A local school announced Thursday that it has successfully eliminated paperwork by asking parents to complete the exact same paperwork twice.
Under the district's new paperless initiative, families will first complete the paper form sent home by the school. After the school receives the completed form, the family will receive an email containing a link to a Google Form where they can enter the information again.
Administrators said the change will save staff members the considerable burden of typing information from one school-created form into another school-created form.
The burden will instead be handled by parents, who have been promoted without notice to unpaid members of the district's data-entry department.
One form, two formats, zero duplication
School officials emphasized that the new process should not be described as duplication because one form is made of paper and the other appears on a phone.
'These are completely different experiences,' explained a fictional administrator who had recently attended a webinar on digital transformation. 'The first time, the parent writes the child's name with a pen. The second time, the parent types it with a thumb. That is innovation.'
The administrator added that the district is committed to reducing the amount of paper entering the building, beginning immediately after the paper has already entered the building.
Families who have already done exactly what the school asked them to do should not be concerned. Their completed forms will be safely stored in the office while they complete the forms that count.
The work has been eliminated from the correct dashboard
The district reported that the new system makes the process more efficient because the employee who used to enter the information no longer has to enter the information.
Asked whether the work had actually disappeared, officials clarified that efficiency is measured only inside the organization. Work performed by families does not appear on a district time study and therefore does not technically exist.
The same method is expected to eliminate several other responsibilities later this year. Parents may soon be asked to score their own children's assessments, schedule their own conferences, and enter their own attendance before calling the office to explain the attendance they already entered.
Early projections show the district could become the most efficient school system in Illinois if families eventually operate the entire school from home.
Help remains available through one additional step
Families unable to complete the online form have been encouraged to let the school know.
To reduce confusion, the district has created a separate electronic form where parents can report that they cannot complete the electronic form. Families without internet access may use the internet to access it.
Parents who still have questions are welcome to call the office, where a staff member will explain that the fastest option is to complete the form again.
A task transferred is a task completed
The paperless initiative is being celebrated as a major operational improvement because the school can now describe a repeated task as a modern service.
Nothing was simplified for the family. Nothing was integrated. No information moved automatically from the document the school issued and received into the system the school chose to use.
The task was not eliminated. It was reassigned to the person with the least power to say no.
That is not a paperless system.
It is paperwork with better branding.
