Owen Sound Committee - Corporate Services Meeting Transcript — April 10, 2025

00:00:20 Speaker 01: All right.

00:00:21 Speaker 01: Welcome, everyone.

00:00:22 Speaker 01: It is Thursday, April 10th, and this is the Corporate Services Committee.

00:00:28 Speaker 01: And I will call the meeting to order.

00:00:30 Speaker 01: Number two is call for additional business.

00:00:33 Speaker 01: Does anyone have any additional business this evening?

00:00:36 Speaker 01: Seeing none.

00:00:38 Speaker 01: Number three, declarations of interest.

00:00:41 Speaker 01: Does anyone have anything to declare this evening?

00:00:44 Speaker 01: Seeing none.

00:00:46 Speaker 01: Number four, we have confirmation of minutes.

00:00:48 Speaker 02: We have two sets of minutes this evening from the Corporate Services meeting on March 6th, 2025, which has already been presented and approved by Council.

00:00:58 Speaker 02: And minutes from the Corporate Services Committee meeting held back on November 14th, 2024, and they are attached to tonight's agenda because we had no meeting in January, and February was cancelled due to quorum.

00:01:11 Speaker 02: So they are on tonight's agenda for approval.

00:01:15 Speaker 02: So if I can get someone to, Brock is going to put those motion forward.

00:01:22 Speaker 02: So I will call the question.

00:01:23 Speaker 02: All in favour?

00:01:25 Speaker 02: And that is approved.

00:01:28 Speaker 02: At number five, we have no deputations and presentations.

00:01:31 Speaker 02: Number six is public forum, and we have no one in attendance this evening.

00:01:36 Speaker 02: Number seven, correspondence received for which direction is required, we have none, which brings us to number eight, reports of City staff.

00:01:45 Speaker 02: And at 8:01 this evening, we have a report from the Communications Advisor regarding Corporate website analytics and overview.

00:01:52 Speaker 02: So we will turn it over to Carly.

00:02:02 Speaker 02: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you.

00:02:04 Speaker 02: Yeah, you don't want me presenting on that.

00:02:05 Speaker 02: I'll leave that for KBA.

00:02:06 Speaker 02: But thank you.

00:02:07 Speaker 02: Good evening, committee.

00:02:08 Speaker 02: I am here to talk about Report CM 25-006 respecting the corporate website tonight.

00:02:15 Speaker 02: Almost one year ago to the day, I stood up here and shared with you all owensound.ca's recent migration to a new and improved content management system or CMS platform.

00:02:27 Speaker 03: Today, I'm happy to look back on the past year and share some data highlights about how the website's being accessed and utilised.

00:02:34 Speaker 03: The city primarily uses Google Analytics to track website usage stats, and we've also implemented an online accessibility module in the past year called Moncido, part of Aquia Optimized.

00:02:46 Speaker 03: And just for clarification tonight, owensound.ca is recognized as the city's corporate website.

00:02:51 Speaker 03: It does include the Tom Thomson Art Gallery's online presence.

00:02:55 Speaker 03: It does not include Owen Sound Tourism, River District Police Services, or the Owen Sound Public Library.

00:03:03 Speaker 03: Before we dive into some stats and numbers, I just wanted to highlight some of the new or improved online services, all available from or within owensound.ca.

00:03:13 Speaker 03: Over the past year, several city departments have moved or optimized services online to enhance our residents' access and to increase staff efficiency, so this includes Cloud Permit,

00:03:26 Speaker 03: which was launched by the city's Building Department almost one year ago, and allows applicants to apply and track building permits and book inspections at any time from anywhere.

00:03:37 Speaker 03: Bookings for Harrison Park Campground and Cabin, as well as Kelso Beach Campground, are now completely and fully online.

00:03:44 Speaker 03: This has allowed the booking system to open much earlier than in previous years.

00:03:49 Speaker 03: Also to note, but not on the screen here, online marriage licence applications have become available as of last June, as part of Service Ontario's pilot programme.

00:04:01 Speaker 03: And Corporate Services, you may be familiar with some more recent launches, including DocuPet, an enhanced pet licensing system that makes it easy for residents to licence their dogs and cats online.

00:04:14 Speaker 03: A huge plus there is that previously all pet licences expired annually on December 31st.

00:04:21 Speaker 03: However, with DocuPet, licences are now valid for a full three hundred and sixty-five days from the date of purchase, so no calendar deadlines.

00:04:29 Speaker 03: And more recently, soft launched is our Virtual City Hall, where Owen Sound ratepayers can now log in online to view and manage their tax and water accounts, make online payments, go paperless,

00:04:40 Speaker 03: and access a range of other billing services.

