Technology in Government, May/June 2004, Vol. 11 No. 4

Kenora partners with Imex Systems for online portal

6/30/2004 2:46:58 PM - Site to provide 'collaborative communication,' as well as e-services

By: Kathleen Sibley

A new municipal Web portal won't be a life-changing experience for residents of Kenora, Ont. But it will make life easier in a lot of ways, says the organization behind the northern city's portal project.

"It's just another convenience; it's not a sweeping change in life," says Don Cameron, chief
administrator of the Lake of the Woods Business Incentive Corp. (LOWBIC).

"If they can get together and have a meeting in a room, that's one thing, but around here we have some distance problems to deal with."

LOWBIC, the organization that provides tourism promotion services to Kenora, a city of 17,000 close to the Manitoba border, is using Mississauga, Ont.-based Imex Systems Inc.'s iCity suite of e-government products, which it launched at the recent MISA 2004 conference in Toronto.

LOWBIC was also interested in developing a Web site that would allow it to conduct e-commerce transactions, but didn't want to take on the project itself, says Cameron.

"Our job is mainly to find funding and to hand it off to them (the city)," he says.

The portal, which is expected to be up and running by August, is a two-year project with Imex Systems. Following the launch, there will be a year of training and working out the kinks, says Cameron.

In addition to the features offered by most second-generation city Web sites, such as bill payment, recreation registration and licence purchases, for example, Kenora's portal will provide what Cameron calls "collaborative communication" capabilities.

That means coaches and sports team organizers will be able to collaborate in chat rooms rather than having to organize telephone conference calls. As well, Kenora plans to provide streaming video functionality for local tourist operators.

Funding for the $850,000 project will come from FedNor's Community Futures Program as well as from the City of Kenora in a 50/50 arrangement, says Cameron.

But getting the city to commit to the project has presented the biggest challenge so far, says Cameron.

"First of all, it was a new concept, and there were a number of people that were either not on computers or the Internet and they're not interested, so there's a knowledge hurdle to climb there," he says.

At the same time, he says, while the benefits in aggregate are good, "it's just a little more convenience. So from their perspective it was just a marginal improvement."

One councillor who wanted to wait for another five years until the city could be really sure it's the right direction to go in voted against providing budget for the project.

The councillor's concern is valid, though, Cameron says. Although 118 residents LOWBIC surveyed on their interest in such a portal supported the idea, he says, "if it went to a plebiscite or something like that I don't think the numbers would be as high."

LOWBIC chose Imex out of six contenders for the project because the firm offered "a good fit for our community. We're not Toronto, we're a small community with less than 20,000 people and we looked for some kind of empathy for our situation."

The deciding factor, however, was that the Imex offering allows the municipality to host the Web site itself.

"The Bell Canada proposal normally asks for them to host it, in which case all your technology problems are solved but it costs you money every time you want to make a change. I think we wanted more control," he says.

According to Shamir Furtado, director of business development at Imex, the iCity portal is a software solution that facilitates electronic service delivery and that is designed to meet the needs of small and mid-sized municipalities. "One of the things we do differently is integrated functionality," says Furtado. "Typically, when you have two or three different services such as recreation and property taxes from one vendor, and you have utilities from another vendor, you have to comply with three to four different vendors." That means an organization has to worry about not just the different technology standards of all the vendors but also the business processes as well, which leads to integration complexities.

"In our case you're looking at a single sign-on and that allows you to access these various e-services so you're dealing with only one vendor," he says. As well, he adds, "As a citizen I don't have to provide my information to multiple vendors."

That single vendor approach also helps when it comes to implementation, he adds. "We build it from scratch so we are aware of every single component."