Project: Councils OnlineVersion: 1.0

Client: Syndicate of NSW Councils



Table of Contents

1Introduction......

2Project Management......

3Contract Management Activities......

4Stream Activities......

4.1All Streams......

4.2Assets & Supply......

4.3People......

4.4Management Support......

4.5Service Management and Constituent Interaction......

4.6Technical......

4.7Organisational Change Management......

5Deliverables Achieved......

6Payment Status......

BI-MONTHLY REPORT TO COUNCILLORS

1Introduction

This report to Councillors is the second progress report on the Councils Online project for the NSW Syndicate of Councils. Readers of the previous report will have seen that it reported on the progress of the project since commencement, up to July 2003. This report, and subsequent reports going forward, will be for the prior 2 months and will highlight expected activities in the coming 2 months.

2Project Management

This consists of the key activities of the Syndicate Project Manager and the Council Project Managers in the management of the project for the past 2 months, and other upcoming activities.

Project to Date
  1. The General Managers, as part of the Steering Committee for Councils Online, met to address some of the design challenges that were confronting the Core Teams. A number of key decision were made that have provided the Core Teams with the direction that needed to progress the design to virtual completion by the end of Aug 2003. A communication to the Core Team is to be developed that provides the context to the decision made and the principles that the GM’s expect the Core Team to embrace for the rest of the project.

  1. Identification and provision of resources from all Councils to join the Project Core Team for the development of training documentation along with representatives from CGEY.

  1. Contract Deliverables and work products required in July, with the exception of one, and all deliverables and work products for August, have been completed as at 30 Aug 2003.

  1. Risk Management matrix has been updated to reflect additional mitigation strategies for previously identified risks and to reflect new risks.

  1. The northern satellite project office at Wyong has experienced some issues with the establishment of software and telecommunications infrastructure. The software issue has been addressed and interim arrangements have been established for temporary telecommunications. The COL high-speed telecommunications are expected to be installed and operational during September, which will eliminate the need for the temporary arrangements.

  1. Acceptance Testing Protocol has been finalised. Preparation for the UAT has commenced. Addressing issues related to remote site, eg, GIS integration, different emails

  1. Established the User Acceptance Testing teams for the acceptance testing of Councils Online before roll-out at Councils. A launch event is planned for mid September.

  1. Internet Strategy finalised after involvement from a broad cross-section of Council representatives. From this work the impacts on COL were derived and the Portal conceptual design progressed which is inclusive of the constituent interaction portal and the employee portal. There is expected to be 5-7 portal views established to reflect security requirements and the various user types.

  1. Monitored the progress of data cleansing at each Council. While this is the responsibility of each individual Council, the lack of completeness of data cleansing could have negative impacts on COL.

  1. Developed a database of Council Related Projects that either impact COL or are impacted by COL. Initial analysis produced 260 candidate projects which was reduced to 21 either related to 1 Council or in common in one or more Councils. Each has been allocated to a Council PM for the development of action plans. These will be monitored closely and reported on weekly at the Project Managers meeting.

  1. CGEY continuing to co-operate with business process areas that are clearly outside the scope of the contract with the Syndicate as they relate to:
  • Waste Management process
  • Development of Workers Compensation functionality
  • Data Conversion

Coming 2 Months
  1. While the design phase was either completed or near completion at the end of August, should issues arise that represent unacceptable design, then the Syndicate intends to maintain the position that these be rectified.

  1. Finalise with CGEY what constitutes a disaster for the purposes of initiating the Business Continuity Arrangement under the contract.

  1. Continue to monitor the progress of data cleansing at each Council.

  1. Commence the development of user acceptance testing cases, scenarios and scripts

3Contract Management Activities

This consists of the key activities of the Syndicate Project Manager and the Council Project Managers in the administration of the contract for the past 2 months, and other upcoming activities.