00:04:42 Speaker 03: So, overall, these online services increase operational efficiency by reducing staff time spent on previously more manual tasks, while also delivering a more convenient and accessible experience for end users.

00:04:55 Speaker 03: So, let's jump into the data behind our online enhancements and our overall corporate website uses.

00:05:02 Speaker 03: The numbers I'm referencing today capture data from early March of 2024, which was just before we migrated to the new CMS platform, to early March of 2025.

00:05:13 Speaker 03: And over the last year, we've had two hundred thirty thousand visits to the website, which is an average of six hundred thirty visits per day, and certainly more than we could handle in person.

00:05:24 Speaker 03: The average engagement time per active user is one minute and one second.

00:05:29 Speaker 03: So this counts the time when a user has the web page open in their foreground when they're scrolling or clicking and they're actively engaged.

00:05:36 Speaker 03: It doesn't include idle time.

00:05:37 Speaker 03: So if they've just minimized the website, seasonality and events certainly affect the number of visitors to the site and what they're looking for.

00:05:46 Speaker 03: The most, as you can see in the line graph here, the most visits at one time happened in the days leading up to July 1st and the Canada Day holidays.

00:05:58 Speaker 03: Where people are going to our content performance.

00:06:01 Speaker 03: The top five most visited web pages over the whole year include, of course, our homepage, the Guelph Owen Sound Transit page.

00:06:09 Speaker 03: Excuse me.

00:06:10 Speaker 03: This is actually where users engage for the longest time among the top five.

00:06:14 Speaker 03: So over a minute, our Careers and Employment Opportunities page, Garbage and Recycle, as well as our Waterfront Camera.

00:06:21 Speaker 03: It remains a very popular page for people to see what's going on over the bay.

00:06:26 Speaker 03: Rounding out the top ten most visited pages, we do have the Sound Waterfront Festival, which includes Canada Day event information, Council and Committee Meetings page,

00:06:36 Speaker 03: which of course has the calendar and linked to meeting agendas and reports such as tonight's, public transit information, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, and TD Harbour Nights concert series, as well as public skating,

00:06:47 Speaker 03: depending on the time of year.

00:06:49 Speaker 03: We've recently used these insights to set up pages with heat maps.

00:06:54 Speaker 03: So again, in the background, through our online module, accessibility module, we're able to track where people are actually scrolling to and clicking on these web pages,

00:07:04 Speaker 03: and that helps us get an even better understanding of what people are looking for, and help us ensure that's easily available.

00:07:16 Speaker 03: Some user demographics and behaviours.

00:07:19 Speaker 03: Since a lot of our information online is hyperlocal, it kind of makes sense that eighty-five percent of visitors to our website come from Canada.

00:07:29 Speaker 03: However, we also have eight percent from the USA, three percent from Indonesia, one percent from China, and the remaining others come from Germany, UK, Ireland, India, Sweden, France, and others.

00:07:41 Speaker 03: We can also see, and this is really important to me, that over sixty-one percent of our website users are accessing owensound.ca from mobile devices or cell phones.

00:07:52 Speaker 03: So it just highlights the importance of having the responsive CMS platform on the website, so everything looks as good on an iPhone as it does on an Android, as it does on a laptop,

00:08:01 Speaker 03: as it does on a desktop.

00:08:04 Speaker 03: How users are getting to our site and where they're coming from.

00:08:08 Speaker 03: Most website visitors, fifty-nine percent of first visits, come through an organic search, so something like Google ranking high on there is important.

00:08:18 Speaker 03: A quarter of our visitors come directly by typing owensound.ca into the address bar.

00:08:23 Speaker 03: Posts on social media direct about twelve percent of first visits, and the remainder come from referral links in ads and newsletters to get to the page.

00:08:36 Speaker 03: So ranking high on Google is important, as I mentioned.

00:08:39 Speaker 03: SEO does stand for search engine optimization.

00:08:42 Speaker 03: In simple terms, it's about setting up our website so it ranks as high as possible in these search engines and helps people find us more organically,

00:08:49 Speaker 03: so not having to pay for ads and sponsored posts through Google.

00:08:55 Speaker 03: Over the past year, we've had over five million impressions in Google search results, which is the number of times a user saw a link to owensound.ca on Google.

00:09:04 Speaker 03: We had 227,000 clicks through from Google onto owensound.ca.

00:09:08 Speaker 03: The Google search bar within our website is much more advanced than the city's former site's search function.

00:09:15 Speaker 03: It includes searching documents, events, images, and allows users to sort by relevance or date.

