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“Nothing good comes cheap”

Jun 10, 2009 News

Municipal IT programme…


–    says Mayor Green

In recognition that the Information Technology System at City Hall is in a bad state, City Mayor Hamilton Green, has said that the municipality is prepared to spend the necessary funds to fix it.
The Mayor’s disclosure came as a response to this newspaper’s question about the ongoing Information Technology (IT) programme that is currently being introduced at the municipality by India-based Software Company, Polaris.
The entity, Mayor Green said, was recommended to the municipality by the Indian High Commission.
In emphasising that “nothing good comes cheap these days,” the Mayor pointed to the fact that the municipality has been able to secure the expertise of the outstanding company to address the IT problems at City Hall.   It has been revealed that the programme is expected to cost about $26 M, an amount that many believe the municipality can ill-afford, he added.
The City Mayor has however noted that there is some indication that some staffers are not willing to embrace the IT process and perhaps do not even want the system to be fixed.
At the municipality’s statutory meeting on Monday, Councillor Junior Garrett, said that efforts are not made to prioritise municipal undertakings. He added that while some $13 M was paid towards the IT programme the municipality is unable to pay for garbage collection.
“Because we don’t set our priorities in order and we don’t do cost analysis, we can’t find the money…If we can pay Polaris then we can pay for the removal of garbage so that citizens could get relief.”
It was also at Monday’s meeting that Acting Town Clerk, Yonette Pluck-Cort, disclosed that Commissioner of Inquiry, Keith Burrowes, had expressed his interest in the Polaris venture. She reported to the council that Burrowes, as a result, has looked at the contract that was signed with the Polaris Consultancy.
Pluck-Cort said, that the Commissioner is seeking to offer some assistance by having his lawyers look at the contract with the possibility of re-negotiating with Polaris.
This newspaper understands that the software company has already completed the system analysis phase of the venture, which saw it interacting with Heads of Departments to deduce how they operate manually.
Another aspect called the Gap Analysis has also been completed where they have been able to establish what can be done to improve the current system and have commenced a system design phase.
The Polaris experts were expected to present a status report to the Management Information System Committee, which is the governing committee for the municipality’s Information Technology Department, this week. The presentation of the report is expected to mark the first benchmark that indicates that they have reached the half way stage of the project.
–    It was anticipated that by the end of this month the team would have been able to submit the entire outline of the project. However with likely interventions, the Polaris team may have to rethink its approach.

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