Report for House Committee February 16, 2000 Meeting

Meeting Management System - Past, Present and Future

Report Summary

• This is an information report regarding the current state of the Meeting Management System, and an outline of the benefits of redeveloping it using current City-standard technology.

Report

The Past

• The concept for an automated voting system arose in 1989 reports to Executive Committee and City Hall Steering Committee containing visionary recommendations to make the new City Hall building then being planned into a highly automated environment.
• Executive Committee on March 20, 1991 approved the recommendation of a February, 1991 report to automate Council Chamber and River Valley Room with on-line computerized voting.
• The Computing Resources Department implemented the initial version of the Meeting Management System (MMS) in the fall of 1992, immediately after the Municipal General Election.
• Various improvements and enhancements to MMS were added up to 1997, including:

display of motions and votes to the public gallery,

a presentation video-feed on each Council member’s computer.

• The computing platform used for MMS conformed to City technical standards in place in 1991-2. This platform is now incompatible with current City-standard technology and is largely unsupported by the vendors.
• The original MMS computers lasted from 1992 until mid-1999, when they were replaced with current models. At that time, the video-feed feature could not be continued on each computer, and the use of computer “mice” replaced the touch-screen capability.

The Present

• The incompatibility of the underlying MMS technology prevents Council members from having the ability to review urgent e-mail during a meeting. Also, the incompatibility prohibits the use of City-wide desktop computer support standards, requiring instead a more costly support agreement with an outside supplier to support Council Chamber PCs.
• Fortunately, the Meeting Management System is currently experiencing a reasonably low level of failures over the past few months. The replacement of the computers in 1999 seems to have avoided, for now, the potential for an operational equipment crisis.
• MMS, however, is largely “frozen” as to its current set of functions. Any significant functional changes to the MMS cannot seriously be contemplated, until the underlying technologies are replaced. Only one City of Edmonton employee has adequate background needed to make large MMS changes, and even that one individual is now available only for emergency “quick fix” situations.
• The City of Edmonton continues to receive inquiries and visits from other organizations interested in our Meeting Management System for use in their environment. No outside organization would agree to purchase MMS in its current form, however, due to its unsupportable technology. The potential for selling a re-written version of MMS to other municipalities would appear to be very promising.

Benefits of Redeveloping MMS

• The 1998 I.T. Branch Rationalization Study clearly recommended that the technology underlying our Meeting Management System be replaced.
• Some benefits of replacing technology underlying MMS are:

further increase in overall reliability, due to use of standard Microsoft-based technologies,

simpler support of the software, allowing for faster fixing of problems or implementing enhancements,

standardized and less costly desktop support for all computer equipment in Council Chamber,

compatibility with other City-standard computer tools, allowing the option of e-mail and other tools on the MMS computers during meetings,

restoration of the former capability of a presentation computer display-feed to each Council member’s PC,

the potential for a truly innovative and “showcase” system using state of the art technology, which further emphasizes Edmonton’s role as a Smart City.

The Future

• The funding to replace the existing Meeting Management System is now approved in the Capital Budget for 2002.
• No software packages are available on the market, which even begin to provide the capabilities of our existing MMS. This only leaves the City with the alternative of a custom-built replacement for MMS.
• However, possibilities appear to exist for a joint-venture partnership with outside organizations to complete a redevelopment of MMS.

Budget / Financial Implications

• Although Capital Budget funding is approved for 2002 to replace MMS, the potential exists to postpone other I.T. Branch capital expenditures of equivalent dollar amount to that needed to replace MMS. This could provide a means of accelerating achievement of a new Meeting Management System.

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