Project to Date
  1. The Syndicates legal advisors have previously endorsed back-to-back agreements between CGEY and their sub-contractors in terms of licence novation provisions. After receiving feedback from CGEY’s legal advisors, the Syndicates legal advisors have now reassessed the nature of the novation arrangement. The Syndicates legal advisors now believe that the Deed of Novation should include:
  • Software licence,
  • Software maintenance and support, and
  • Source code in escrow.

  1. Subject to the finalisation of the above, arrange Deeds of Novation to be signed by each Council, CGEY and each of their sub-contractors

  1. Negotiated, in part, with Geac for the provision of data extraction services from TCS to populate COL.

  1. Reconfirmed with CGEY for the inclusion of data conversion services by their sub-contractors when these services were not included in the contract between the Syndicate and CGEY

  1. All invoices due as at 15 Sept approved for payment by all Councils.

Coming 2 Months
  1. Monitor the effectiveness and completeness of the data extraction of TCS data by Geac.

  1. As further data requirements for COL are understood then the extension of the Geac TCS data extraction services will be negotiated.

  1. Ensure that Deliverables are on time and of an acceptable standard before recommending payments to CGEY

  1. Progress the development and signing of the Deed of Novation

4Stream Activities

The intention here is to highlight the key achievements and milestones achieved in the past 2 months, and to advise of the major milestones planned for the next 2 months.

4.1All Streams

The following are the key activities that generally relate to all the business process streams.

Project to Date
  1. Either finalised or about to finalise the detailed business process designs for the future state down to the lowest of the 6 levels being:
  • Mega process
  • Major process
  • Process
  • Sub-process
  • Activity
  • Task

  1. Developed a detailed description of the integration requirement between Geographical Information Systems and COL, mapped back to the specification requirements as contained in Schedule 2 to the contract. Awaiting feedback from CGEY

  1. Planning for Conference Room Pilot 2, which is intended to be more of an acceptance event rather than a design event, is well under way now that design is nearing, or in some cases, complete.

  1. CGEY, in conjunction Council Core Team members, have completed the Development Register which documents all the software development required for COL such as:
  • Integration
  • Conversion
  • Customised reports
  • Enhanced functionality, and
  • Workflow

  1. Some concerns raised regarding compliance with Schedule 2 specifications. Core Team advised that no requirements are to be signed away without approval of PM’s and GM’s.

  1. Data mapping of source data, generally TCS, to the destination tables as defined in the CV040’s completed for most streams. This enables the data to be extracted and trial conversions to be undertake so as to ultimately populate COL just before going live.

Coming 2 Months
  1. Conduct Conference Room Pilot 2 in late September. Some possible delays to ensure that the solution build is well progress so as to ensure success of the event.

  1. Commence the training of Council user acceptance testers in anticipation of User Acceptance Testing commencing December 2003.

  1. Commence building Councils Online based on the finalised design evolving from all streams

  1. Conduct unit, integration and system testing as Councils Online is delivered

  1. Commence Phase 2 design work

4.2Assets & Supply

This Stream consists of those Council activities related to the management of assets and purchasing.

Project to Date
  1. The mega-processes that are included in this Work Stream are as follows:
  • Asset Life-cycle Management
  • Project Management
  • Works Estimating
  • Plant & Equipment Hires
  • Asset Leasing Out
  • Purchase to Pay
  • Inventory & Stores Management

  1. The ASM team relocated to the new satellite office situated in Wyong

  1. Conducted the CRP1 sessions at the HP Riverside premises and completed by 18 July 2003.

  1. Conducted a Data Migration briefing for the Data Migration Managers from each Council at Parrammatta Council

  1. Mapped Schedule 2 requirements, where possible to a task flow

  1. Modelled inputs & outputs for all Mega Processes for all streams in Holosofx Process Modelling Tool

  1. Completed documentation of Functional Spec use cases to provide to the Technical Team for: Purchase Order layout, Cheque print, EFT remittance, EFT payments, Fax-enabled Purchase Order, Asset reporting, Purchase Order /Accounts Payable distribution customisation, Project Accounting integration to KRONOS

