London city hall still not using costly custom IT software to track social housing

A multi-city partnership meant to streamline the tracking of social housing programs has instead been mired in a bureaucratic blackhole.

In 2011, city staff decided that London would lead an eight-community partnership dubbed the Collaborative Housing Initiative (CHI) to develop a custom-made software package for social housing administrators.

“The proposed software was to be developed to manage housing waitlists, rent supplements, provide a portal for housing providers and provide reporting tools to simplify annual reporting to the province,” read a new report to the Community and Protective Services (CAPS) Committee.

Twelve years later, only Hamilton and the Region of Waterloo have partially rolled out the software.

The Regional Municipality of York left the CHI for unexplained reasons in May, 2022.

The CHI also includes Windsor, Chatham-Kent, Halton Region and Ottawa.

London has not launched the software despite contributing $361,750 of the $2.6-million spent by the consortium since 2011.

“The City currently has a version of the software and is undertaking preliminary assessment prior to embarking on a full testing plan,” the report explained.

Collaborative Housing Initiative Expenses (Source: City of London)

CONCERNS RAISED ABOUT HOW THE PROJECT HAS PROGRESSED

• The IT Department warns that the software development does not aligned with current technology and project management processes
• Regulatory changes since software development began mean “even if industry project management best practices were followed this project would have required significant change requests whenever new legislation was changed.”
• Collaborating with a large group of municipalities with different systems and priorities can be extremely challenging when creating a custom software product
• The last update to city council was provided in February, 2015

A TIMELINE OF THE PROJECT

• December 2011 - council notified by staff that London would lead CHI partnership
• April 2013 to January 2014 - council approves $200,000 and delegates authority to the Managing Director, Housing Social Services and Dearness Home to execute further agreements
• January 2014 to January 2017 - London signs consortium agreement, a software developer chosen through competitive bidding, a change order agreement clarifies scope
• January 2017 to March 2023 - London & Middlesex Community Housing (LMCH) provided oversight as a technical resource partner, a Governance Group met monthly from 2017-2019 to discuss software developer’s outputs

However, there is a three year gap in the record of recent activities.

“Further review is underway to determine the scope of activities between 2020 and 2022,” the report stated. “There is lack of readily available project management documentation related to this period.”

Posted as a late addition to the agenda of council’s Community and Protective Services Committee, the staff report concluded, “Despite the challenges identified, the intended outcome of the software will add value to the administration of community and affordable housing at the City of London.”

Specifically, the report claimed that the system will simplify preparation of the Service Manager Annual Information Report to the province by having the required information in a single software system.

Civic administration intends to start providing quarterly reports to city council beginning this fall.

The CAPS Committee will consider the report on May 2.