Client: Duty Budget Office (CBO), City of Portland 

Date: March, 2017 – August, 2017

Site: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/cbo/

Situation

The City of Portland, City Budget Office (CBO) provides timely, accurate, and unfiltered information and analysis regarding budgeting, forecasting, and fiscal policy issues to the Mayor, Commissioners, City Auditor, City bureaus, and the public.

With the City's present budgeting system, BRASS, at risk of being unsupported by its vendor, CBO planned an aggressive procurement and implementation cycle to replace BRASS by the 2019-20 fiscal year. 

But what were the business needs and requirements for the City of Portland's budget system?

Solution

Working in collaboration with a team of city stakeholders and our collogues at Delaris Technical Consulting, members of the Steaming Kettle team:

• Facilitated ten meetings with CBO staff and staff from Bureaus throughout the City
• Using the City's budget calendar as a starting place, helped develop a process map and identify key types of interactions between Bureaus and CBO 
• Identified process and software improvements for both CBO and 
• Developed business needs and lead stakeholders through a prioritization process to identify requirements

Key Accomplishments

• Developed and executed an 80-day elicitation, validation, and prioritization plan
• Analyzed integrations between BRASS and the City's ERP (SAP) to identify 400 data dictionary elements
• Identified more than 750 business and technical needs
• Assisted stakeholders in prioritizing their needs in less than ten days
• A vendor packet, forming the heart of the City's RFP, with process maps, system requirements, a data dictionary, and a glossary