Palmerston North City Council approves extra $2.5m to replace its finance system

Palmerston North says it new Civica cloud-based finance and regulatory system will give better data reporting. Photo / Freepix

Palmerston North City Council has agreed to spend more on replacing its finance and regulatory system.

The extra $2.5 million brings the total cost for the upgrade to $7.3m.

The finance system is used for everything from paying suppliers and contractors, holding rates billing information, and helping with planning, regulatory and infrastructure-based services such as dog registration, consents and wheelie bins.

The new system, to be provided by Civica, is cloud-based, acting chief executive Chris Dyhrberg says.

It is a critical piece of software that about 80 per cent of council staff need to do their job.

"This technology replacement is necessary as our current system, Ozone, has become outdated. Its provider has indicated it will stop supporting it before long. It is vital we have a robust replacement in place before this occurs."

The new Civica system gives better data reporting, which will help the council understand where it is doing things well and where it can make improvements.

"It will help us provide a better service to the people of Palmy, our customers, through supporting data-driven decisions for improved business and customer interactions with council," Dyhrberg says.

This project began in 2019 through a procurement process to find a replacement.

While some work has been under way during that time, there have been delays, including the pandemic preventing Civica experts from Australia being involved with onsite implementation. Some gaps between the old and the new system were also identified.

Dyhrberg says the council sought an independent review of the project, which looked at its procurement process and recommended the council continue with Civica.

The independent review was done by Deloitte and cost $40,000.

"It was prudent and vital to us that we sought independent advice at this pivotal moment in the project, to provide reassurance to our ratepayers and elected members that we should continue with Civica and commit the added investment needed. Civica is used by many other councils around the country and we've been able to also get valuable reassurance and feedback from them."

The extra $2.5m approved by the council is made up of costs associated with supply chain issues, and more requirements on staff regarding their involvement in the project to ensure the hundreds of different processes for every use of the system are clearly scoped and documented to ensure the new system will be able to do the same - and make improvements.

This work and the pre-implementation phase means the council needs to backfill staff from different parts of the council to work on the project. It also needs some external contractors for specialist technical roles where it doesn't have internal expertise, Dyhrberg says.

As well as moving all the processes, documents and systems onto the new system for launch on July 1, there will also be robust testing and training to ensure the launch is a success and staff know how to use the new system.

This is a Public Interest Journalism funded role through NZ On Air