Finance Committee - 07/15/2020 Page 5
And we felt that although it was a worthy project, we were in the middle of the testing for the AP5 upgrade and
we were just beginning the Full Measure & List Revaluation and we did not feel it was a project that we could
take on at that time. We set it aside and then COVID happens.
In hindsight now to look back, would the project have been beneficial with COVID and with our staff working
remotely, absolutely no doubt about it. So we brought it back again now that we finished the AP5 Upgrade.
Director Codagnone brought in a couple of organizations. We just some discussions, one of the main reasons
we are choosing Inception is because they deal with Docuware. Upon reviewing the Docuware Software, we
felt it was a product that meets our needs not only in Assessing but also in other City Departments. So when
you engage and you bring in a new software, you also want to make sure that although it fits for Assessing, is it
going to fit for the rest of the organization because you don’t want a number of different document
management systems in different City Organizations.
So all of our Directors sat and reviewed the Docuware Software and had a presentation before Assessing
decided to move forward with this Software. This is a very large project. So if you look to the section of the
contract where it says the City’s responsibility, this is a lot of staff time. We will actually be pulling the files, we
will be going through, we will be indexing them. This is going to take a significant amount of time, but it has
many, many rewards to it. Not only will our Assessors be able to work with their new tablets on AP5 from the
field, they will now be able to pull up those property record files and they will be able to deal with those. That is
something that they haven’t had in the past; they’ve had to come back to the office, look through the property
record file, call back the resident, ask more questions, look at the file again. You know, it’s not as efficient as it
could be.
The other part of this and certainly one that we still recognize is the being able to offer these files publicly. But
you really have to put this in phases, this is a very large project. So while we need to first work on getting
these files indexed, figure out the process there is going to be going through each file and saying “what is a
public file and what is non-public’. So if you have financial information or if you have on the commercial side,
you have income statements and things like that, those will have to be marked by us as a non-public
document. They will still be scanned but when you do get into the Phase where you look at making these
public documents, those documents would be handled differently.
| Know that | got reached out to today because last night at my presentation | didn’t mention the public portion
of this project. That is not to say that there isn’t. | noted in my Memo about how more efficient we could be
because we wouldn’t have to spend time copying and e-mailing files, so certainly we do realize the significance
of making records easily accessible for the public. But there are also the efficiencies within the Department; so
it is two-tiered. The other part of this contract that is worth noting is at the end you will see a line item for
professional services. That line item is so that we can sit with the company and figure out how best to move
forward with other Departments and look into how we handle contracts within the City because we'd like to get
our City Contracts on this process because it contains a very useful workflow for sending those contracts
through the City Department, ultimately to the Board of Aldermen or the Finance Committee, obtaining
signatures and having those contracts executed. So we have built that additional money into the contract to
see how this project progresses after the Assessing portion of it.
Mayor Donchess
Thank you, Ms. Kleiner. Now are there any comments of questions, but before we go to that | wanted to make
sure that the record reflects that Alderman Dowd has joined the meeting. Any other Alderman that we have
not recognized who have joined the meeting? | don’t see anyone but if anyone has, please speak up? Ok
then let’s go to Alderman Klee who | believe has a question.
Alderman Klee
Thank you so much. | remember reading it and now sitting here | am looking through the document. Director
Kleiner could you remind me how many items that we feel that will be scanned in all of this.
