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HomeMy WebLinkAbout12-10-18 Information and Technology 7OUiJ1l 'it U i .,: PEACE i......_.. a\j13,6 .," OFFICE OF THE CITY CLERK KAREEMAH FOWLER, CITY CLERK INFORMATION &TECHNOLOGY DECEMBER 10, 2018 3:31 P.M. Committee Members Present: Tim Scott, Gavin Ferlic, Jake Teshka, Sharon L. McBride Committee Members Absent: None Other Council Present: John Voorde, Jo M. Broden, Oliver Davis (late) Other Council Absent: Regina Williams-Preston, Karen White Others Present: Kareemah Fowler, Bianca Tirado, Graham Sparks, Bob Palmer, Gabriel Murei Presenters: Dan O'Connor, Santiago Garces, Tracy Skibins, Marlaina Johns,Joseph Molnar Agenda: Update- IT Related Items Including Accela- IT Staff Committee Chair Tim Scott called to order the Information and Technology Committee meeting at 3:31 p.m. He introduced members of the Committee and stated, Thank you for coming. This is an update from IT regarding Accela. This came up during the budget presentations, which was very good. One (1) of the concerns was, as I stated before, our version of PSAP. I know we are involved with PSAP but we've had concerns from the Clerk, citizens and Code Enforcement to make sure this is something that touches citizens. You had some action items you sent out to us so we would like to see that update and we will go from there. Committee Chair Scott then proceeded to give the floor to the presenters. Update- IT Related Items Including Accela- IT Staff Dan O'Connor, Chief Technology Officer for the City of South Bend with offices located on the 12th floor of the County-City Building, stated, First(1st) and foremost, thank you for inviting us to this meeting and asking us to bring the topic of Accela back. It is something we've been working on quite a bit, more so recently with the changes in the Code and in IT as well. Your request has allowed us to kind of formalize this. I will walk you through a little bit of this (referencing a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office) and then you can ask questions as we go or after. He continued, To touch first (1') on the governance around department-specific application, it is normal and typical for departments to have applications of software that are important to their operational business functions that they then will take ownership on the operational side of it. IT cannot position ourselves to be the end-all-be-all for every application out there, so, Accela is a INTEGRITY' SERVICE'ACCESSIBILITY JENNIFER M.COFF.MAN BIANCA L.TIRADO JOSEPH R.MOLNAR CHIEF DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS DEPUTY/DIRECTOR OF POLICY ORDINANCE VIOLATION CLERK EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Blvd.I South Bend,Indiana 46601 I p 574.235.9221 I f 574.235.9173 I www.southbendin.gov le CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK perfect example. We do help make sure it is running on the back end but then we partner with our business units, for example Code, and try to define roles and responsibilities. I will say, historically, we didn't do a great job defining roles and responsibilities but we have taken some recent changes to heart and I think we are all working very well together. Department owners and sponsors of Accela, as we are using it today, are Tracy and Marlaina. As you know, they are accountable for creating new users, development reports, troubleshooting and those kinds of things. We are working with them to bolster this. In our mind, this is how we always wanted it to be but probably wasn't there so we are working with them to define the roles and responsibilities. In this type of environment, IT does not support a specific solution. We rely on the expertise of the business units to do that. So we take a high-end support and awareness of the system to make sure it is functional, but then if there are errors or user challenges, we do ask the department to engage and become the experts by working with the vendors to try and resolve those issues. That is what we have been starting lately and I would say that is going well. Committee Chair Scott stated, Including the Clerk's Office because they have the Ordinance Violation Bureau and that type of thing, too. Mr. O'Connor replied, Our most significant attention has been with Code as of late. Committee Chair Scott stated, And they are connected. Mr. O'Connor replied, Yeah, but this conversation is more about how we are working with Code. So what we have here (referencing a slide in the presentation) is a RACI matric that did not exist before. So we put this together and if you look at it from a semantics perspective, there are a series of pairs and columns. This (referencing a slide in the presentation) is a department example of a best-case scenario under the governance model and then here is how we have it set up with Accela, the Business Analysts, the IT and Application Divisions, Software and Microlntegration. Councilmember Oliver Davis arrived at the meeting at 3:35 p.m. Mr. O'Connor continued, It stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. What we are trying to show here is in the proper governance model, the example is what we are aiming for. So for example, operations, the department is the one(1)responsible for it. The way we have Accela set up, it mirrors that. It is kind of hard to see here but we have highlighted the differences (referencing the slide in the presentation). A lot of the differences right now are due to what the role of the IT Business Analyst has been. You can see that a lot of those are not in line with governance. So