East Gwillimbury receives administrative award for new dashboard

YorkRegion.com
May 30, 2018
Simon Martin

East Gwillimbury took home a little hardware at the 2018 Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators conference.

The town received the Professional Development Award in the 20,000 to 100,000 population category at the national conference in Fredericton. The award was for the town’s innovative new Growth Management and Development Dashboard.

“CAMA is pleased to recognize the administrative excellence demonstrated by East Gwillimbury for the development of their dashboard,” Janice Baker, president of CAMA and City Manager for Mississauga said. “The dashboard is instrumental in improving the town’s ability to provide reliable data related to municipal growth.”

East Gwillimbury is in the midst of dramatic urban growth and the population is projected to double to 50,000 residents by 2025. Council is committed to ensuring that there is a smooth transition for both existing and new residents.

In 2017, the town’s Information Technology department developed an in-house web-based software solution, a growth-management and -development dashboard to assist staff with effectively managing growth and proactively developing processes that ensure consistent communications and data-sharing across the organization.

The software solution runs nightly to connect internal databases, provide automatic updates to various internal departments and create a readily available dashboard for reporting. The project ensures staff are able to access accurate, near real-time information to drive workflow; this would result in greater data confidence, and ultimately in better decision-making and long-term planning with regards to municipal growth.

“As we experience growth, our staff continue to look for innovative new ways to ensure that we meet the needs of our residents,” Mayor Virginia Hackson said. “This project has pulled together critical functions to ensure that our new residents feel at home right away, and the services they need are immediately available.”

CAMA’s Professional Development Award recognizes a community that has developed a unique and innovative program for its staff and can be replicated in other communities. Since Canada has a unique mixture of small and large communities, awards are granted according to population — for municipalities under 20,000, for those between 20,001 and 100,000 and for those over 100,000.