North Bay’s information technology and systems (IT) appears to have room for improvements.
Tuesday’s council meeting saw a presentation made from the company Blackline Consulting, which did an independent review of the city’s IT systems.
Ian Shelley, the one who gave the presentation, says there are “some gaps” in the city’s IT infrastructure.
“Even though you have many systems supporting business operations, there’s little connection between them; there’s little information shared between them,” Shelley told the committee, adding the online systems are functional, but “basic”.
Shelley notes many of the decisions made in the city’s information systems have been made with cost-savings in mind.
“I have a feeling that a part of that is a lack of enterprise-wide decision-making of what’s important,” Shelley said.
As for how much the city spends on its information systems, Shelley says North Bay is on the “lower end”. He says Ontario municipalities normally pay between $1,400 to $6,750 per user for information systems. North Bay pays approximately $2,200 per user.
Shelley says many municipalities pay for IT through capital expenses, but the rise of subscription-based cloud services will likely make it an operating expense for cities.
“You will see a lot of those ticket items in capital expenses slide over into operating expenses,” he forecasted.
The report also found North Bay has less staff in IT than other municipalities do, with just 1 percent of city staff in the department, where other cities see up to 5 percent of staff in IT.
Among Shelley’s suggestions was to assign someone to take over the innovation side of IT, who will work separately from the director of IT. He says the former can focus on the bigger picture of the city’s IT while the latter can handle day-to-day challenges.
Council agreed to file the information presented in Blackline’s for future consideration of IT upgrades.
