A handful of London, Ont., city councillors are ready to cut ties immediately but most say they need more information before deciding whether to continue with a multi-million dollar custom social housing software project that’s been in development for about a decade
Debate over the fate of the Integrated Housing System reached full council on Tuesday, two weeks after councillors received the first update on the project since 2015 at a meeting of the Community and Protectives Services Committee.
The idea for the custom software project, meant to replace Excel sheets and Word documents, began in December 2011 and was confirmed in 2014 when London signed an agreement with Windsor, Hamilton, Waterloo, Chatham-Kent, York, Halton and Ottawa. The consortium of service managers was dubbed the Housing Collaborative Initiative (HCI).
Since that time, Hamilton and Waterloo have partially rolled out the software while York has exited the consortium entirely.
As of May 2, the project has cost $2,605,224 with London contributing $361,750 of that total.
At a committee meeting earlier this month, staff had said they would prepare a report accounting for every dollar spent and investigating whether to continue with the project, but Ward 2 Coun. Shawn Lewis is ready to back out of the consortium immediately.
“I can’t support this. I’m going to be blunt,” Lewis said at Tuesday’s full council meeting.
“At some point there are decisions that have to be made about when it’s appropriate to cut bait. And I think we have invested far too much in this software for the value that we will get from it even once it is, assuming it ever does come to completion.”
Ward 1 Coun. Hadleigh McAlister expressed similar sentiments and raised concerns about the software potentially being obsolete once it’s finally live.
“I think we would be better suited to cancel, look for a new tender and develop something that could actually be implemented in a timely fashion.”
While she stressed that she does not “want to be committed to making this work just because we’ve put money into it,” Ward 4 Coun. Susan Stevenson argued that it’s worth it to wait for more information before making a decision, especially since waiting a few months longer won’t have a major financial impact.
“My understanding is that, as sort of unfortunate situation that we’re in with this, is that there is no more ‘pouring in’ of money.”
Director of municipal housing development Matt Feldberg confirmed that the software component is a fixed-price contract and the contract with the consultant was renewed back in February for two years.
It’s also unclear at this time how much it would cost to pull out of the project.
“We would provide that as part of the report,” deputy city manager Scott Mathers began, “to be able to let you know if there’s a way to exit the contract and what the cost would be to do so.”
When asked by Lewis about how many staff hours are involved in preparing the report, Mathers said staff are working to determine whether it’s appropriate to move forward and the work involved in that would also provide the information necessary to “identify the requirements for anything that would come beyond this.”
“It’s valuable work to do so I’m not overly concerned about the staff component. From the consulting perspective and having the project manager still online, (I) have some preliminary numbers, approximately $8,000 per month to be able to have that back and forth.”
Mathers also told council that “if this was a project that started today, this would not be happening” but that it provides a learning opportunity for staff and highlights the need to look at other legacy projects to ensure that “we are going back and having some accountability on those as well.”
Ward 8 Coun. Steve Lehman suggested to fellow councillors that “if it’s not this software package, it’ll probably be some other software package which will require further investment of staff time and additional dollars.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate at this point to make that call right now,” he said, adding that he expects a lot of questions to be answered when staff present their next report.
Councillors voted 10-4 to accept staff recommendations to undertake an accounting of everything the city has spent on the project to date, to investigate the pros and cons of continuing with the project and to have more transparency from the governance group on the status of the project.
Councillors McAlister, Lewis, Ward 3 Coun. Peter Cuddy and Ward 6 Coun. Sam Trosow voted nay while Coun. Steven Hilliar was absent.
An amendment from Stevenson to have staff commit to completing the next report by the end of September was passed unanimously.
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