TITLE
Recommendation to authorize City Manager to execute an agreement, amendments to extend the term and all related documents with Langham Consulting Services, Inc., to provide professional services for the selection of a new customer information system (CIS) to replace the City's existing utility billing system in an amount not to exceed $200,000. (Citywide)
DISCUSSION
At its July 10, 2007 meeting, the City Council requested the City Manager to work with the Long Beach Water Department to begin the process of upgrading the City's utility billing (UB) system. More specifically, the City Council requested staff to prepare a plan to complete the upgrade that would reflect the implementation of an allocation-based, tiered rate for water conservation purposes across customer types, as well as providing other needed functions not currently available with the existing system. In addition, the plan should provide cost estimates and a funding strategy that minimizes the impact on the City's General Fund. Attached is the completed plan that was provided to the Mayor and City Council in January 2008, indicating that staff would move forward with the system selection process.
Existinq System Overview
The City of Long Beach uses a 27-year old, staff-developed utility billing system (UB System) to maintain utility customer information, process utility service requests and to bill for gas, water, sewer and refuse services. The UB system was determined to be one of the high priority systems to be replaced during the development of the 2003 Information System Master Plan. The system uses antiquated technology, which makes it difficult to update to meet new business needs, as well as costly to integrate with other modern systems built with newer technologies. Also, the City has some risk since the staff who developed the system and maintained it for many years have retired, and colleges and universities are not teaching the computer programming language used by the system ...
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