00:09:23 Speaker 03: And then, as I mentioned earlier, the city did implement a third-party software last spring called Aquia Optimize to assist in online accessibility compliance, auditing, updating, and enhancing user experience on owensound.ca.

00:09:37 Speaker 03: So, on the back end, the weekly reports draw attention to what's of high importance based on accessibility requirements, as well as what is popular content and getting lots of views.

00:09:48 Speaker 03: This has helped us reduce broken link errors by sixty-four percent, even as the number of web pages being searched or tracked increases.

00:09:57 Speaker 03: We currently have zero broken images or misspellings, and we're currently above the industry average for accessibility compliance.

00:10:03 Speaker 03: As you can see on the screen there, the average I believe is about eighty-four percent compliance, and we're at ninety-three percent.

00:10:11 Speaker 03: On the front end for our users, Aquia Optimize also offers the opportunity to customize your experience on owensound.ca.

00:10:18 Speaker 03: So that's the image on the right-hand side of the screen there.

00:10:23 Speaker 03: So it gives you the ability to adjust elements like font size, contrast colours, add a little straight line reading guide across the page, and more.

00:10:34 Speaker 03: And all accessibility personalization options are accessed by the little person icon that's at the bottom right of each screen and in each web page.

00:10:45 Speaker 03: So, as noted in the report, website and online accessibility module fees are included in the annual operating budget.

00:10:53 Speaker 03: And taking this time to have this annual review of Owen Sound.

00:10:55 Speaker 03: Annual review of owensound.ca helps staff understand how users interact with our site, what information they're looking for, and how well our current content performs.

00:11:04 Speaker 03: As the city continues to expand online services, these insights guide improvements and track shifts in user behaviour.

00:11:11 Speaker 03: And this website data will also help inform the upcoming external communication strategy.

00:11:18 Speaker 03: So, with that, I recommend that, in consideration of staff report CM 25-006.

00:11:25 Speaker 03: respect and corporate website analytics and overview.

00:11:28 Speaker 03: The Corporate Services Committee recommends that City Council receive the report for information purposes.

00:11:31 Speaker 03: Thank you.

00:11:33 Speaker 03: Thank you.

00:11:36 Speaker 03: That was great.

00:11:36 Speaker 03: Does anyone have any questions for Carly?

00:11:40 Speaker 03: None.

00:11:42 Speaker 03: I do.

00:11:43 Speaker 02: I was wondering why we have a separate website for Tourism and River District and all those different things, and whether they are linked with our website.

00:11:55 Speaker 02: I was just trying to like...

00:11:56 Speaker 02: I know the River District is, but I can't find a link for Tourism.

00:12:00 Speaker 02: Yeah, so thank you, Madam Chair.

00:12:02 Speaker 03: The Tourism and River District sites were set up separately, just with the initial idea that they have a totally separate audience.

00:12:12 Speaker 03: Tourism, especially, they're reaching different website visitors than ownsound.ca, and we do look forward to in the future possibly having them as a microsite under our corporate Owen Sound.ca website, and that's definitely something we've explored.

00:12:28 Speaker 03: And then we do try to link in and out.

00:12:30 Speaker 03: I know Owen Sound Tourism is included in our navigation menu, but we should probably have some other links throughout different pages on our website.

00:12:37 Speaker 03: And I know there are some things, especially things like camping and swimming, sort of rec programmes that we overlap and kind of link back and forth.

00:12:46 Speaker 03: And so yeah, we'll try to keep those going as much as possible.

00:12:51 Speaker 03: Okay, great.

00:12:52 Speaker 03: Does someone want to move receipt?

00:12:55 Speaker 02: Stephanie will move that, and if there's no further any further questions or comments, then I'll call the question.

00:13:03 Speaker 02: All those in favour, and that is carried.

00:13:09 Speaker 02: So we'll move on to item 8B-1, which is a report from the Manager of Legislative Services regarding the Policy Review Project 2025 annual update.

00:13:18 Speaker 02: So we welcome Kristen.

00:13:21 Speaker 02: Thank you, Chair Middlebro'.

00:13:23 Speaker 02: Good evening to members of the committee.

00:13:25 Speaker 02: For those of you who don't know, I am the Manager of Legislative Services for the City, and one of the projects that falls under my purview is the Policy Review Project.

00:13:34 Speaker 04: And since there are some new members on the committee, I took the opportunity to put together a very brief overview of what this project is, as well as the report for tonight.

00:13:44 Speaker 04: This is an overview of the vision, goals, and scope with respect to the vision: we wanted to reduce the time spent searching for policies; we wanted to create a collaboration model for policy development;

00:13:56 Speaker 04: we wanted to have a process that staff understood; and we want to eventually have a policy stock that reflects our current position on policy issues.

