cityofboston.gov - Official Web Site of the City of Boston - Thomas M. Menino, Mayor

The Administration & Finance Cabinet, comprised of Treasury, Auditing, Assessing, Budget Management, Purchasing, Human Resources, and the Office of Labor Relations, works collaboratively with DoIT in order to maintain a healthy financial structure that fully supports City services according to Mayoral priorities.  Leveraging technology, the City continuously works to streamline operations and gain improved operational efficiencies.

Enterprise Resource Management

The City of Boston is working on upgrading our ERM financial system.  The upgrade will streamline processes, improve communication and collaboration and promote greater efficiency by allowing City recourse to work more strategically. At the current time, we are in the process of reengineering our business processes to achieve our stated objectives.

Governance Structure
The upgrade is a combination of Business Process Owners and technical resources.   Collaboration between the business process owners and technical support staff will result in new, streamlined business procedures that have a sound technical basis.

Change Management
The City will leverage Oracle’s User Productivity Tool (UPK) and Tutor to train users in business procedures and processes.  Oracle Tutor will be used to build a complete, central, online library of documented business procedures.  Having a single online repository of business procedures will ease maintenance of these documents, reduce confusion about procedures, eliminate paper documentation and facilitate communication of changes and updates.   Tutor will be used initially to support the Financial application, but they can be used to support any other application the City utilizes.  

Licensing & Permitting

Our enterprise permitting process makes collaboration possible between all 5 permitting agencies (Fire, Public Works, Transportation, Inspectional Services, Parks). Prior to this system, applicants and documents had to move between 5 different physical locations. The enterprise system streamlines the process of permit application and approval from city planners, parks and historic districts.

We are also updating our permitting software platform to increase features and functionalities on the business side as well as improve the user interface (UI) and citizen experience with the permitting portal.

Fire Permitting Process
Our enterprise permitting system will be expanded to include fire prevention permits.  Eight permit types are currently available with 35 more coming online this fiscal year.
Constituents will see significant time and cost savings as they apply, pay for, and print permits via one-stop online transaction.

Public Works and Transportation Permitting Process
Our enterprise permitting system will be expanded to include the public works and transportation permit applications.  Sixteen (16) permit types are currently being configured to come online this fiscal year. The new system will:

• make use of shared city data (like street listings, property ownership and contact records),
• manage and share records, and
• reduce the resources required to process permits.

Constituents will see significant time and cost savings as they apply, pay for, and print permits via one-stop online transaction.

Central Cashiering Management

Our enterprise permitting system is integrated to a central cashiering system in order to manage payment collection from all sources, linking these activities to the City’s accounting and information systems...  The goal in this fiscal year is to achieve optimal automation, uniform and enforceable policies, consolidated reporting, and strengthened internal controls.
 
The most significant challenges of any organization where employees are involved in managing payment and cash functions involve financial risks associated with fraud, shrinkage, embezzlement, or theft. a reality  The appropriate mitigation for this condition is to deploy a core set of cash management risk best practices outlined below:

• Minimize Cash Handling,
• PCI/PA-DSS –certified for Payment Card Industry/Payment Application-Data Security Standards,
• Separation of Duties,
• Consistent Payment Collection Procedure,
• Relevant Security and Permissions Model,
• Centralized Reconciliation, Reporting and Auditing,
• Integrated Technology Model, and
• Facilitate consumer/citizen self-service as applicable.

Strategy and Performance Management

These are tough budget times. All government organizations, including us have to deliver more services with fewer resources. We have to rapidly align resources and people to find smart, innovative and strategic ways to deliver services. In order to accomplish these objectives, the City of Boston is currently implementing a state of the art SAP Business Object Strategy Management and Business intelligence initiative.  This project will link strategic plans to initiatives, performance measures, and business units, The performance-related information will be communicated to both inside and outside stakeholders and it will drive transparency about services and their effectiveness and also foster collaboration. 

Entity Index System

The City of Boston is using the software tool MultiVue to streamline the evaluation of contact/customer records based on many levels of matching and reconciling.  Leveraging entity index software allows us  to identify and resolve duplicate records (contacts) within databases and build a master contact record.  This meta-record will allow us to slowly build a profile of constituents interacting with the city through various agencies and services.  It involved linking a city databases together (CRM, property owner, permitting, and licensing).  A property owner gets created in a database that it maintains from a number of sources and for a number of purposes. MultiVue matches the identities in the Property Owners Database (POD) with those in the other systems to eliminate duplicates, and to identify any updates that need to be made in those systems. We have expanded the data flows into the MultiVue identity index to include the identity information in the Elections Department voter database, our internal PeopleSoft financial system, and the Lagan CRM system being used for the city’s Constituent Services call center.

Our goal is to be able to efficiently tie the City Departments systems together that house customer data so that those agencies are able to locate a constituent no matter how many variations of that name was used across the enterprise and be able to share or summarize to the constituent what they have or may owe; whether they happen to visit department A or B. This also enhances the City’s operation where a customer visits department A to obtain a permit or license and through this connection to the Identity Index System, this customer is shown in department B with outstanding and overdue violations. Department A is able to provide that information to the customer and have this payment requirement satisfied ahead of issuing the customer a permit.  Allowing our agencies to validate identities and client interactions with the city improves our internal business processes while reconciling outstanding issues constituents may have with the City in regards to payments or violations.

E-Forms Implementation

The City is implementing an online form solution that will allow an application end users or employees to complete online forms instead of paper forms.  The online form will be work flowed through a specific approval process.  After final approval, the application database will be updated and the transaction is complete.  Anticipated benefits are reduced data entry errors, shorter cycle time and cost savings by eliminating preprinted paper forms. Before each form was converted, various factors were tracked so that some of the form benefits can be quantified Forms scheduled to be online soon include:

Human Resource Forms

• Personnel Action
• Position Approval 
• Leave Buy Back
• BPS Overtime and Stipend 

Other Financial Forms

• Vendor Enrollment 
• Budget Amendment 

Greening IT: Finance & Administration Processes

Work to eliminate distribution of Payroll Pay Advices
Although over 90% of our 20,000+ employees are paid by Direct Deposit, the City has continued to print and distribute pay advised.  This is an expensive and time consuming process.  Pay check information is available online to all employees.   The City expects to stop printing these advices and only make them available through employee Self-Service, subject to collective bargaining.  We have done an analysis that indicated we would save over $200,000/year by eliminating the distribution of Pay advices.

Replace Large Volume Reports With Electronic Versions    
Several large, frequently run reports, such as the Payroll register, have been replaced with electronic versions that can be viewed and stored electronically rather than in paper form.