Region goes it alone on e-agendas
By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express
There is an old adage that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
That is the route the Region of Durham has taken for the rollout of its electronic agendas.
After several attempts to find a company to implement e-agendas as required by provincial legislation, regional staff determined an in-house approach was the best option.
According to a staff report included in the March 2 council information package, advantages of this approach included using existing skill sets of internal staff and cost savings of $100,000 from not having to purchase separate e-agenda software.
Tania Laverty, manager of communications, says moving to e-agendas could also result in future cost savings if employees and councillors choose to discontinue printing hard copies of agendas.
As an example, the March 7 committee of the whole agenda was 343 pages.
Assuming all members of council printed off the agenda, that amounts to around than 10,000 pages.
The region had previously entered into a contract with U.S.-based company Accela to develop and maintain the region’s e-agendas.
The original deadline was set for Jan. 1, 2017, and would have helped to ensure the region’s website was fully accessible and compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. The act requires web pages and other online documents belonging to government entities to include the ability to resize text, audio description for pre-recorded video content and captioning for live video.
However, as reported earlier by The Oshawa Express, region staff indicated to council early in 2017 it had become clear Accela would not meet the deadline due to an inability to make the program work within provincial guidelines.
The Region then rescinded the agreement, with no compensation paid to Accela.
The program went back to tender last summer, but the request for proposal (RFP) process ended in September 2017 without a single bidder.
Regional staff declined to provide comment on the possible reasons at the time. E-agendas were ‘soft-launched’ at durham.ca in December, and according to the staff report, progress on the project will continue.
“Staff will continue to evaluate ways to improve the user experience. As part of [second phase] considerations, mobile technology may be offered to council, and the option to move to a fully electronic, paperless process will be explored for the new term of council beginning in December 2018,” the staff report states