Agenda Index City of Vancouver

ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

TO: Vancouver City Council

FROM: General Manager of Community Services

SUBJECT: QuickFind

RECOMMENDATION

GENERAL MANAGER'S COMMENTS

COUNCIL POLICY

There is no applicable Council Policy.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this report is to briefly review the development and implementation of QuickFind and to make a recommendation on the funds remaining in the QuickFind budget.

BACKGROUND

In October of 1996, Council approved the development of QuickFind, an on-line information and referral system. Included in the approval was a budget covering costs for project management, hardware and software, workstations for front line staff, .35 FTE in Information Technology and .5 FTE for an "information coordinator".

DISCUSSION

The development and implementation of QuickFind is now almost complete. What remains to be done is the variety of tasks dealing with on-going support of the system updates and maintenance and improvement of both the data and technical components of the system.

Process: Immediately after Council approval, close to 40 new PCs were ordered and installed for front line staff. By December of 1996, a number of front line staff had volunteered to become part of the QuickFind "Working Group" which would be involved in every aspect of the development of QuickFind. Also by December, a contract had been let for the development of a data model.

One of the additional tasks required of the consultant was to review the market to determine if the City could or should buy software off-the-shelf. It was found that there was no existing product which combined both a telephone directory and a "frequently asked questions" function. Staff were therefore faced with two choices: hire a consultant to develop the software for us or develop it in-house. The decision was made to develop in-house for a number of reasons: to increase the City's Internet programming capacity; to provide for on-going technical expertise; to keep the budget in line and because it was exciting to think of the City developing "leading edge"technology. Staff believe that it has been proven many times over that the decision was the right one: both the process and the product are excellent.

All of the spring of 1997 was devoted to developing and implementing a data gathering strategy for both the "Directory" and the "Frequently Asked Questions" components of QuickFind. By the summer the Working Group was also testing and modifying the programming and user interface of the system. By September, the programming was complete for the look-up and maintenance of "Directory", which then allowed the Working Group to train the 80+ front line staff throughout the City who by now had been identified as "updaters" of the system. In November, the Directory went on-line for all staff and in December, the Organization Chart was made available.

In February of this year, front line staff were trained in how to maintain the frequently-asked-questions (what is now called "Inquiry") part of QuickFind. This last component of the system was recently made available to all staff.

Budget: When Council approved QuickFind, it approved a budget of $376,000. QuickFind is significantly under budget - as of April 1, 1998 there was a balance of $185,998. While it is proposed that much of this balance be returned to the IT Systems Replacement Program, there are some residual issues which staff are recommending be funded from the QuickFind balance.

System Administrator: In our 1996 report, staff anticipated the need for a half time "information coordinator", which Council approved on an on-going basis. With the experience of the past fifteen months, staff are now convinced that this position - referred to as the QuickFind System Administrator - is required on a full-time basis for two years, after which time it would revert to half time. The primary requirement of the System Administrator will be to work regularly with close to 80 updaters in over 50 locations to ensure that they are using and updating QuickFind on regular basis. The updaters are critical to the on-going accuracy, completeness and currency of QuickFind. Organizing and providing support to these staff will be a key task of the administrator and will form the basis of the system's success or failure. It should be noted that the transition from paper information to electronic is a "cultural" shift that hasn't been made yet by everyone - even some supervisors and managers. The task of providing continuous and direct support to so many updaters, as well as providing encouragement to the rest of the organization will be demanding and time consuming.

The other major responsibility of the System Administrator will be the maintenance of the overall system, both in terms of data and in terms of guiding technical changes and improvements.

The original budget for the half time position was $23,000 per annum. At Pay Grade 19, the annual cost of the proposed full time position, including benefits, is estimated at $46,000. Onetime furniture and other workstation costs are estimated at $4,000. For a period of two years, the position would require $50,000 in addition to the $46,000 already allocated.

Data Entry: From time to time, the Project Manager has hired either temporary staff or existing regular staff - on an overtime basis - to assist with data entry in cases where a significant amount of data has to be changed or entered. It is anticipated that this kind of situation - outside of the purview of any one updater - will continue to arise on a sporadic basis. Staff estimate the maximum cost of this work, over a period of two years, to be $15,000.

In sum, staff recommend that a total of $65,000 remain in the QuickFind budget for the purposes described above and that the remaining amount of $120,998 be returned to the IT Systems Replacement Program.

CONCLUSION

The City of Vancouver has developed a unique and exciting corporate business and customer service tool in QuickFind. And almost from its inception, front line staff have been involved in every aspect of its development and implementation.

The Inquiry (keyword) part of QuickFind now has about 1100 entries. It is the hope of staff that through growing use of all parts of QuickFind, the database will be expanded to not only encompass every staff person with a telephone , which it does now, but also virtually any subject a customer might inquire about. It is estimated that Inquiry could ultimately include many thousands of subjects and commensurate referrals. Such is the range of services and information we provide.

As it grows in popularity and as its information base increases, QuickFind should become as useful to the business of our city government as the telephone. We have, literally at our fingertips, the means to eradicate the problem we sought to address: "You're the sixth person I've talked to and I still don't have an answer". QuickFind gets it right, the first time.

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