00:14:05 Speaker 04: The two primary goals are to create a cohesive, centralized, and current repository, and to implement a system for developing policies and tracking policy life cycles.

00:14:15 Speaker 04: With respect to the scope: all of the City policies are in scope for this project, but it does not include police services or the library places that have their own boards.

00:14:27 Speaker 04: Looking at the background, this project began in 2023, and at that time, many policies were outdated and difficult to find.

00:14:36 Speaker 04: Sometimes, when we did find them, they weren't actually a policy.

00:14:40 Speaker 04: There was no person or team managing policies at that time, so there was no coordination amongst staff.

00:14:45 Speaker 04: So a policy could be set and then forgotten.

00:14:48 Speaker 04: The old adage, "It was everyone's responsibility, and it was no one's responsibility," within that decentralized model, each division used to create their own policies, which resulted in duplication, inconsistencies, and a lack of policy review.

00:15:04 Speaker 04: So our current approach, since 2023, I have been working with the Information and Privacy Coordinator on this project.

00:15:10 Speaker 04: We've created a new policy template, new topics to organise policies into groupings, and we've refined the approval process.

00:15:18 Speaker 04: I work primarily with content experts to help identify their important messages and ensure that the policy can be read and interpreted by a layperson, so that those messages are actually clear.

00:15:29 Speaker 04: I focus on both the content and the format.

00:15:33 Speaker 04: The Information and Privacy Coordinator manages the policies as records, ensuring that they're properly approved, protected, and organised.

00:15:42 Speaker 04: Each year, one department analyses its policy stock, and this last year it was done with the City Manager's Office.

00:15:49 Speaker 04: And each year, policies slated for review are scheduled into quarters, so that the work is properly spread across the year.

00:15:59 Speaker 04: There are a few benefits of this project.

00:16:01 Speaker 04: One, we are eliminating a lot of policies, so they are more manageable.

00:16:07 Speaker 04: We're implementing review dates, so the policies remain current.

00:16:10 Speaker 04: We're organising the policies differently so they can be found more easily, and centralizing the process enables changes to organizational structure to occur without impacting access to important information.

00:16:22 Speaker 04: But the overarching benefit is that the City now has a process with ownership and accountability, so the situation we were in in 2023 won't be revisited.

00:16:33 Speaker 04: Now I'll turn briefly to a review of 2024.

00:16:37 Speaker 04: As previously mentioned, the City Manager analysed the policy stock from his office as well as that of Communications and Community Development and Marketing.

00:16:45 Speaker 04: That means that starting this year, those policies that were identified as needing amendments will be in the review rotation.

00:16:53 Speaker 04: We originally had 30 reviews scheduled for 2024, but some staff turnover and the start of the service review projects impacted our progress, and we were able to complete 20 full reviews.

00:17:04 Speaker 04: A policy review includes staff discussions, research, reviews of comparator policies, editing, reporting, and rollout.

00:17:12 Speaker 04: I would estimate that a simple policy review is about 10 hours at minimum.

00:17:20 Speaker 04: There are two highlights that I want to give you from last year.

00:17:23 Speaker 04: They are our work with the workflow and with Citation Canada.

00:17:27 Speaker 04: The workflow refers to a digital process in Share, which is our information management system, which allows us to set a person to be notified by the system that a policy is up for review;

00:17:38 Speaker 04: this has reduced the need for manual notifications or for people to have to go and find that information on their own.

00:17:44 Speaker 04: The notice is delivered into their inbox in October for work plan planning, and then again in January as a new year reminder.

00:17:51 Speaker 04: And feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive from staff.

00:17:55 Speaker 04: We hope that this is the start of our workflow chapter at the City.

00:18:02 Speaker 04: Citation Canada, which is a digital HR solution, was rolled out last year by the HR staff, and its training platform includes the ability to assign policies to groups of staff to review and sign off.

00:18:15 Speaker 04: The system tracks who has read and signed off on the policy, and we hope this year to start distributing new policies to staff via this platform.

00:18:23 Speaker 04: Both of these highlight ways that we are trying to achieve efficiencies through this project.

00:18:29 Speaker 04: Through the work we did with the City Manager on his policy stock, and through the policy reviews that we undertook in 2024, we've identified 65 more policies that we can remove from our records.

00:18:43 Speaker 04: If approved, a bylaw will come forward to repeal these policies, and we can get them off the books.

00:18:48 Speaker 04: However, they will continue to exist in the master policy index, so we can track when they were in effect and when they were repealed.

