The city of Plattsburgh is looking into putting its budget and business operations onto a cloud-based platform. Representatives from OpenGov were at City Hall Tuesday evening showcasing their system.

The city is considering changing its software system for planning and budgeting. It’s currently done with an in-house system. Ward One Councilor Rachelle Armstrong has been researching companies that help cities streamline basic business functions and might update the 19-year-old system to a cloud-based operation. “We have tools but they’re not updated tools. They’re not the best tools and they’re cumbersome. You know information is fragmented and there’s no continuity or uniformity in the reporting systems that we have through the various departments throughout the city.”

Tuesday evening, the mayor and most common councilors met with representatives of OpenGov, a technology company that provides cloud-based budgeting software to education and governmental agencies across the U.S. Account Executive David Spolidoro offered an overview of their system. “What OpenGov does is we unify all that data into one consolidated platform and in that platform we do a couple of key things: a very easy to use collaborative and more importantly transparent budgeting process that can be monitored by the city management. The other part of that is to give everybody the information they need with live data.”

That data is available through a series of Dashboards that provide real-time data. “Dashboards are actually made for as many uses or folks as you want to see them. I understand you do have regular monthly reporting that goes out to your department heads here. Instead of manually creating that and sending it out via email or paper copy this is a system where it’s live feed and they can look at it any day with the most up to date data from that night before.”

Mayor Colin Read wanted assurances that services would be guaranteed should the company be chosen. “This is a very broad tool with an incredible amount of potential. This is a very bright and shiny object in front of us and if we simply don’t have the true dedication to making this thing work it’s going to be one of those software boondoggles.”

Councilor Peter Ensel: “That is on us.”

Councilor Mike Kelly: “That’s exactly right. So we have got to put a lot of effort into making it a success if we go this route.”

City Chamberlain Richard Marks feels the OpenGov system has potential and would be more flexible than the city’s current business system. “It’s got good potential for the budgeting process as well as the workforce planning process and those are the facets of it that I’m most interested in. I think it’ll help us. The council’s decided that they want this type of a system for the public transparency as well as for the budgeting process so that’s what this is all about.”

OpenGov is proposing a seven-year contract with the city.