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City briefed on ARPA-funded language access tool; initial developer cost $130,000 and translations billed pennies per document
Summary
City staff told the committee that ARPA funds paid about $130,000 for a locally developed translation application the city owns, and that translation usage since August has cost about $51.38; staff outlined a three-phase rollout that includes website integration and a collaborative correction process.
Spokane's Office of Civil Rights and the city web team briefed the Finance and Administration Committee on progress using ARPA funds to create a language access tool and an implementation plan.
Josh Webb (Webb) and Jarell Haynes, director of the Office of Civil Rights, said the city contracted a local programmer and spent about $130,000 over roughly eight months to develop a translation application that the city will own and support. Webb said the city "built a whole set of technologies to build into the next phase of the city's website" and will own the code.
For ongoing translation volume the presenters said costs have been very small to date: Webb reported $51.38 in translation charges since August for documents translated using the new tool. The committee asked Webb to confirm these figures; Webb said they would provide access to the administrative dashboard so council members could see translation counts, languages and costs.
Staff described a three-phase rollout: phase 1 paid for development of the tool; phase 2 is integration into the city website and a user-facing request workflow that will queue documents for translation on demand so the city does not translate every document into every language preemptively; and phase 3 is a collaborative correction workflow that would allow community reviewers to suggest edits and have translated documents updated and redistributed.
Haynes said the Office of Civil Rights will designate a civil rights coordinator as the primary contact for language access and will embed language access coordinators within departments rather than hiring an ongoing ARPA-funded single employee. The clerk's office is onboarding staff to support organization and scheduling for the internal language access work group. Haynes said training of departmental staff and collection of department-level vital documents is underway to measure demand and costs.
Committee members asked about timelines for website integration and whether adding a pro/con sign-in or other features would be part of the initial rollout or a later phase. Webb said website integration will be part of the next scheduling for a new city website and that the sign-in/organized pro/con feature would likely be a later phase after the basic tool is integrated and staff training is complete.