  1. Conducted cross-stream meetings with MS & People to address Schedule 2 requirements

  1. Meetings took place between Assets & Supply Stream and other Streams to identify integration points.

  1. Conducted Project Management Champion workshop to clarify CRP1 decisions and identify items to be decided at a Joint Finance A&SM Champion’s Workshop

  1. Conducted a series of Asset Champion Workshops to confirm CRP1 decisions and develop the attributes to be assigned to items in the Mat-man Equipment Register

  1. Ran A&SM/ MS joint champion workshop to clarify issues with major impacts on both streams

Coming 2 Months
  1. Confirming Schedule 2 is covered in BR100 and Task Level Mapping.

  1. Commence documentation of Functional Spec use Cases to provide to the Technical team

  1. Work with each of the work streams to identify key Organisation Impacts on each of the 5 Councils

  1. Finalise remaining functional specifications

4.3People

This Stream consists of those Council activities related to the management of the employees of Council from recruitment to payroll.

Project to Date
  1. The mega-process that is included in this Work Stream is as follows:
  • Hire to Retire

  1. Preparation for CRP1 (Conference Room Pilot 1), including set up of the CRP1 Oracle server, scenario testing and CRP dry runs.

  1. Successful delivery of the Oracle Core HR, Oracle Recruitment and Kronos Time and Attendance CRP’s.

  1. Feedback and event evaluation for all CRP’s has been conducted. All future issues and action items have been recorded, and a plan formulated for CRP2.

  1. Kronos Payrule survey was completed

  1. Integration specifications from Hire to Retire applications (Oracle HR, Oracle Payroll, Kronos Time and Attendance and Intaz SafeTsmart) to other Councils Online Applications have been completed.

  1. Began to prototype the entire solution that will be demonstrated in CRP2

  1. Integration Specifications finalised

  1. Began the development of Use Case Specifications that need to be delivered for Phase 1

  1. Recruitment, Core HR workshop were held to finalise open issues that were found in CRP 1

  1. Core HR workshop was held to finalise templates and look ups that will be used for the Councils Online solution.

  1. Use Cases developed

Coming 2 Months
  1. Development of set up documentation

  1. HR, Payroll and Kronos set up in Development Environment

  1. Locking down of Use Cases

  1. Further development of Security Documentation

4.4Management Support

Project to Date
  1. The mega-processes that are included in this Work Stream are as follows:
  • Finance to Manage
  • Cash Management to Treasury
  • Development Contribution to Completion
  • Information to Plan
  • Application to Acquittal
  • Agenda to Action
  • Receive to Retrieve

  1. Cash Management (Bank Reconciliation) joined with the Assets & Supply Group in their presentation to the Finance Champions. Finance to Manage and Development Contribution to Completion, Application to Acquittal and Information to Plan CRP’s completed.

  1. The Chart of Accounts working group made steady progress in developing the Chart and tested the original Chart assumptions. To date, they have established Expenditure and Income Accounts and the Balance Sheet for Assets and Liabilities.

  1. Meetings with Champions have identified Chart of Accounts commonality, structures and responsibilities between the 5 Councils. There have also been discussions on the Organisational hierarchy of the Chart of Accounts.

  1. Progressed the Chart of Accounts elements and reporting required to deliver the financial statements/ management reporting. Decision process supported by GM’s.

  1. Work on the translation of our Future Process Models into the Holosofx modelling tool has been finalised

  1. Workshop that focused on future CRM and EDMS business integration was held. Outcome was very positive and will see a very efficient process implemented to support the recording of written service requests in Trim while tracking all customer interaction via Oracle CRM.

