Last night we authorised a Cultural Master Plan Study at a cost of $70.000..
And an Urban Forest Study at $120,000.
It's all in the Strategic Plan.
That's on top of $40,000 to combat the effect of the Emerald Ash Borer and $100,000 for the Arboretum group of volunteers to plant trees in Lambert Wilson Ravine.
And Oh Yes, remember the software package we bought last year about this time. Well it's still not up and running. We are at the "testing" stage.
We had to spend $58,000 a few months after the original purchase
for needed parts overlooked at the time of the intial purchase when the I.T. department had not been consulted about compatibility.
Well.... last night we approved another $100,000 for twelve hand held pieces of equipment and licenses and other stuff .
Annual licences are about $7,000 apiece. They are not transferable.
Crews in the parks department will be able to do data entry on the job.
What time they arrived, what the weather was like, what needs to be fixed, what equipment was needed to fix it, what time they left All stuff like that.
If it'sraining it means paper wont get wet and information lost.
It's all stuff needed to keep track of assets.
Just like the Ministry of Municipal Affairs had in mind when municipalities were directed to get with the program.
Of course the Province isn't doing it yet. They don't know how. That's why they're so interested to see how municipalities go about it and who might get it right.
Did I tell you, we approved another hundred thou. Yeah ,right.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
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4 comments:
And none of this was streamed for us?
Man, if you can't show me that something works, I'm not keen to pay you to play around with it. Not a good night at the office.
I really hate to be a nag. But did anyone mention a Performance Contract?
I am an IT professional. I have Project Management training.
I know the general public get frustrated seeing comments like yours with the progress of the software implementation. IT today is very different in a "compliance" world.
IT was a huge target in the aftermath of Enron and Worldcom. Business processes changed to make the departments or people that are responsible for a function to be responsible for that function completely. As a consequence, IT has developed processes and procedures whereby nothing will be done by IT that would bring the IT group into a bad situation. A case in point being the $58,000 purchase. IT must be a key stakeholder in the beginning in order for everything to connect (physically and logically).
Another by-product is the extended "testing" and the subsequent "acceptance" phases. If the software does not do what it is supposed to do, who is responsible? The owners of the software - not IT. So the owners along with the vendors and IT will perform the testing, but only the owner can say that it is good to go. Delays in this phase are usually because the owners also have to do their regular jobs on top of the testing.... never enough hours in the day.
Based on the time line that you have written here, it seems to me that if IT was involved from the begining, and the use of a certified Project Manager, the scope of the project could have been properly scoped out in the beginning so the additional purchases could have been realized in the beginning. Now it just looks like they continue to go back to the well, it's just bad project management.
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