Audit and Accountability Fund - Development Charges Study
Improving the Identification, Monitoring and Tracking of Development Charges Related Projects at the City of Windsor
The City of Windsor was the successful recipient of grant funding from the Province of Ontario’s Audit and Accountability Fund in 2021. Administration determined that a review of the City’s process of reporting and monitoring of development charges (DC) was an appropriate fit for these funds. PSD CityWide was selected as the consultant to complete this study.
This project identified systems and business process inefficiencies in how the City of Windsor manages the reporting and monitoring of its development charges (DC) related capital program, which requires staff to complete 25 major and highly technical processes. In completing them, staff consistently face two overarching inefficiencies. These are: manual data analysis and information management, and limitations in technology and systems functionality. These can consume hundreds of staff hours.
Based on the type and volume of data contained in them, two of the applications found in the City’s suite of software applications may offer a suitable platform for staff to expedite the DC process, both annually and ahead of each iteration of the DC background study.
Together, CityWide™ Asset Manager and CityWide™ CPA overcome some of the principal constraints and inefficiencies. The systems contain more than 50,000 asset records, with data pertinent for DC reporting. Individual assets can also be appended to each DC project, allowing for maximum accuracy in project costing. This data also endures any mutations in project naming conventions, scopes, and descriptions over time, and across various data sources.
The applications are also integrated, allowing staff to retrieve data dynamically, and attach other informative asset attribute to each project profile, including risk and condition. Native reporting in the systems reduces manual analysis by staff that must be conducted to support development of capital budgets, and ahead of each DC background study.
The consultant's report can be accessed via the following link: PSD CityWide Report
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