2018 Annual Report of the Information and Technology Committee

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,o'YFlQ . PEA Ch. > 1865 Tim Scott 1ST District Council Member Common Council President Danielle Fulmer, Director of Business Analytics for the Department of Innovation and Technology with offices on the 12th floor of the County-City Building, stated, I'm going to move through this fairly quickly. You all have access to the full report but I want to go over the highlights. You also should have a handout with the slides on it. So we worked with the ETC Institute to conduct a Community Services Survey in April and May of this year. The goal of that survey was to gather feedback from residents to get a snapshot of what they are thinking overall about how the City is doing and how they feel about the services we are providing. We wanted to find out how satisfied they were with the services and what is most important to them. We then also got access to benchmarking data to compare how we are doing among other cities both regionally and nationally.The vendor we worked with has done over seven hundred (700) municipal surveys.That is what they specialize in.They helped us to make sure we get a sample that is representative of the City of South Bend. So over seven hundred (700) households participated, it was a random sample, and the results are representative by Common Council District. That means we can tell if the responses we got say something different about residents living in one (1) district or another along with their experiences.The surveys were mailed out and could be completed online or by mail.They could also be completed over the phone and in Spanish.The complete survey is online at the Common Council website or can be made available through the Clerk's office. Dec, 10th, 2018 meeting was to discuss and have the Director of Technology report on the use of Accela, the processing system used by Code Enforcement and the Violations Department. At this meeting Dan O'Connor, Director of Technology for the City of South Bend reported this system has not been utilized to its full effectiveness and efficiency to the departments' abilities. It was stated that Accela was utilized to about 70%of its capabilities.This was a concern of Tim Scott and other members of the Council. As stated by the Director of Code Enforcement,Tracy Skibbins and Ordinance Violations Department employee,Joe Molnar, that the program was not fully utilized and there was some frustration in the day-to-day job using Accela. It was noted the license contract for Acela was running out and that the City IT department would look at newer and better programs that work well for Code,Animal Care and Control as well as the Ordinance Violations Bureau. Tim Scott express his concern of paying for a program and not utilizing it for the past four(4) years. The Council hopes this mistake would not happen with any new programs. It does not look like we will maximize Acela prior to its departure from the City. 227 W.Jefferson Blvd.Rm.441 Office: (574)235-5983 FAX: (574)235-5575 County-City Building South Bend,IN Voicemail: (574)235-5980 TDD: (574)235-5567 46601-1830 Cell: (574)538-1936 Email.TSCOTT@SOUTHBENDIN.GOV