  1. Proposals developed for around Payroll costing, maintenance costing and overhead allocation

  1. Continuing to develop process documentation – another level of refinement

  1. A lot of effort has gone into the preparation of more detailed Impact Statements for the Change Management Stream.

  1. Developed Task and Activity diagrams for each of the sub-processes

  1. Reviewed Schedule 2 for compliance

  1. Developed Data Conversion requirements (and site specific work)

Coming 2 Months
  1. Ongoing QA of task models and deliverables

  1. Finalisation of the Chart of Accounts and the use of segments

4.5Service Management and Constituent Interaction

Project to Date
  1. The mega-processes that are included in this Work Stream are as follows:
  • Services to Cash
  • Maintain to Rate
  • Calculate to Rate
  • Waste to Disposal
  • Meter to Cash
  • Enquire to Return
  • Register to Monitor
  • Book to Function
  • Apply to Complete
  • Title to Parcel
  • Register to Inter

  1. CRP1 addressed about 80% of the business processes, based on scenario scripts that were handled by the principal software application for that business process. The integration between other software applications will be addressed as part of CRP 2.

  1. Core Team members checked that development of the solution remained consistent with the Specification Schedule 2 and with the previously agreed Leading Practices and Process Models. Any potential gaps identified were referred for discussion with the Design Authority.

  1. Randwick City Council has recently acquired hand-held software for Waste Mgt route optimising using blue-tooth enabled GPS and way-point identification. This is best described as a cross between the route mapping advisory systems found in some hire or luxury cars and the navigation GPS used in sailing craft.

  1. Preparations are under way for the development of scenarios for CRP2, which will be held during the period 18 to 25 September 2003. The preparations include the writing of Integration Test Scripts, writing of System Test Scripts within each module, mapping the requirements of Schedule 2 of the contract specification with the Development Register and the configuration documents (BR100) for each application.

  1. Process owners completed the Task and Activity document (BP90), which details the relationships between cross-stream processes and entry of task level data. This involved further flow diagrams used in conjunction with the Holosofx models that depict inputs and outputs. The data now contained in Holosofx includes the Processes, Sub Processes, Inputs & Outputs, Process Descriptions and Sub-process ID numbers.

  1. Core Team were involved in Solution Design and Data Mapping workshops with the GEAC Pathway consultants. The sessions determined those TCS parameters that will require a translation table, from which GEAC’s data analysts can migrate existing data into the respective fields in Pathway.
The sessions also reviewed those fields in TCS that may have data that is either not current or inappropriately coded. This data needs to be identified by Councils, and reviewed in conjunction with the Core Team process owner, to determine if it would be better saved on disc as historic data or whether it would have a more appropriate recipient field in Pathway, subject to selection of the relevant parameter and code.
  1. Following the Pathway data mapping session, Core Team members have been busy developing translation tables with GEAC’s Pathway consultants. This work involved taking information from TCS as provided by G5 councils and ensuring that data held in TCS parameters and codes would be able to be migrated to parameters in Pathway and that proposed rate types and codes would provide recipient fields in Pathway for data migration.
Where the Pathway module is of a totally different structure, existing data may not be suitable for conversion and in these cases, a cost benefit comparison needs to be made to assess the cost of writing a script for data migration versus the cost to key in data.
  1. For Constituent Interaction the following has been completed
  • Finalising the structure of Service Request Types, Problem Codes, and Task Types
  • Rethinking how we can best use Severity, Urgency, and Priority fields
  • Working on how to set up Workflow and Escalations
  • Investigating other features of Oracle – eg. Assignment Manager, Territory Manager, Service Intelligence

  1. Core Team have been working on analysing how best to format Service Request Types and Problem Codes but also on a number of documents.
  • Use Case (functional specifications) for integration with Mat-Man
  • Use Case for the integration with TRIM
  • Use Case for Workflow
  • Task and Activity Statement, which breaks down the Future Process Model to another level
  • Detailed Impact Statement which focuses on impacts in terms of Communication, Education, Training and Staff
  • Application Set Up document on exactly how the system will be configured
  • Update the Development Register

  1. Core Team members have been preparing the Impact Statement document to flag those elements of the business process which will have a Low, Medium or High impact in either the People, Process or Technology sectors.

