In an effort to reduce paper consumption, government is considering purchasing iPads for its officials, among them cabinet ministers and Permanent Secretaries.

According to the Minister in charge of ICT in the Office of the President, Dr Ignace Gatare, the proposal of issuing iPads to officials is mainly aimed at advancing efficiency and smart governance.

"We are still in the preliminary level of the project. There are some government officials who already have them, but there are those who don’t. We have to first carry out a mapping exercise,” said the Minister.

"The project requires considering several aspects, including budget constraints. iPad is one device but there are also other devices that may probably be cheaper and serves almost the same purpose. We need to look into that as well”.

Gatare noted that his ministry is coordinating with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance to see how the project can be realised.

According to the Director of Cabinet Affairs in the Prime Minister's Office, Eugene Balikana, the equipment could save government a lot of money spent every year on paper and printing costs.

He added that they are also studying whether the device could improve workplace efficiency and organisation.

"The funds that will be used in purchasing the devices will not be drawn from government coffers, but from institutional budgets,” said Balikana.

The iPad runs on the same operating system like all other Apple products such as the iPod Touch and iPhone.).

It uses a wireless local area network ("Wi-Fi") connection to access local area networks and the Internet. Some models also have a 3G wireless network interface.

The computer comes in two versions with the latest, iPad 2 costing around US$500.

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