City approves IT Strat Plan

The City of Yorkton now has an IT Strategic Plan.

After many meetings with all departments within the City of Yorkton that we determined that we contract Info Tech Research Group to guide us in the development of an IT Strategic Plan for the City of Yorkton. Info Tech Research Group gathered data from all departments and then came on site for two days to complete the project. We now have an IT Strategic Plan that all departments support and look forward to implementing, explained Shannon Bell, Director of Finance with the City at the regular meeting of Council Monday.

“This strategic plan was designed to align itself with the corporate strategy and specifically to address five main goals in that plan,” she said.

“Currently the City’s IT department is providing high quality services and support to all departments and when projects are completed the departments are reporting a high level of satisfaction with IT.”

However we are noticing that the level of satisfaction with IT as a whole is declining due to the department having to decline requests from lack of resources. There simply are not enough resources to complete all services and support that is required by the departments within the City. This will hinder the departments from achieving their departmental goals and objectives, detailed a report circulated to Council.

“Currently Info Tech Research Group has assessed the City of Yorkton’s IT department as being reactive as opposed to being proactive. Currently we are reacting to issues that happen rather than implementing policies and systems that will prevent some issues from happening in the first place,” offered Bell. Bell said the group identified IT’s role in the success of five key goals from the City of Yorkton’s Strategic Plan.

The first area was in terms of technology.

“Here we see IT supporting technology that enables direct business with the public, setting up and maintaining automated referral services and reviewing the value of social media. IT wants to maintain their high level of customer satisfaction. This will be achieved through initiatives such as launching a new website for the City, having online forms and hotlines for residents to submit concerns to the City and to implement a social media management tool that will allow us to better communicate with our citizens,” said Bell.

IT also plays a role in terms of infrastructure.

“Infrastructure has become a large initiative for all municipalities recently. In an effort to ensure that all infrastructure is accounted for and managed IT will need to provide a stable, secure and consistent platform and processing environment to assist departments in their infrastructure needs. This will include improving network communications between City facilities and buildings by installing dark fibre. We also want to improve data quality and utilize the current versions of software to enable better informed decision making for the City’s infrastructure network,” said Bell.

In terms of governance and communications IT plays a role as well, offered Bell.

As privacy laws evolve it is becoming more and more critical for a document/records management system to be implemented to minimize the City’s exposure to potential liability issues for non-compliance, she explained, adding “Also we want to proactively engage the City in policy making and improve communications both with our citizens and our own departments.”

It is the same in the area of economic development.

“We will forever be looking for innovative ways to enhance our City’s prospects. To accomplish this we need to modernize the City’s workforce. One way of doing this is by having a larger online presence through our new website, social media, etc. We want to build a strong brand for the City of Yorkton so that we can attract new businesses and have Yorkton as the City of choice to live in,” explained Bell.

And finally IT plays a role in education.

It has been identified that the City is committed to facilitating the delivery of lifelong learning to its employees and residents. IT will act as a trusted advisor and assist City employees to ensure that they are well trained in technology usage, said Bell.

In the strategic plan being presented, we have identified the proposed projects and sub-projects that IT will be working through over the next few years. This work plan directly relates to the five goals above and will help the City achieve success in the future, said Bell.

“These projects include implementing a new website, online scheduling of building inspections, providing more forms online for users to communicate with the City, assisting with Asset Management, launching a document and records management system, making the streamlining of Payroll and Human Resources more efficient and helping the departments modernize the City’s online presence,” she added.

Councillor Chris Wyatt would vote against accepting the IT Plan. He said the plan was suggesting an added position, without looking at options such as contracting out, and he could not support it for that reason.

The rest of Council passed the plan.