AMANDA Public Portal to Help Vancouver Automate its Highest Volume Permits and Licenses

Vancouver, BC - July 12, 2011 – CSDC Systems Inc. - a leading provider of business process automation solutions for government agencies, and the City of Vancouver have announced plans for the City to offer online services for some of its permits and licenses using CSDC Systems' AMANDA Public Portal.

In an effort to provide its citizens with permit and license services in the most efficient, effective, reliable and sustainable way possible, the City will offer online self-service for the four highest volume permit and license types. Doing so will enable over 70% (or 135,000) of the City’s permit and license transactions to be available as an online service.

Providing citizens with a convenient one-stop-shop for license and permit issuance, will provide many benefits, including:

• Timelier issuance of permits and licenses (new applicants and renewals) to citizens due to a decrease in the number of manual, paper-based processes.

• Greater opportunity for department staff to focus on customer service with more time available to resolve the issues of exceptional cases.

• Increased cross assignment opportunities, absence coverage, and knowledge transfer attributed to standardization of internal office workflow.

• A reduction in the number of car trips to City Hall by applicants, contributing to the City’s sustainability initiatives (e.g. Greenest City Initiative).

Dog licenses, business licenses, security alarm permits, and residential parking permits will be the four areas of initial focus for the City’s online services initiative. Three departments are responsible for the management of these four permit and license types: Licenses and Inspections, False Alarm Reduction Program, and Engineering Services.

Once implemented, the City’s online service should yield immediate results. For instance, the Licenses and Inspections Department has 55 staff members who process approximately 70,000 dog and business licenses each year. By automating much of this work, City resources will be freed to focus on more strategic initiatives and the cost of service delivery will decline with a corresponding improvement in citizen service levels.

“CSDC is proud to be partnering with the City of Vancouver to help the City achieve its vision for a customer ‘self-service’ approach with a focus on improving the customer experience,” says CSDC's Vice President of Business Development, Nitish Mukhi. “AMANDA Public Portal will provide the citizens of Vancouver with an easy to use portal to submit, track, renew and pay for their permits and licenses online without ever coming into City Hall. By targeting the highest volume permits and licenses for online services, the City will also see immediate improvements in licensing compliance, enforcement, and payments.”

Additionally, by extending their investment in AMANDA, the City can take advantage of the platform’s flexible and highly configurable architecture. For example, should the City need to meet unanticipated needs in the future, AMANDA can easily expand both within and across departments, allowing for City-wide sharing of knowledge and resources with resulting efficiencies.

City of Vancouver has been a client of CSDC since 1999. The City first implemented AMANDA as part of a comprehensive licensing system for handling a high-volume of business and dog license renewals. The City improved its revenue by more than 10% the first year the system went live.

About CSDC

Since 1989, CSDC has provided integrated, powerful and flexible software to automate the business processes of government agencies at all levels. CSDC’s core technology, AMANDA, serves as a Business Performance platform, designed to improve operational efficiency and deliver citizen-centric services. AMANDA is an enterprise solution that enables a wide range of government services, including Permitting, Planning, Inspections, Licensing, Code Compliance, Fire Prevention, Public Works, Environmental Health and Safety, and Public Access.