  1. CRM proof of concept (POC) for outstanding design issues presented and agreed upon by CI champions. Outstanding integration issue between Doc. Mgt. and CRM resolved.

  1. Workshops for Cemetery/Waste and Application/ Licencing took place on 26 August. Security Profiles 1st draft finalised. Started Business Mapping, Business Scenarios and scripts.

  1. Report use cases delivered for Complete Customer Case.

  1. Successful meeting with GEAC on number of issues, namely cNAR.

Coming 2 Months
  1. Continue addressing the single solution approach via configuration session with champions.

  1. Finalise deliverables
- Business Mapping.
- Final review of Impact Statements
  1. Prepare for CRP 2 and integration testing

4.6Technical

Project to Date
  1. Worked through the first batch of Use Case specifications to begin the job of Use Case realisation

  1. Commissioned the development hardware and application software environments for technology and the business streams, taking the Wyong move into account.

  1. As CRP have been running, we have assisted with software patches where required

  1. Made interim environments available for the Streams

  1. Begun loading application software on the Development Environment

  1. Agreed a common plan for Data Migration

  1. Begun planning the Architectural Proof of Concept

  1. Refined the Technical Integration Architecture

  1. Refined the way to solve cNAR and have locked in Design of cNAR

  1. Begun prioritisation of the Development Build Plan

  1. Delivered the Integration Proof of Concept to the Team and Council PMs

  1. Delivered the Portal SSO Proof of Concept to the Team and Councils PMs

  1. Produced initial cuts of the Test Scripts

  1. Worked with the Functional Streams to further refine Use Cases

  1. Began Development of Integration Use Cases

  1. Prepared Test Scripts for Use Cases

  1. Produced an updated Environments Plan

  1. Liased with Vendors to further design Portal / SSO

  1. Resolved some of the outstanding data migration issues and clarified scope of Data Migration programs

  1. Have agreed the Scope of Architectural POC

  1. Ascertained all stream environments requirements

Coming 2 Months
  1. NT Server Testing

  1. Data conversion programs started

  1. cNAR build started

  1. Portal development continuing with more input from the Syndicate.

  1. Development Register to be finalised and detailed resource plan to be developed to address all development work.

4.7Organisational Change Management

Project to Date
  1. A strategy has been developed to keep the Councils Online website up to date

  1. The results of the May 2003 Communications Survey at each Council have been analysed with positive results and communicated to project management

  1. Communication plans are being revised and revisited by the Change Managers

  1. Change Advocate Network (CAN) meetings continue with top 5 issues being raised

  1. Received Detailed Impact Statements from each stream to aid in developing Change Management action plans

  1. CRP 1 feedback sessions have been finalised by the Change Managers with the feedback collated and communicated to the Project Managers and Stream Leaders. This feedback is being used in planning for CRP2

  1. The Councils Online newsletter has been distributed to all Council staff

  1. Work continues on the Learning Plan

  1. Planning discussions around training environments have been conducted with the Database Administrators

  1. Development of an Oracle Tutor strategy for business procedures and training materials has been finalised and agreed by the Stream Leaders

  1. The Councils are continuing with the identification of End User Trainers along with User Acceptance Testers, while the Stream Leaders focus on the identification of Trainers for the Train the Trainer sessions.

Coming 2 Months
  1. Issue the monthly newsletters

  1. More detailed planning of the upcoming training will be undertaken and nominations for the roles of trainers will be sought.

  1. Continue to plan and implement change initiatives

5Deliverables Achieved

A fundamental tenet of the contract is that the implementation plan, acceptance of the solution and payments are all linked to the provision and sign-off of pre-determined Deliverables. It is these Deliverables that provide visibility of project progress and acceptability. As such the following provides a status of the all Deliverable due during July and August.