If you make a habit of sitting through the entirety of AMS council meetings, you’ll start to notice how long they can run. With the hopes of avoiding more time wastage in the future, the AMS is updating their software.
The AMS has issued a request for proposals (RFP) from software companies, as council meetings move from their old haunt into the new council chambers.
“The RFP itself outlines the sort of software features we’d be looking for in something that can support boardrooms and our meetings,” said AMS president Aaron Bailey. “Something that is a goal of mine personally ... is how to make council more efficient, make sure that the meetings take less time, meeting members are more informed, have access to the materials.”
According to Bailey, there are a number of ways that a software upgrade could help cut down inefficiency of meetings. The most significant improvements would be that online materials could be curated to one place where councillors have access to the documents, as well as a streamlined method of voting.
“Our software we currently use, Voice, has been good in providing that service to us, where within the iClickers you’re able to sort of do run off voting,” said Bailey. “However, Voice is quite fickle ... we really want an up-to-date software system that has those voting functionalities.”
When an RFP is issued, the AMS begins accepting proposals from different companies in a competitive bidding process. The highest the AMS will go? $20,000.
The number seems steep, but Bailey is hoping that a competitive ceiling of $20,000 will actually keep the cost below that. He says that many companies may not chose to start at the full price lest someone outbid them in terms of cost and features.
“My special projects assistant and I … took those quotes that we received from that company as sort of a baseline starting point,” said Bailey. “By doing an RFP we’re hoping that we can actually drag down the costs a little bit more.”
The costs will be covered by the capital projects fund, which doesn’t only cover physical alterations to the student union building, but software changes and upgrades as well.
Making council more accessible to students plays a role in the desire to upgrade the software. According to Bailey, a new system could allow the meetings to be broadcast to different rooms in the new SUB for any student to watch.