Computer upgrades for the municipality are years behind schedule, possibly running taxpayers $1.2 million over the project's budget.
Mayor Karen Elliott says that this forecasted increase is the worst-case scenario, and that municipal staff will be looking to control the increases as much as possible.
Elliott said the upgrades are necessary, as the municipality's old filing systems — some of which were paper-based — don't make the cut in today's world.
"The risk to the District in not making this investment is that we wouldn't have been able to keep up to the pace of the growth of our community," she said.
"[Stopping the upgrade] is not really an option for us, we do need to replace those systems," she added.
In addition to faster processing times for administration and boosting cybersecurity, the goal is to have taxpayers access many District services with a touch of a button on their phone, Elliott said.
To date, some notable improvements include the open data portal, and geographic information system mapping, which allows residents to look up data and property information, she said.
The District's Technology Transformation Program was launched in late 2015 with the expectation that by the end of 2019, much of it would be completed.
At that point, the new finance and land management systems would be implemented and in use. The District would also be close to finishing a replacement of its recreation management software, and work would be underway for an asset and work order management system.
To date, the new finance system has been implemented but is not in full use. The other items either aren't finished or haven't been started, a staff report says.
The project is at roughly about 40 per cent completion to date, said municipal program manager Kerry Ing during council's Oct. 15 committee of the whole meeting.
He said the delay is not due to staff, which has been working hard, but rather the organization's inability to maintain functions during disruptions caused by the upgrades.
"The organization may not have been ready for the change," said Ing.
A District staff report had a similar message.
"After several conversations with leaders and staff, it appears there was misalignment between
the [Technology Transformation Program's] objectives and the organization's state of readiness: the District was not resilient enough to maintain service levels and accommodate the disruptive changes caused by [Technology Transformation Program.]" reads the report.
Ing also noted a cyberattack earlier this year sucked up a significant amount of resources.
He didn't add any details, but The Chief learned months ago that a ransomware attack corrupted many of the municipality's files in May. Most were recovered.
Staff estimates the upgrade project could take until 2023, and they forecast the price tag could reach $5.2 million, according to the report.
$4 million was budgeted for the project.
From 2016 to 2019, the actual cost has been $2.69 million, the report says.
"The [Technology Transformation Program's] original objectives may not have properly reflected the time, resources and as such, budget required to complete," reads the staff report to council.
"Although the program is within the original estimates and has been under budget year-over-year, it is not anticipated to be complete within the original budget and as such there will be budget requests to fund the resource requirements that are forecasted for 2021 and subsequent year [Technology Transformation Program] projects."
Elliott said that with the recent hiring of Ing as a full-time staffer devoted to the job, the District believes it'll be able to put the project back on track.
"There's not really a turning back," she said.