the goal of this is to identify the differences and then try to work with the business units to get more toward the governance model. I don't want to belabor and go into all the details, unless you would like me to, but this is just a good snapshot of where we are and where we need to make improvements. One(1)really good and new piece is the MicroIntegration column on the right side of this (referencing the presenation). Historically, when Code or others would have Accela questions, they would contact the Business Analyst directly with questions and concerns. A lot of times, I think,that was email or a phone call. There wasn't good tracking on that regarding what tickets were being opened, their status, and so on and so forth. So just about two (2) weeks ago,we now have it set up where if Code or the Clerk's Office has any questions or concerns about Accela, they will call 6000 and email Microlntegration and a ticket will be generated. So they document all the tickets and then it will escalate them immediately back to South Bend into a queue that the Business Analyst has a view into. They will then work with the departments to EXCELLENCE ! ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f574.235.9173 I I D574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 2 CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK percent (70%) capacity on everything we are using as a tool? What percentage do you think we are? Mr. Garces replied, Accela is a pretty big tool in the sense that it is a tool that some cities use to do a lot of processing. Here in South Bend it was more intended to manage Code Enforcement and the Violations Bureau's issues. Basically,we submitted the initial report in 2014 that we presented to the Council at the time of what we thought that Accela was supposed to do. I would say probably seventy percent (70%) or more of the functionality of it would be fair to say. It's supposed to handle environmental violations, housing violations and I think one (1) of the pieces we haven't fully implemented is the zoning violations.The bulk of violations that Code Enforcement manages end up being environmental violations. Now we know that there are challenges. First(1St) of all, I think the expectations are very forward looking and they want software that helps them. I think this is where we are open. We purchased Accela in 2014 and the contract will be done sometime next year so I think it would be fine to start to look for something else if Accela is not the most valued. Committee Chair Scott stated,That was going to be my next question but I would like to hear from Code. Have we maximized the program to your ability? Tracy Skibins, Director of Code Enforcement for the City of South Bend with offices located on the 13th floor of the County-City Building,replied,We agree that it is about seventy percent(70%) as well. Even though we have the housing environmental piece, we're still doing things manually and not through Accela. That is something we are working on. Marlaina has worked with Accela longer than I have so I will turn it over to her. Marlaina Johns, Deputy Director of Code Enforcement for the City of South Bend with offices located on the 13th floor of the County-City Building, stated, I would say seventy percent (70%) but we still run into a lot of daily operational issues with it. Switching software programs is something we are definitely hoping for just because of the troubles we've had. Joseph Molnar, Ordinance Violations Bureau Clerk for the City of South Bend with offices on the 4th floor of the County-City Building, stated,We just use whatever Code is writing.We take those tickets and once there are payments on them, we have to mirror that in NaviLine, currently. Grass and litter are the big ones and then the housing repair ones. Committee Chair Scott followed up, So about seventy percent(70%) efficiency? Mr. Molnar replied,Yeah,whatever Code is doing,we are on the back end. Whether we are taking payments or sending to collections, we on the back end of that. If we take a payment or do something with the ticket,we have to then reflect that in NaviLine because they don't talk to each other currently. Mr. O'Connor stated, I think the important thing to consider is it was purchased in 2014 and I think how we want to use it has changed some of the needs. I think having the good dialogue like we've been having about meeting everyone's needs is good. If it is not fully capable, we have time to look at alternative solutions and that is something we intend to do. We aren't going to keep us in an application that is not being useful. EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 111)574.235 5567 www.southbendin.gov 4 110 CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK resolve them. We will track them and close them as necessary. We turned this on a week ago, maybe, and I think there have been about five (5) that have come through. As of earlier this morning there were two(2) still open in the tracking system. One(1)is being worked on internally and the other one (1) we opened up a case with the Accela tech people. This should give us some good data and tracking to really understand what some of the challenges and needs have been. Santiago Garces, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of South Bend with offices located on the 12th floor of the County-City Building, stated,There are over forty-five(45) software systems that the City maintains. When Dan shows this here, the example of governance is more of a typical relationship like we have with the records management