Agenda Index City of Vancouver

ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

TO:

Vancouver City Council

FROM:

General Managers of Community Services, Corporate Services and Engineering Services

SUBJECT:

The MAP Project

 

RECOMMENDATION

COMMENTS OF THE CITY MANAGER

PURPOSE

The purpose of this report is to update Council on the Municipal Application Partnership (MAP) Project and on the future directions the City intends to take to support the objectives of the MAP Project.
BACKGROUND

In July 1998, Council approved the implementation of the MAP suite of applications. The approved budget for the Project was $5.9 million coming from several sources including:

The objectives of the MAP Project included:

Between July, 1998 and spring, 2001, staff focussed their attention of the following activities:

All of this took place in the context of continual change: the implementation of SAP, a change in ownership of the City's GIS and MAP software, the 1999 review of the DBR Project, and the civic strike of 2000.

The MAP implementation plan identified several phases:

The implementation of VanMap has made geographic data more accessible for staff and has increased the use of GIS in the City. Four successive versions of VanMap were released to staff between September 1999 and spring 2001. As well, in February 2001, Council approved extending VanMap access to the public through the City's web site. VanMap was released publicly in May 2001 and an enhanced public version was released in February 2002.

The last two phases of the MAP Project included the need for considerable customization of the MAP software for the Development Tracking (DT) application and the Water and Sewer applications and the need to draw on Autodesk consultants to help with this effort. In light of the amount of modification that might be required, it was decided to assess and confirm whether the MAP approach was still the best way for the City to meet its business requirements before proceeding with this work. The MAP Executive engaged Westech Information Systems to review MAP's Development Tracking application and its implementation. In May 2001, Westech completed their review and recommended that the City defer the customization of the MAP application until after the completion of the DBR re-engineering efforts.

In May 2001, Autodesk, the vendor of the City's GIS and MAP software, announced that while they would continue to support the MAP application suite, they would no longer enhance its functionality. Given the results of the Westech review and the Autodesk announcement, it was concluded that the City would be best served by seeking solutions for Development Tracking and Sewer, Water and Property Information Management Systems elsewhere.

In making this decision, it was noted that the Project has produced a number of positive outcomes to date including:

DISCUSSION

With the above deliverables now in place, the City is proposing to move forward to the next phase of the Project. The discussion below focuses on how the three City departments most involved in the MAP project - Community Services, Corporate Services, and Engineering Services - intend to move forward to meet their business requirements building on the deliverables of the MAP Project.

1. Community Services

In July 2001, Community Services began to develop plans to address the information technology needs of Development Services in the absence of the MAP applications. The plan focuses on the following activities:

These activities are described in more detail in the companion report, "A New Plan for a Development Tracking System".

2. Engineering Services

MAP was to provide Engineering Services with several GIS-enabled applications to support the management of roads, traffic, water, and sewer infrastructure, as well as improved tools for plotting, management of property information, and access to geographical information.

Going forward, Engineering will be meeting these needs through an integration of GIS and Computer Assisted Drafting and Design (CADD) tools. The City's GIS environment is evolving to facilitate the use of third party special purpose applications and Engineering is leveraging this by strengthening its direct links to the GIS database and reducing its reliance on proprietary software by using standard and open products. Engineering has successfullydeveloped a method for bringing information from the Land Titles Branch into the GIS environment that ties in with the corporate Property Information Management Strategy Project. As well, Engineering will build on its successful implementation of a mobile application for collecting infrastructure data in the field.

3. Corporate Services

Going forward from MAP, Corporate Services has responsibilities in two areas: managing and supporting the GIS infrastructure including VanMap, and managing the corporate Property Information Management Strategy Project.

The GIS sustainment team in Information Technology is responsible for formulating and implementing the City's GIS strategy with input and assistance from other departments, notably Engineering Services and Community Services. A GIS Charter and Service Level Agreement are being implemented in consultation with those departments. The three service groups have agreed on a strategy for moving GIS at the City forward using standard and open products. These products will provide greater access so that end users can choose from a wider variety of end user tools to meet their needs. VanMap remains a very important part of this strategy.

The Information Technology Department is also responsible for the corporate Property Information Management Strategy Project. The purpose of this Project is to amalgamate all City of Vancouver, Land Titles Branch, BC Assessment property and address data and to make it more readily integrated and accessible. The Project will develop service level agreements to ensure that the property data maintained by City departments is accurate and current. It will also make the data available to all applications throughout the organization to allow other departments to use the data for decision-making. These activities are described in more detail in the companion report "The Property Information Management Strategy Project".

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

As noted above, the budget for the MAP Project as approved by Council was $5.9 million. To date, approximately $2.5 million has been spent on software, hardware, staff salaries, consultants, and other expenses to achieve the above-noted deliverables.

Discussions at the MAP Executive and Management Team level have resulted in an inter-departmental agreement that the cost sharing of MAP Project expenses to date will be allocated as follows:

Department

Approved Budget

Actual Expenditures

Remaining Budget

Community Services

$3,000,000

$870,000

$2,130,000

Engineering Services

$1,300,000

$662,000

$638,000

Information Technology

$1,600,000

$962,000

$638,000

Total to Date

$5,900,000

$2,494,000

$3,406,000

Both the Engineering Services and Information Technology portions of this project have been fully funded based on the prior Council approvals, as follows:

· Engineering Services from overhead charges on sewer, water, and streets capital projects and from positive variances on water connection accounts
· Information Technology from the Information Technology Long Term Plan. The balance of the funding approved for MAP will be directed to the Property Information Management Program that is documented in an accompanying report.

The Community Services portion of the cost of the MAP Project has been financed by a loan from the Capital Facilities Fund. This loan was to have been repaid by a 10% increase in development and building permit fees, beginning not before 2000 and only once significant improvements could be demonstrated to the user community.

To date, none of this fee increase has been implemented. A 1.5% fee increase generating approximately $225,000 per year would be sufficient to repay the current obligation of $870,000 in roughly 4.5 years. Given that a 5 % fee increase occurred early in 2002, Community Services Group proposes to defer this fee increase until the review of the development application process is completed and a systems solution is in place. In its place, it is proposed to utilize existing funding within the Community Services Group operating budget currently allocated to repay technology loans for DOMINO and Licence+ which will be available beginning in 2003. Utilizing this source, the obligation to MAP cost to date will be repaid by 2005.

Reports from Information Technology and Community Services detailing the redeployment of the remaining approved funding to build on the MAP successes and move forward to complete the project's objectives accompany this report. A report from the City Engineer will be brought forward in the future.

CONCLUSIONS

The MAP Project has delivered a number of successes. The General Managers of Community Services, Corporate Services, and Engineering Services are recommending that future directions build on these successes through the redeployment of approved funding to complete the Project objectives. These redeployment plans are presented and in companion reports and will also be reported to Council in future reports.

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ag020730.htm

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