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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Cost of city reorganization increases by $212,000

By: Bartley Kives

6/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 4

THE price tag for Winnipeg's reorganization is now approaching $600,000, as the city didn't include a computer-company contract when it came up with the cost of the two-year-old job.

City records reveal Winnipeg paid a consulting firm almost $212,000 last year to help consolidate its information-technology systems -- above and beyond the $372,000 the city already disclosed it spent on reorganizing the public service as a whole.

In June 2008, Winnipeg chief administrative officer Glen Laubenstein launched a reorganization that saw the city dissolve two entire departments, eliminate 83 full-time-equivalent positions and place the city auditor and city clerk under the auspices of the CAO instead of council.

Over the next 15 months, the city spent $372,000 on consulting fees, expenses, meetings and retreats to plan and implement the reorganization, the Free Press reported in October after filing a freedom-of-information request. Almost $190,000 was spent on fees and expenses incurred by a single Montreal consultant in a series of sole-sourced contracts.

In response, the city said it will achieve $10.5 million in annual savings because of the reorganization. About $1.5 million of those savings will flow from an information-technology consolidation, Laubenstein said in an Oct. 8 press release.

"Before the reorganization, every department had (its) own server and staff. Now we are in the process of consolidating all the servers, which will enable information to be processed and shared more quickly and at significantly lower cost," he said at the time.

Now, the city concedes it did not account for the costs of the information-technology consolidation. The $372,000 reorganization tab disclosed by the city did not include a separate information-technology assessment, internal services director Linda Black confirmed in an interview.

In 2008, the city paid Gartner Canada Co. $211,551.20 to assess and plan the consolidation of Winnipeg's information-technology services, according to the city's annual disclosure of spending on consultants. The spending was part of a $280,000 Gartner contract that was not tendered, the consulting report states. The assessment was commissioned by former internal services director Luella Lee as part of a city-wide effort to find more efficient ways of doing business, Black said.

"A number of initiatives were undertaken as a result of the Gartner review," she said. The remainder of the $10.5 million in annual savings credited to the reorganization will be achieved through internal efficiencies and reductions to city staff, the city stated in its press release. But some members of city council remain skeptical of this claim.

The executive policy committee is expected to table the 2010 operating budget in February.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 6, 2009 B1

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4 Commentscomment icon

@Private Citizen...and that's to say the least...As a result of working for a contractor that works periodically for the City doing snow clearing and/or sweeping etc since 1997...Well you just don't want to know what I have so often seen...City foreman's using 30 plus yrs old maps that don't have the latest streets etc and foremans that haven't figure out those streets exist and I'll be darn if you are a contractor touching any of those streets that the foreman forgot to mark off when you are in the area...Foreman's flip out at you...So what happens is the next day they will send an entire crew to go do some small street that could have been done the night before but wasn't because it is the way it is...Crews will travel the next day form one end of the district to the other...to catch that small MIA street...I know...I was many a times part of a crew that did it...There's a saying out there at the yards...Lots of foremans and no real workers knowing anything about what they are suppose to do...You either have one of the two types of foremans at the city yards...The power tripper who continuously screws up and the nice guy who usually doesn't last long...and to clearify nice...That's a formean with reasoning and logic and that's the way it is...There are contractors out there that will refuse to work in some of the Districts such as in District 4...Ask any foreman whose fault it is that this stuff goes on...It's always the contractors fault...Whatever...GGF

and now going to increase water bills. only makes sense right. Wrong!

Other (more cost effective) efficiencies can also be found. I walked passed a City of Winnipeg 4x4 three quarter tonne crew cab truck that was left idling at the 7-11 on Osborne and Bartlet at 8:10 this morning. The workers went inside to grab coffee. It was plus four outside, this is simply inexcusable. Those are our tax dollars wafting out the tailpipe of that gas hog. Shame!

Of all the things I am upset about at City Hall...This is a subject that has been long overdue in Wpg...In fact I was the one that wrote a letter last year to Glen Laubenstein and the Mayor suggesting the city go that route...For me its rather simple...One just has to have had some dealings with Permits and so on at City Hall to know just how disfunctional the system we have here in Wpg is...There is an old saying out there and that is the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in Government Departments and this should help fix some of this problem...The real issue is how Glen Laubenstein and the Mayor failed to account for some of the expense items required to get there...Which means what?...A bit sloppy accounting/disclosures etc...No surprises there...Now having said that...I am hopeful that they haven't forgotten about the objective which is not just the money savings but a system that should become more user friendly for you and I...This will be money extremely well spent for Wpg if it acheives that...and for the moment I stand with the other city councillors...Skeptical about the numbers...and focused on keeping a watch on the objective...GGF

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