Citizens of Georgetown will soon be able to pay their rates online when the Mayor and City Council launches its new Revenue Collection and Financial Management System (RCFMS).
According to a press release from City Hall the new software will “significantly improve council’s IT capabilities and financial accountability.”
Furthermore, citizens will through this “responsive web-based application” be able to track their business transactions with the municipality online via phones, tablet and PCs.
The release said that the functioning of the system was explained to council workers by Adunni Christian, the council’s Network Administrator and Richard Langford, CEO of Innosys, the company developing the RCFMS software. They were at the time giving an update on the system’s progress.
Once implemented this software will replace three previous software solutions and cover operations in areas of the council’s financial management which are tax collection, budget and reporting and other revenue collection.
Person’s conducting business with City Hall are currently unable to conduct their business transactions or make simple enquires unless they go the municipality’s office.
This will soon change, according to the release, as by the conclusion of the implementation process, citizens will be able to access their entire business history from the comfort of their homes using any internet enabled devices.
Christian was quoted as saying that citizens will see the proper history of their properties, payments made and location information among other things.
He further explained that the implementation process is at present seeing information from the old software being carried over to the new system, and cross checks or parallel checks are being made.
Langford noted that “as rates and taxes and other transactions are done, tests are being done to ensure that the software follows basic double entry accounting principles.”
There is no stated time for the completion of this process and the activation of the software. It is noted however that “the parallel runs are expected to last a few weeks more while employee training is still ongoing.”
Meanwhile citizens transacting business at the council are being asked to walk with their Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) so that they may be used to allow the council to better manage its customers’ information in the new system.
