Mayor’s Task Force on eGovernment Releases Report
Today my Task Force on eGovernment released their report “Changing the Conversation- Transforming the Governance and Use of Technology in the Post-Amalgamation City”.
Please view the entire report and join the conversation at ottawa.taskforcereport.ca
The 82-page report contains eight recommendations dealing with governance, investment and citizen centricity We will be tabling it at the Corporate Services Committee later this afternoon and begin work on reviewing how the city can adopt their recomendations.
Task Force Chair Rob Collins outlined details of the report during the Mayor’s Breakfast series this morning and was joined by fellow members Ben Robataille, Michael Turner, Professor Gerald Grant, Robert Thompson, Andy Moffat, Ed Shepherdson and Kelly Kubrick.
I would like to thank each of them for their hard work. They have done an outstanding service for the citizens of Ottawa and I commend them for delivering a clear, concise report outlining how we can improve our communications with residents. Their recommendations, in particular those dealing with governance, can fundamentally transform our City government for the better.
The Task Force concluded that the benefits of exploiting proven, successful information technology tools and applications, should deliver improvements that will help the City of Ottawa break the lock-step relationship between City growth and growth in staffing and budgets.
Over the long-term, the Task Force believes cutting the costs associated with growth could deliver significant savings when measured against the City’s $2.1 billion budget. Conservative estimates show Ottawa’s population growing to one million peoplein the near future. This represents a 23 per cent increase in population from the 2006 census figure of 812,129. To accommodate this growing population, the City’s operating costs are likely to grow by at least 20 per cent based on current trends.
However, the Task Force suggests that efficiencies gained from investing wisely in information technology and managing it intelligently could offset virtually all of that 20 per cent growth in operating costs.
Join the conversation and lear more by visiting the community created website at ottawa.taskforcereport.ca or leave your comments below.
