It's part of an electronic government initiative being cheered on by Mayor Larry O'Brien that is aimed at helping the city cut $100 million in operational costs over the next three years.
Friday, the mayor announced a team of expert citizens for the Mayor's Task Force on E-government, to be headed by Rob Collins, former chief information officer of Cognos, who recently retired from the computer software corporation. The group will considering ideas to make the city's operations more easily accessible to residents through information technology.
Councillor Rick Chiarelli, vice-chairman of the city's long-range financial planning subcommittee, said one of the best ideas being planned is a pilot project for up to 150 staff members. The employees will work from home and the field, and use computers to keep in touch with managers and citizens. Employees will be able to book time in an office for meetings. The potential positions to be in the pilot will be identified shortly, then submitted to the task force and council.
Social service caseworkers, engineers and planners, public health nurses, building inspectors and communications staff are some of the staff members who could take part in the pilot project, said Mr. Chiarelli. He said it will require some changes in thinking but he said the city has to measure employee output not on the time they spend at their desks, but on the work they produce.
Mr. Chiarelli said the costs of maintaining office space and land phone lines for employees are high and some employees find that spending time in the office simply slows them down from getting field work done.
"We have snowplow operators who have a land line. What's the point?" said Mr. Chiarelli.
The city is working with the federal government on this pilot project and there could be 300 federal employees also involved in the pilot.
Mr. Collins, the volunteer head of the task force, said he is enthusiastic about coming up with very specific ways to make city government more effective. For instance, he said the city should be able to drastically reduce the amount of mailing it does by using electronic communication. And the city's Web site can be improved so that information is easier to retrieve.
Mr. Collins is being joined on the volunteer task force by people with experience in business, technology and government: Gerald Grant, Kelly Kubrick, Andrew Moffatt, Ben Robitaille, Ed Shepherdson, Robert Thompson and Michael Turner. They are being asked to come up with some kind of plan by April. The city has $5 million set aside for information technology projects.
On display at City Hall yesterday were some of the most recent uses of technology in city operations. In December the city's paramedic service switched from a paper-based record and reporting system to an electronic system, after several months of a pilot project. The city's 300 paramedics use durable, small laptops with tablets and keyboards. The call and patient information can be quickly taken in and easily retrieved.
OC Transpo is another city operation that is using new electronic technology. About 90 per cent of the city's 1,000 buses have global positioning systems, which allow the company to monitor the location and speed of the bus. The rest of the fleet should have the devices by March.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Patrick Dare
Quelle/Source: The Ottawa Citizen, 25.01.2008
