I think its needs to be a tailored solution given the audience I just need to find an affordable one that works !

[TechMonkey]

I think OneNote can be pretty structured. Surely you could have a Notebook per committee, then organise by tab and by page. If things are labelled well you would be able to see what date the minutes are for, upcoming agenda and supporting docs can be added either as links or embedded in the notebook. They may need some babysitting to start but once they are used to it then they will be fine.

 

If Board Packs does it for you at a good price though go for it.

[CAM]

You still need to plan for offline governors too. Confession: I don't own a suitable device for my meetings so I use paper copies whilst other governors are cursing at their devices because of the filtering!

[bigdannyb79]

Yes we will provide paper copies where needed or requested. And yes I accept there may be some technical/(user!) challenges initially but we're also looking at it from Trust perspective to provide some structure and organisation to the various meetings we have and provide ready reference to all the documentation. The solutions I'm looking at fit the bill I'm just been surprised to learn that some of them cost more that 10k per annum ! I think there will be a 'right size' product for us but was just hoping someone could save me having to have the same conversation ten times before I find out it costs a small fortune . . .

[FN-GM]

the schools in our MAT use Google Drive for this. I am also a governor at another school and use drive.

[TechMonkey]

I'd be very interested in rough costings if you manage to get them. I bet this is something I am asked about eventually.

[bigdannyb79]

Yeah in ICT forums I've used one drive & google docs successfully but as an evolving MAT I were thinking a more structured approach will be beneficial as we scale. I'll def post back ballpark costs and post back with any decision we make. As you say with governance of MATs etc coming under more scrutiny, anyone read the EFA Rodillian report ?!, having a one stop shop with calendars, attendees and documentation in one place ensures we have a clear audit trail of our governance proceedings.

[bigdannyb79]

boardpacks - approx 7.5k for 50 users with 5k setup fee.

 

needless to say I'm still looking . . .

[Oaktech]

We use GSuite. Governors have their own isolated domain. I provide support for all new governors to install filtering certificates and get them up and running on our guest wireless. We also provide 4-6 school devices for each meeting logged in with a governor account which literally has just chrome accessible and that's about it via some pretty draconian GPOs.

[CAM]

Check with your local Learning Grid if you have a contract with them for Internet, etc. They might have a solution. LGfL for example are providing their clients with OneDrive which would also significantly improve security and accountability. My biggest concern with that service is the E-Mail inbox is separate from our existing Local Authority E-Mail logins.

[snagrat]

A MAT I work with were looking at the-governor.co.uk

 

Not sure if it does what you want but in the end they didn't go with it and went the OneNote route.

[GrumbleDook]

We use Google Drive too. Allows for those of us with devices and for offline / hard copy fanatics too.

[elsiegee40]

Thanks - its just not structured enough for the variety of people we have - some of our directors will struggle with not getting a paper pack in front of them so it has to be really structured and tailored to login which providers like Board Pack do.

 

You log in and see you committees and your diary, can look at a meeting and get the previous minutes and then upcoming agenda and supporting docs - it makes it very easy and smooths a transition away from printing half a tree.

 

I think its needs to be a tailored solution given the audience I just need to find an affordable one that works !

 

The clerk should be organising this so the structure is correct. If the governors/directors can't cope the clerk isn't doing it right!

 

Paying out is nonsense when O365/GAFE allow you to do it for free... if the clerk can't organise structure then they're probably failing with the paper system too.

 

I admit some clerks are better than others. We have one advanced and one that's less -so (being polite). Fortunately the advanced one is in charge for the whole trust and the other just has to fall in line

[jcollings]

We have just started using this - https://www.the-trust-governor.co.uk/

 

It's not the prettiest thing in the world but once you've got the hang of it then it#s pretty straight forward. They're also very helpful when you're stuck or clerks need training etc. It also allows you to fill in all the statutory declarations and things like that so really does reduce the amount of paper floating around.

[jmak]

One of our governors has asked me to look at http://www.slack.com as he successfully used it at work. I haven't checked the data protection side yet, but he's an O365 user and also an advocate of this, so presumably it offers something extra.

 

We use Google Suite and I haven't yet established what it doesn't do that they need.... Personally I can't see why you would need anything beyond Google Suite or O365 depending on your preferred poison....

[john]

One of our governors has asked me to look at http://www.slack.com as he successfully used it at work. I haven't checked the data protection side yet, but he's an O365 user and also an advocate of this, so presumably it offers something extra.

 

We use Google Suite and I haven't yet established what it doesn't do that they need.... Personally I can't see why you would need anything beyond Google Suite or O365 depending on your preferred poison....

 

If Slack is being suggested would suggest if you are O365 yourselves to look at Teams as it is the MS equivalent of Slack (although I believe not fully feature complete its MS's aim to make it the MS Slack)

[bigdannyb79]

THanks for all the responses. I know I could use the likes of gsuite or o365 and onenote to fashion a solution that was entirely fit for purpose but with potentially 10 different organisations already and several committees within each I wanted to explore a solution that was intuitive and needed little training or support and hence looking for a targeted solution specifically for the job. I'll have a look at the trust governor - I'm not too hopeful though when there website is as unappealing as it is !!