Business Improvement Districts
An online reporting portal for the Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) has been created to assist in the timely submission and completion of required BID reports. This reporting tool turned a formerly manual process into an efficient, automated system that reduces processing time and reduces calculation errors to ensure accurate alignment with each BIDs Management District Plan. Our goal is to continue to enhance the portal to include invoice and payment tracking. Creating an automated, transparent system around Business Improvement District applications and payment processes will keep pace with increasing expectations of responsiveness and immediate access to information. We also plan to complete a sustainable Branding and Marketing Public Information Campaign for the BID Program that benefits all businesses in the City and expands opportunities to participate in the BID system.
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Council and Public Services
In addition to expanding the use of electronic signatures and forms, we will continue to streamline Council and Public Services by working toward the creation of an online portal to collect and append public comments to their related Council agenda items. Currently, this is a time consuming, manual process. We have also started developing a concept for a digital transformation of the Council File Management System (CFMS) which will combine current silo software systems into one modern solution that will improve the user experience. Innovation funds have been awarded for this project by the City’s Innovation and Performance Commission.
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Elections
The consolidation of municipal elections with the County of Los Angeles in 2020 requires pre/post planning which spans a minimum of 5 years (2019 to 2023 - 2 election cycles). We will collaborate with the County by assisting with vote center locations and outreach. Our goal is to improve candidate filing, ensure voter accessibility, and ensure that both voters and candidates in the City and LAUSD can easily acclimate to changes taking place at the polls. We plan to send Get-Out-the-Vote text messages and email reminders to voters beginning in 2020.
We are also exploring ways to standardize neighborhood council (NC) election processes, both internally (operations) and externally (public-facing). Our long-term goal is to offer NCs a variety of service options, which may include: online voting, vote-by-mail, touchscreen voting, vote centers, and poll pass, an interactive sample ballot where voting selections are captured on a computer or cell phone and taken to the polls to be cast. Efforts to reduce wait-time at the polls using poll books is already underway.
Records Management
The Records Management Division seeks to find a suitable location near its current warehouse to store an additional 124,000 boxes on-site, reducing the City’s commercial storage expense by $300,000 per year. 28,000 feet of floor space is required, along with storage racks and a record tracking system. In addition to space efficiencies, the division is working toward scanning all Council files back to 1980 to coincide with the inception of the original Council File Index, now known as the CFMS.
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Administrative Services
We are committed to simplifying our services and reducing processing time and paperwork by utilizing electronic forms and signatures wherever possible. Trust fund accounting and contracting will be streamlined and analyzed for consistency among each section. New employees will participate in a simple onboarding process that is well-organized, welcoming and informative. Training will be provided to current and prospective supervisors to demystify civil service rules and reinforce the department’s philosophy on a healthy and productive management program that includes the supervisor-employee relationship. The future of the NC Funding Program includes providing an even more robust funding portal where all budget, contract, special event, and inventory information is readily available to the NCs and viewable to the public online. A long term project for NC Funding is to enhance training delivery by providing an online training video library for NC financial officers and stakeholders.
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Systems Innovations
The Systems Division will continue to support the Office of the City Clerk and City Council processes by creating new, and modifying existing, applications to enhance the user experience, maximize accountability, and reduce manual processes. All department staff will be moved to Windows 10 by 2020 in response to Windows 2007 no longer being supported by Microsoft after that date. A long range goal is to create a Citywide contract portal, as an extension of CFMS, that will be searchable by all City departments and the public.
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