BY mid-month,, at least 40 staffers from the Mayor and City Council’s (M&CC) Information Technology (IT) Department and Treasurer’s Department among others, will have received complementary training for what is expected to further modernise City Hall’s service provision through better computerisation of its operations.For the next two weeks, four staffers will be trained daily by Richard Langford, head of Innosys, a local software company developing a new method to help improve the council’s financial management capabilities.
The Revenue Collection and Management System (RCMS) is said to be 80 perecent complete and is expected to be running in a matter of weeks. Adunni Christian, the Council’s Network Administrator, said that RCMS has been in the making for some time and its primary aim was to “tighten council’s accountability and handling of revenue.”
He said that there were many benefits associated with the system, particularly in the area of revenue collection, transaction/information management and customer service.
Christian explained that currently, the council’s system was an old version and was extremely limited in the number of tasks that could be performed at one time. He pointed out that while RCMS will be a “response web-based application,” the existing system was desktop based, meaning that whatever was done could only be accessed on that particular computer. For example, it was mentioned that the collection of rates and taxes was presently done by one cashier, since the desktop application for that transaction is on that particular computer and cannot be easily accessed by other systems. This hampers the movement of information, wastes time and creates long customer lines.
Christian said that, “This new software seeks to adjust those constraints by allowing multiple cashiers to access the software [while]at the same time allowing for better service.” He said it would also ease the lines that customers sometimes endure.
Outside of this, the software allows authorities to better track all revenue movements and access information through better system integration. Christian related that the Treasurer’s Department, the custodians that oversee every transaction in the Council would be better able to manage all monies coming in and going out. They will also be able to see the movement of every transaction and its facilitator.
Other RCMS benefits, the administrator noted, included the accommodation of payment options with financial institutions; the management of municipal subventions and disbursements; accuracy through validation and verification; employee productivity tracker; reduction of paperwork and possible loss of client information. It also facilitates information for better decision-making.
Hit by many financial hurdles in the past, Town Clerk Royston King said that Council was interested in solidifying its accountability and transparency capabilities as part of its image-improvement programme.
“Many things have been said in the past, and the idea of corruption at the council seems stuck in people’s minds.” King said, “It is the administration’s job to reform our image just as we have reformed our city. This software seeks to help us be accountable to our citizens.”