Clarington IT strategy - digitizing development

NRU
Sept. 27, 2017
By Sarah Niedoba

With Clarington's population anticipated to grow to 100,000 in the next year and development is booming, the municipality is creating a five-year IT strategy to improve e-services for both its residents and developers.

According to Clarington CAO Andrew Allison, the strategy will complement other initiatives the city is undertaking to make its internal processes easier to navigate for the development industry.

"We just went through a service delivery review to look at how we process development applications," Allison told NRU. "We're looking to update our software to see if we can create a better, simpler process-things like permitting, where developers can file and track development permits online."

As its population grows, creating online tools for the development industry is of utmost importance. The strategy identifies several potential tools, including one for electronic permitting, which would allow developers to file and track building permits online, and another for tracking development applications. Currently, applications must all be submitted on paper, while under the proposed system e-forms will be completed online.

"We're growing, and we have significant development pressures, so we need to look at ways of making our services more accessible and userfriendly where we can," Allison says. The strategy also highlights the need to overhaul many of the municipality's public services, including online registration and access to open data. Clarington mayor Adrian Foster says that the municipality needs to become more responsive to its residents.

"A part of it is that, yes, we're experiencing growth, so we have more residents to account for," Foster told NRU. "But the public also has certain expectations now-they want to be able to access services and information on their smart phones. More and more people are doing transactions on mobile, and we need to be able to respond to that."

Foster says that the IT strategy has the potential to create digital opportunities for residents to participate in municipal initiatives. "We're looking at posting online the traffic studies that we're doing, and getting ongoing public feedback on them, which will really give us a sense of what the community wants," he says. "It's that kind of thing that we want to make possible."

Council directed staff to create the five-year strategy in the fall of 2016, and after working with Prior & Prior Associates to conduct a review of the municipality's services, it is to be considered by council at its meeting October 10.