Committee reviews plan to restore transparency portal and evaluate cloud move for financial system

City staff told the finance committee that the municipal transparency portal is being rebuilt after data did not migrate correctly during a system transition, and that officials are weighing a cloud migration for the city's financial software.

Kim (staff) has been restoring minutes, agendas and finance reports that were lost in transition, and the city engaged Findlay and Cook (vendor) to assess options. The committee discussed whether the city should move its Business Central/Mission ERP instance to a corporate cloud tenant or keep the current government-cloud configuration. A staff member explained that "Syllogis is not in the government cloud" and that migrating would require spinning up a separate tenant and reviewing security protocols.

Staff emphasized the trade-offs: a corporate cloud tenant can host add-on modules not available in the current government cloud configuration, but it requires careful security work and coordination with the vendor. The city’s consultants said other local governments have used corporate tenants for add-ons; staff said the next step is to decide whether to proceed and to define licensing, roles and internal controls.

The committee also discussed the broader question of whether to replace or upgrade fund-accounting software. Staff suggested running a new system concurrently with the current one during migration to ensure data integrity. Officials named modules the city would like to add — capital-assets, grant management, debt management — and said those functions could reduce manual work and improve internal controls if integrated in a modern system.

Committee members asked staff to continue vendor conversations and to include IT/security and treasury staff in follow-up meetings. Staff committed to resolve cloud-security questions and report back to the committee by the end of the week on whether to proceed with a tenant change.