IT Governance Business Case
Enhancing the Contract and Agenda Workflows
Enterprise Initiative
Background
The City of Durham has been leveraging OnBase for over 20 years, beginning with the City Clerk's Office using the system as a document management system. Over the years beginning in the early 2000s, the agenda, policy, and contract workflows were migrated to the system in attempt to automate the processes as much as possible. Over the years, OnBase has undergone several upgrades for compliance reasons only, only updating the versions of the outdated software but not enhancing the functionality or capability on the modern version of the OnBase software.
The agenda workflow, however, has several components that exist outside of the OnBase environment. The agenda and accompanying documents are transferred to the Granicus system, where the information is made readily available to City Council members during their meetings using iLegislate.
Additionally, the agenda is published for public consumption on CivicPlus website.
Current Business Problem
Business Problem 1: The contract and agenda workflows need enhancements to their processes. The OnBase clients' needs to be upgraded to enable the capability to enhance the current workflows using a modern user-friendly interface.
Business Problem 2: The agenda workflow, with its several components outside of the agenda item approval process, has proven to be inefficient and time consuming, coming at high opportunity cost to the Agenda Coordinator and City Manager's Office, due to the fact we were using a custom developed script that prevented us from modernizing the system. The custom script was eliminated after adoption of CivicPlus, but the process remained manual.
Current Pain Points
•The OnBase client being utilized for the contract and agenda workflows is outdated and in need of upgrade
•The contract and agenda workflows are both in need of process re-engineering within OnBase to streamline and approve the workflow processes
•The lack of integration between OnBase and Granicus for the agenda process has resulted in time consuming manual processes to transfer the agenda and accompanying documents from one system to the other
•The current requirements needed for uploading items into Granicus are complicated and time-consuming
•The backend of the agenda workflow process involves three different systems (OnBase, Granicus, and CivicPlus) which currently have limited integration and need to be automated to ensure accurate and timely completion
•The agenda coordinator position has experienced high turnover, resulting in the need for an automated process to ease the learning curve of job responsibility for new coordinator as well as the ability for someone to complete their agenda process with little to no impact on human resource during position vacancy
Desired Business Value
City of Durham's Strategic Plan Goal:
Goal 4: Innovative & High Performing Organization
Objective 4.3: Strengthen Interdepartmental Collaboration and Communications
Initiative 4.33: Enhance interdepartmental collaboration in the development review process
TS Objective 3: Maintain and modernize all the City's assets to align to the evolving and emerging technologies in the marketplace for City's business units
Future State Benefits
• Improved contract and agenda workflows
• Up-to-date OnBase client with increase configurability
• Integration between OnBase and Granicus
• Automated backend agenda process, streamlining Agenda Coordinator responsibilities and decreasing burden on City Manager's Office
Analysis of OnBase Upgrade
• The TS Project Management Office has been leading a project to upgrade OnBase clients to the newer version of OnBase to allow for enhancement of the various workflows, including the policy, contract, and agenda workflows
• To date, the policy client has been upgraded and workflow enhanced
• The contract and agenda clients remain needing an upgrade at which time Navient will work with key stakeholders to revise the business rules to ensure the system workflows meet business requirements
• Upgrading to the new unity client will allow for increased configurability in the system to allow for easier future changes
Analysis of OnBase & Granicus Integration Options
• While Granicus has API capability and documentation, Granicus has expressed that they will not provide support for establishing the API connection or maintaining it. The responsibility would fall 100% on the City of Durham
Application Programming Interface (API) Integration Robotic Process Automation (Hyland RPA) Integration Automated Transfer of Documents Yes Yes Ability to Reformat Documents No Yes Requires Collaboration between Navient & Granicus Yes No Scalable to other systems No Yes Scalable to other key processes No Yes Dependent on Systems Yes No Professional Services $15,590.25 $15,590.25 Recurring Cost $0.00 $10,000
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• What is RPA?: RPA, or Robotic Process Automation is a lightweight Information Technology business process management tool that can automate workflows to improve process outcomes and efficiency. It accomplishes this by capturing routine manual processes and performing the work in a fraction of the time it would take a human resource. There is no physical robot in RPA, but software bots that interact with applications as if they were human users to perform routine, repetitive work in any industry.
• InfoTech Research Group Insight: "RPA's sweet spot is "swivel chair automation": processes that require human workers to act as a conduit between several systems, moving between applications, manually keying, re-keying, copying, pasting information. A bot can take their place."
• This insight speaks to the very need of the City Manager Office's business problem and pain points associated with the backend agenda workflow process for the Agenda Coordinator
I am so glad I deployed RPA!
