Land Management Database Platform Review

In October 2021, Burlington City Council approved a funding request to the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Audit and Accountability Fund) for a Land Management Database Platform Review.

The Ministry approved the request for funding and the City entered into an Agreement with Perry Group Consulting Ltd. for an independent third-party review.

This project was to find cost savings and quantifiable efficiencies for Information Technology (IT) related to the business process/services supported by the City’s Land Management Database Platform (LMDP).

There are over 100 processes/services, primarily for:

• development applications,
• building permits and
• business licenses

Many City departments are supported by the LMDP. The core of the LMDP is AMANDA software we use to manage our business licensing, permits, registration, certificates, rebates and collections. Other software supported by the LMDP includes:

• Bluebeam,
• AMANDA Public Portal,
• ArcGIS,
• network shares,
• Excel,
• the City’s email system and
• the City’s website.

The consultant found

1. Our LMDP, is stable and market competitive in delivering support for our business processes/services. There are some parts that could be upgraded or replaced.
2. The City is not making the most of the LMDP to support our business processes/services. The greatest opportunities for cost savings and quantifiable efficiencies is to look at our processes so we are using our LMDP as part of our business as much as possible.

The consulting team drafted and costed a three-year work plan to take on the LMDP powered business process to redesign it to make it more efficient. This is estimated to be an annual savings of $893,659 less annual costs estimated at $382,000.

The three-year project cost is estimated to be $2,810,000. While some of the project costs are for software, most of the costs are for services and staffing.

The work plan is looking at an Agile model to provide a continuous stream of deliverables and value for the customer, service delivery and mobile staff.