Pittsburgh, Allegheny County begin joint financial system
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Pittsburgh and Allegheny County leaders gathered this morning to launch a shared financial management system that they said would bring efficiency, transparency and savings to government operations.
"This is just a continuation of what I know can be strong partnerships between the city and county," Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said.
Also attending the press conference were county Executive Rich Fitzgerald, city Controller Michael Lamb and county Controller Chelsa Wagner.
Mr. Fitzgerald and Ms. Wagner said the officials would continue looking for other ways to collaborate.
The county has been using the J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne system for about 10 years. Today, the city piggybacked on to that system, a move that had been urged by the city's state-appointed financial overseers.
Mr. Lamb said the city would have spent about $12 million on a system built from scratch. To date, he said, the city has spent about $3 million on the joint system. Depending on whether the system is expanded, he said, the city's continuing costs could be less than $1 million annually for the next five years.
So far, Mr. Lamb said, the city's general ledger, invoicing and payment operations have been added to the system. Payroll will be added as soon as possible and when that happens, he said, the city can eliminate a $750,000 annual contract with an outside vendor.
Officials said the system will make it easier to track and analyze spending for example, to get a handle on fuel costs across departments or to analyze police overtime costs for big events.
Ms. Wagner said, "You can't have transparency, you can't have timely information, if you're not operating on state-of-the-art supported system."
First Published January 17, 2012 12:00 am