system of the Police Department. Then, obviously, the CAD System that helps things like PSAP. A lot of departments have a number of pieces of software that accomplish very specific things. That is where in our model, central IT is best positioned to have a lot of ownership of the central types of applications such as the finance and procurement systems, the HR systems and that type of thing. Obviously with the Admin and Finance example of the purchasing, software is about process. It is about supporting the processes of different groups and we want to make sure that the people can say what the process should look like. They should have the ownership and we should all work together to solve the problems most effectively. I think the biggest finding for us is how can we change the relationship to make sure we address the issues that exist while addressing all our shared responsibility? That is what this matrix does. Mr. O'Connor continued, So a little summary of what we have done with Accela and with Code is throughout 2018,we tried to address questions,comments and concerns that came up.We realize that IT didn't have all the necessary resources to address all the needs in a timely fashion. So for that, we came up with the idea of contracting with a professional services company called Zen IT and we have prioritized and centralized some of the Accela development requests shared between Code and the IT team. The Business Analytics team and Code meet once every other week, they go through the list and they decide ones we will have the vendor help us with, which ones we can do internally,and so forth and so on. We just, like I said earlier, transitioned to the calls going into Microlntegration so we can track them. Then they have a new employee starting this or next week and we've talked together to make sure we work collaboratively to bring that person on board. We will share some knowledge and do some knowledge transfer on the Accela pieces that we have done in the past so this person can pick that up and be as supportive as can be. He went on, Then this (referencing a slide in the presentation) is the list of the seven (7) highest prioritized projects we are working on with the Code group. They are sorted by project type, so, if it says vendor, those three (3) are slated to be worked on by Zen IT. So those are in progress and in queue. Internal are the ones the Business Analytics team will be working on in conjunction with the Code Department. The last two (2) are yet to be scheduled. This is something we put together with them so we can track what their concerns on and we are continually asking ourselves what priority we should be taking by working with them to address them and to start getting these things completed and off the list. Committee Chair Scott then opened the floor to questions and comments from Committee and Council Members. Committee Chair Scott asked, I'll put them on the spot a little bit but our customers, Code and the Clerk's office, where do you think we've reached our potential on Accela? Are we at seventy EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 3 CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK Committee Chair Scott stated, Yeah and my concern is I think we are almost to the end of the life of the program where we could look at something else. But now we are going to look at something else when I don't think we've fully maximized the efficiency and all the tools within Accela for what we are doing here. Mr. Garces stated, My take would be, and I haven't been here since 2013 and working with Code, but when I started, Code was mostly driven by paper. So I agree with you about thinking where we were in 2013 where there were some cases when it took almost two(2)months to receive letters for violations. I think there has been a lot of value. As the priorities shift, we realize things could be integrated and automated. Although that is the case, software is not a static piece. It will constantly require evaluating where there is value and where there are opportunities for investment. I think one (1) of things that has been really valuable with the process of Accela is I think it has led to a lot of understanding of the business process. Again, Accela is used by multiple departments in the sense that Parks cuts the grass,the Clerk's Office processes the ticket and Code Enforcement assesses them so it is a complicated piece of software in that it has multiple stakeholders and it also has a front-facing piece to the residents. Residents, in a lot of cases, are not very tech savvy either so it is tough. Committee Chair Scott stated, I agree that we have come a long way but my concern is about the software we have in place. We are just,now,up to seventy percent(70%)when we are about ready to go off contract. I hope the lesson learned is that we get the maximum use out of a software the first (1St) year it is implemented. It would be good for taxpayer dollars plus for the departments and citizens who use and deal with it. We have come a long way with Code, but I want to make sure we are going farther. Thank you for the update on the timeline of this and we will look at this after the first(1st)of the new year. The other thing I think we need to do is sit down and talk about the website and access to that. With no further business, Committee Chair Scott adjourned the Information and Technology Committee meeting at 3:50 p.m. pectfully Su s m. -, Tim Scott, : a itte‘' . EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION , EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 5