Software program developed by Lamont County entered for recognition

Lamont County will be entering a new time sheet computer software program which they have developed along with MRF Geo Systems in the 20th Annual Minister’s Awards for Municipal Excellence.

Council received a letter from the Municipal Affairs Minister, Ric McIver, giving details and the categories for the awards.

“I’m not sure that we have anything from the past year worthy to submit,” mused Reeve David Diduck.

That’s when Chief Financial Officer Roberta Malysh interrupted.

“I think I have something,” she stated. “We’ve developed a time sheet program in conjunction with MRF that’s never been done before.”

“It was our idea and they worked with us to develop it and now they’re selling it to other municipalities.

“We hope to enhance it to also improve it to include equipment,” she added. She said they were asked to present a presentation on the program last year at a government conference for government finance officers, but the conference was cancelled due to Covid.

“I think it shows innovation and creativity coming from a small municipality such as ours,” she added.

Diduck said if it was something administration wanted to pursue then they could go ahead.

“Are we using this 100 per cent right now,” he asked. County Manager Stephen Hill told council it was.

Malysh said it would be entered under the Smaller Municipalities category.

She after, said she was very excited to enter the project for a Ministers award.

“What we did was in conjunction with our GIS provider MRF, and we needed a good automatic time sheeting system.”

She said many programs had automatic time sheeting systems built in but the County hadn’t found one that worked well for them. She said the program allows staff to enter their hours from a computer, tablet or phone and it goes to the manager for approval.

“To enter it from your phone we developed an app for that,” she said. She said that makes it much easier for staff who work away from the central administration office to record their hours and get them quickly to their managers for approval and payment processing.

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Malysh said there were larger programs available which the County could have accessed, but she found they weren’t as user friendly.

“We worked with MRF Geo Systems,” she said. “We had worked with them on our vehicle tracking systems and other areas of administration. Those are all pretty standard, but developing this time sheeting program was very unique both for us and them.”

She said no one had gone this route before. It allows MRF to take the program and market it to other municipalities to be integrated with their payroll systems.

She said they developed the program and brought it online on January 1, 2020.

“Don’t think it’s perfect because it still has some hiccups,” she added. “But the potential to further develop it to improve our handling of work orders and job costing is being worked on. We will develop it further.”

She said while they planned on designing  the program for some time it has proved its worth during the pandemic.

Gary Zhang, president of MRF is as excited as Malysh about the program.

He said they develop new technologies for a variety of customers.

“It’s digital transformation,” he said. “If something is paper based we try to make it digital.”

He said his firm started working with Lamont County about three years ago developing vehicle tracking through the use of GPS. There is also a GIS map they developed for the County which shows detailed information of land ownership, roads and other items allowing them to see conditions and areas where issues may develop.

“The mapping can be done for almost anything and I know they use it for weed inspections and weed control spraying.”

The new module he said was”a very interesting project.”

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John Mather
Staff Reporter