THUNDER BAY – The City of Thunder Bay has adopted its first digital strategy, fulfilling a recommendation of the program and services review it passed in 2020.
The document calls for the city to roughly double its investment in Information Technology over several years, in order to modernize city services for the digital age.
City councillors unanimously endorsed the strategy Monday night, but the increased spending it lays out will still need to be approved in city budgets beginning in 2023.
The city’s Corporate Information Technology department had a roughly $4.5 million budget in 2021. That lags behind peer municipalities like Sudbury as a percentage of the city’s budget, consultants Perry Group found.
The increased investment will support the addition of several new staff in the IT department, including a manager, GIS and data coordinator, project managers, app developers, and a data engineer, phased in over four years.
In the draft 2022 budget, corporate IT manager Jack Avella said administration proposed to add close to $1 million to implement the strategy, split about evenly between operating and capital spending.
Coun. Rebecca Johnson said she'd keep an eye on assurances the strategy would bring efficiency-related cost savings of up to a million dollars a year, along with the added expenses. Avella also said the city would pursue further funding, after receiving $125,000 from the province to develop the strategy.
Coun. Brian Hamilton shared Johnson's concern, but said cities must begin treating digital infrastructure more seriously.
"[That'] a significant budget driver, but the city's really behind – this is critical infrastructure, I get that," he said.
“This project has been extremely important to how I see the city moving forward,” said Coun. Shelby Ch'ng. “You can count on my vote on the other end of the budget table”
The strategy was developed by Perry Group in conjunction with senior city staff, following a public survey, and consultation of city IT and communications staff, the city’s accessibility committee, and groups like Tbaytel, the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce, and representatives from the local building and construction industry.
The strategy commits the city to a “digital first” approach to city services, through actions like expanding public WiFi, developing an online tax portal, and offering online payments for services like water billing, parking tickets, and municipal camping.
Those who prefer to be served off-line, however, can still count on the city to offer “traditional channels of service delivery,” a report from city administration reassured the public.
The evolution will see the city belatedly meet citizens where they already are, according to the report, which cites statistics that 88 per cent of Canadians bank online and 72 per cent access government programs online, even pre-pandemic.
“For many, technology has become an essential way of getting things done,” it read. “Increasingly, people want to interact with their government service providers in the same way that they make purchases or deal with their bank.”
The report identified existing successes like the city's Get Involved citizen engagement platform, open data portal, and a recent move to offer online registration for things like burn permits and recreation programming.
However, the strategy found the city needs to go further in creating modern customer service portals, eliminating paper-based processes, and building tech support, cloud, and cybersecurity capabilities.
Staff will report to council annually on implementation of the strategy, with the development of an IT governance committee among the first actions planned for 2022.
The passage of the document fulfills recommendations of the Grant Thornton program and services review, approved by council in 2020.