RPA Bot, Please complete agenda process Download agenda items from OnBase Upload agenda items to Granicus Publish agenda to CivicPlus
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Is RPA artificial intelligence? While RPA solutions can be combined or enhanced with the use of AI, at its core RPA is robotics, programmed to completed processes based on business rules. Rulesbased RPA, without integration of AI, is mature and makes a stronger case for business processes with low-risk appetites
• Benefits of RPA?:
• Comprehensive process insight: documented log of RPA bot activities
• Improved employee experience: free human resource for more appropriate decision-based tasks
• Reduce costs: automated process free up human resource capacity and in cases save money
• Scalability: RPA bots can be scaled to more than one process
• Process compliance: RPA bots will follow prescribed business rules precisely
• Flexibility and Agility: Processes can change, and an RPA bot is easily reconfigured and is not dependent on systems
• Speed: Processes that may take days or hours can be completed within minutes by an RPA bot
Analysis of Alternative Solution to Integration: Migrate Agenda Workflow to
• Granicus is a platform designed to aid governments in communicating and sharing with their constituents as well as providing comprehensive solutions for key governmental processes to increase efficiency
• Granicus OneMeeting is a platform of Granicus' that has agenda automation and meeting management components
• The City of Durham currently has components of Granicus implemented for agenda and meeting management and for streaming council meetings to the public
• Granicus OneMeeting can meet the needs of the entire agenda workflow, as well continue meeting the needs of live streaming and meeting management
• Implementation Costs = $8,614.00
• Additional Licensing Fees = $45,008.75 annually
• There would be additional costs for data migration
• Licensing costs are in addition to existing $36,556.00 annual fees
• Total Cost of Ownership = $81,564.75 annually
Granicus OneMeeting
Pros:
• Centralized platform for 100% of agenda and meeting management
• No need for integration between workflow and meeting management systems
Cons:
• Large enterprise change management initiative amid other larger projects
• Separate system for workflows, decentralizing operations
• Increased cost for process & to Granicus contract
• Longer timeline for implementation
Recommended Solution Part 1:
Proceed with upgrade of OnBase clients and enhancements to contract and agenda workflows
Description
The TS Project Management Office currently has an ongoing project with Navient to upgrade OnBase which has been completed for the policy workflow. This approval would extend to the contract and agenda workflows as well.
Pros
• Improved contract and agenda workflows
• Increased configurability of workflows
• Up-to-date OnBase client
Cons
• High opportunity cost for training to all City OnBase users
Recommended Solution Part 2: Implement Hyland
RPA to streamline and automate the backend agenda process
Description
Hyland RPA is a robotic process automation tool which can automate repetitive and process-oriented tasks, substantially minimizing completion time and allowing reallocation of human capital to more important tasks
Pros
• Automated process for agenda coordinator for migrating documents and agenda from OnBase to Granicus
• Can be extended to automate agenda coordinator process for uploading agenda to Civic Plus
• RPA bot can be extended to other process-oriented tasks within City Manager's Office for automation
• RPA flexibility for future use and systems changes. RPA is not system specific.
Cons
• N/A
Security Review
OnBase Upgrade:
• OnBase is already in production and therefore did not require a security review by the vCISO.
Hyland RPA:
• The vCISO indicated that the RPA solution is of low risk to the City, if the vendor recommended security settings are put into place. The vCISO added that if these settings are configured, then the technology is mature, secure, and stable.
Architecture Review
OnBase Upgrade:
• OnBase is already in production and therefore did not require an architecture review as it meets the architectural standards for the City of Durham.
Hyland RPA
• Hyland RPA meets the architectural standards for the City of Durham.
Architecture Review
Hyland RPA
Recommended Solution - Project Financial Estimate
COST ESTIMATES FUNDING Description Implementation Costs (Hours) Post Implementation Run Costs (Hours)/ KTLO Departmental Funding Amount: $ 64,738.00 Labor $ (Hours) Internal TS Department: 295 Hours Funding Requested (Y/N): Y Business Analysis 25 Hours hours Internal Labor New FTE – Year 1 Costs $0.00 IT Support & Cyber Security Analysis 5 hours hours Project One Time Costs (External) $142,750.55 PMO Implementation 140 hours hours Less Existing Project Funding ($64,738.00) Data Center Services 25 hours *Total Project Funding Requested for Year 1 $78,012.55 TS Implementation (EAS, WAS) 100 hours City Manager's Office (RPA Design & Training) 16 hours City Manager's Office (Agenda Workflow Update/Process Discovery) 40 hours Enterprise Training 8 hours per attendee Recurring Licensing Cost (OnBase + RPA) $14,464.00 External Labor $: $0.00 Professional Services: Contract and Agenda Workflow $112,696.30 Professional Services: RPA Configuration $15,590.25 Non-Labor $ RPA Licensing $10,000.00 $10,000.00 OnBase Software Annual Licensing (Contract & Agenda): $4,464.00 $4,464.00 * Total Project Funding Requested Year 1 includes New FTE Labor, External Labor and Non Labor
Risk Identification
Description of Risk Risk Impact (High/Medium/Low) Mitigated (Y/N) Contingency(Y/N) Vendor performance High Y N Cyber Security Low N N Project Team Turnover Low N N Poor Execution High Y N
Mitigation Risk (Costs)
• Alpha & Beta Testing will be completed on the RPA development prior to paying developer for RPA licensing
Contingency Risk (Costs)
• N/A
Our ask
We are asking the IT Governance Steering Committee to approve the business case to move forward with the OnBase upgrade to facilitate the contract and agenda workflow enhancements and to implement Hyland RPA to automate transfer of agenda documents between OnBase, Granicus and Civic Plus.