About $30,000 worth of tablets, originally purchased for the county’s fleet are collecting dust in Westlock County’s basement.
A county report detailing why a collection of 37 Lenovo Think Pad 10 Tablets purchased by the county in 2015 for tracking road complaints were never put to use will came up with no conclusive answers, though current administration explained that they would not be practical for operations.
Chief administrative officer Leo Ludwig presented a report to council detailing the deal at its May 23 meeting after Coun. Mel Kroetsch had inquired about the tablets at an April 11 meeting.
“The sole purpose was to bring in the tablets to report (road) deficiencies,” said Kroetsch during the meeting.
The report explained the original proposal, heard by council in 2014 as part of its budget discussions, presented the option of including a Geographical Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) produced by MRF Geosystems Corporation.
The tablets were supposed to provide the GIS system as well as an Automatic Vehicle Location capacity, enabling council to keep track of where graders were at any given time.
“The original proposal did not include the 37 tablets,” said Ludwig. “In the original proposal there were only three tablets — those were for supervisors.”
Council declined the proposal then, but a series of discussions between MRF and administration in the lead-up to its 2015 budget deliberations convinced council to make the purchase in its 2015 capital budget. It was during those discussions that the rest of the tablets were added to the deal.
“That would have been for every operator and vehicle on the fleet,” said Ludwig.
The 37 tablets, which cost $29,600 in total, were received in March 2015, but never installed. The report stated that the current administration could not determine why the tablets were not field tested before or after they were purchased or why they were never put to use by then-director of infrastructure Bill Mills.
However, the report also included comments from the current director of infrastructure, Al Scott, which noted that in order to report through the system safely, it would require grader operators to pull over and spend up to 20 minutes reporting the road deficiency — not including potential issues with wireless technology and connectivity issues.
The report estimated that the loss in productivity would eat up any efficiencies gained through the technology, noting that the county pays approximately $200 per hour to run the graders.
The report estimated that if each grader reported three deficiencies a day, the county would be losing 11 hours of grader operation. At 55 lost hours of grader operation a week, the report estimated that it would be spending $11,000 to report deficiencies.
Road deficiencies are currently reported by radio and followed up during weekly meetings between the grader operators and management.
The tablets were placed in storage in the county office’s basement, where they remain to this day. The report added that because the tablets had sat for so long, the batteries would no longer hold a sufficient charge.
In addition, because the technology had been around for at least two years, the warranties on the tablets had expired. Replacement batteries were estimated to run between $75 to $90 apiece.
Coun. Bud Massey motioned to receive the report as information, which was approved unanimously.
The fate of the tablets remains uncertain.
The report suggested purchasing batteries for seven of the units to provide to council and sell the remaining 30 tablets, but council has not yet made a decision.
Ludwig said that administration would look into whether the county could recover some of its cost and if not, it would look into donating the tablets to a non-profit.
“We have to determine whether or not it’s worth putting batteries in them and probably selling them,” said Ludwig.
“We don’t have a need for that number of tablets. I have to see what is the market for a two-year-old tablet. If they’re selling for $250, they may be sellable.”