00:18:58 Speaker 04: And looking at 2025, this year we are working with the Director of Public Works and Engineering to analyse policies from that department and prepare them for review.

00:19:07 Speaker 04: For policy reviews, we have an ambitious schedule of 45 policies.

00:19:12 Speaker 04: Some of these are policies that require annual reviews, so they won't be a very large or onerous process, and we will adjust the schedule if necessary.

00:19:21 Speaker 04: And the other mini project that I'm quite eager to work on, that I'm working on with our Communications Advisor,

00:19:27 Speaker 04: is we are researching some tools that can help us organise and rules that can help us organise and present staff policies separate from our policy stock,

00:19:33 Speaker 04: so that our staff will be able to easily find and apply the policies that affect them.

00:19:39 Speaker 04: And finally, the recommendation is that the committee recommend to Council that it direct staff to bring forward a bylaw to repeal the policies outlined in the report.

00:19:49 Speaker 04: And with that, I'm happy to take questions.

00:19:52 Speaker 04: Okay, thank you for that.

00:19:54 Speaker 04: Does anyone have any questions, comments?

00:19:58 Speaker 04: None.

00:20:00 Speaker 04: Brad, go ahead.

00:20:04 Speaker 05: So we have a ton of policies that are on the books, and we just don't follow.

00:20:11 Speaker 05: Is that good question?

00:20:16 Speaker 05: Through you, Chair, to Councillor Hamley.

00:20:18 Speaker 05: No, it's not that we don't follow them.

00:20:20 Speaker 06: Like simply, like if you look at the attached list, there's a policy for teen dances.

00:20:25 Speaker 06: We're not hosting so many teen dances, so again, it's not that we're following them; they're just out of date.

00:20:30 Speaker 06: There's other policies that are literally 50 years old, that were created as a policy.

00:20:36 Speaker 06: And as Kristen mentioned, some things that were called policies were really procedures, and it was a procedure set up for a very specific moment in time for a very specific issue,

00:20:46 Speaker 06: that was classified as a policy, and it just remained in the books.

00:20:49 Speaker 06: And I think, as Kristen also mentioned, that these things have not had a proper policy review process.

00:20:57 Speaker 06: Like this is just modernization, good government, good administration that we're putting into practice, and that's all the work that she's undertaking.

00:21:04 Speaker 06: So it's not that things have not been followed; they've been just sitting dormant.

00:21:07 Speaker 06: And there's multiple reasons why they haven't been looked at.

00:21:14 Speaker 06: Thank you.

00:21:14 Speaker 06: Anyone else?

00:21:16 Speaker 06: Scott.

00:21:19 Speaker 06: I'll move the recommendation in the report.

00:21:22 Speaker 07: Even though I'm concerned that repealing the use of City Hall for food sale fundraising might come back to bite us.

00:21:32 Speaker 07: Yes, I too was concerned on that one.

00:21:38 Speaker 02: My question is: Where are all of the policies kept?

00:21:41 Speaker 02: Like, are they all on the website?

00:21:43 Speaker 02: Or, like, how do you keep track?

00:21:45 Speaker 02: And where are you finding these?

00:21:48 Speaker 04: Well, we're very lucky because when we started to roll over into our information management system, which we call SHARE.

00:21:54 Speaker 04: It was an opportunity for us to start looking at all of the digital records that we have and organising them.

00:22:00 Speaker 04: So our policies used to live like community services policies were in their drives, operations in their drives, and they now exist now in a central policy library.

00:22:10 Speaker 04: So we have a section for working files policies that we're developing, and then they get locked and put into a library where everybody can see them, but nobody can do anything to them.

00:22:22 Speaker 02: Okay, so Scott has moved the recommendation.

00:22:25 Speaker 02: If there's nothing further, I will call the question.

00:22:27 Speaker 02: All in favour?

00:22:29 Speaker 02: And that is carried.

00:22:32 Speaker 02: Thank you.

00:22:34 Speaker 02: So I believe that ends our City reports for this evening.

00:22:39 Speaker 02: And at number nine, we have matters postponed, which we have none.

00:22:43 Speaker 02: At number ten, motions for which notice was previously given, we have none.

00:22:48 Speaker 02: Eleven, correspondence provided for information.

00:22:50 Speaker 02: We have none.

00:22:51 Speaker 02: Twelve is discussion of additional business, which we have none.

00:22:56 Speaker 02: And does anyone have a notice of motion?

00:23:00 Speaker 02: No. Okay.

00:23:02 Speaker 02: So it is 5:53, and I'm going to call it adjourned.

00:23:08 Speaker 02: Thanks, everyone.