In your testimony, that by I think it was June that you would have a strategic plan to give to the President.
No. So we're working through the summer to complete -- we don't have a firm deadline date as of yet. So we're working on the strategic plan, our action plan through the summer and we hope to get it to you by somewhere late in the year or somewhere within the summer. I don't want to give you an actual date just yet and I don't have a firm date as far as when we -- but we're working through it through the summer. So you can expect to hear from us, hear something back from us by end of summer as far as where we are with it, that we do owe you.
The plan is very important and it is important to us. So we'll be working diligently to make sure and we'll inform you by end of summer where we are in that regard.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau. Then Councilman Brooks -- I'm sorry, Councilmember Driscoll, then Councilmember Brooks, then Young.
Thank you so much, Council President. Most of my questions are for OIT and HR, but I did want to follow up on this contracting question by first giving many props to our Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson for doing all of this work of uncovering this issue of contracting and the fact that our amazing nonprofits are doing so much work for the City of Philadelphia and were not getting paid. While we're talking about solutions, what is the possibility that the city could pay a significant portion of the contract upfront so our nonprofits would not face the harm of not being paid? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: So front-loaded payments are restricted under the rules. And we've brought that idea with several workarounds to the Controller's Office, but the concept is still not allowable.
Which rules? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: I believe it's -- I'm not certain if it's under the Code or the charter, but they've told us it is restricted under the current setting. Also, I did want to point out that we have made some significant and really notable progress on driving down the time going without a contract. So it's gone from 151 days to 51 days on average. So there are peaks and valleys and there are still pain and suffering there, but it's significantly less. The all-hands- on-deck has made some significant inroads, but that's due in large part to some very heavy manual lifting. And so, to really get out of the due loop of that heavy lifting, we're looking at a deep dive into procurement reforms, which are really across-the-board reforms that cover both the architecture of the organization, so how we're structured in a very federated model which really diffuses the control and the insight into procurement. And we're looking to pull that in more centrally, right. And we're executing both a pilot and the creation of the Vendor Cooperative are two of the very first aspects of that organizational shift. And we're already seeing -- with the vendor unit in place now we're starting to offload a lot of work that gets spread around. And one of the things for all of you is to know that this organization exists, because I get calls from many of you, from your constituents, who are vendors looking for all sorts of questions. And it's all over the map, the type of answers they could get. And so, now we have a concerted way to answer those. The next thing is business process redesign, which on your way to that --
(Inaudible). COMMISSIONER HOVEY: -- place of updating. I'm sorry, I'm using your time. My apologies. I'll be very quick.
Okay. COMMISSIONER HOVEY: Is tied to some changes in rules and systems. And the changes in rules we're looking at to really get at the root cause of a lot of these problems so that vendors are not ever working again, except in very narrow circumstances and limited emergency circumstances without a contract. We've just launched an RFP to redraft all of our standard templates to make them easier to use and easier to review, which shortens our time of business. And we're teaming with Opal to not only maximize what's there, but look at future improvements too. So all of these changes are fundamental, but we're moving very quickly. And as you can see, in less than a year we've looked at the organization and started to reorganize the organization, looked at our systems, our ground rules. Everything is changing, everything across the board. So it's an urgent effort to not just fix things with a band-aid and a team, but to fix the root causes across the board.
Thank you. Appreciate you. CP -- Council President, that was only a follow-up. I have some OIT and HR questions to ask as well. So let's start with OIT. Thank you very much for our conversation yesterday. As you know, I held a hearing in October of 2025 on the city's use of AI, where we were, what systems needed to be in place. And many of us felt that our hearing left us with more questions than answers and certainly some concerns. Yesterday you had a meeting with me where you showed us your OIT governance policy that you said would be available to city employees with training. It's available now, but that training would start happening on April 1st of this policy. But I felt that there's still many questions that need to be answered. It's a general framework and I've been concerned about a timeline and when we're going to have real answers to questions. So I wanted to know more, just so my colleagues are on the committee can hear too, of what industry experts were consulted and community members consulted when you created the policy, and what other cities were consulted or were studied as well to pull the policy together? And then while we're talking about this summer, what are real deliverables on this? And so, I can frontload a couple of questions here too. I just want to make sure that we're careful that when we're talking about AI and jobs, I wanted to know whether the city is using AI in hiring, knowing that so many consequences of using AI in hiring results in bias and discrimination, making sure that we have significant guardrails on that? What I see overall from these questions that are coming up now is that there are very positive ways we could use AI to help us get our city services done quicker. This isn't about just having an employee using Chat GPT at their desk with guidelines. This is about how to make sure that our backlogs of the potholes, of the dumping, of making sure people can apply for the services they need happen smarter and faster. And I don't think that takes jobs away. I actually think that just makes our policies more efficient. So I'll continue with some more questions which is really to talk about Opal too. That seemed to have fallen off the highlights of your budget this year. My understanding is that you used to have 66 people working on Opal. It's now down to about 23. I wanted to know what your staffing efforts are in order to try to increase that? And how much money has already been spent on this project that is supposed to modernize our procurement processes? I will be fully honest with you. I've already heard it's $150 million. And if you look back, even for some job descriptions, looking for a project manager, they said it would be $100-plus million project. We've already spent $150 million. We don't have enough people working on it. And what are our securities now before we're fully rolled out in AI to make sure that the folks we're contracting with through this procurement process are keeping our data absolutely safe and secure under any future guidelines and future protections we want, including not making sure that none of our data gets to ICE?
So let's first talk about the AI policy. So as you can see, the AR policy is very data-driven, right. It's written from how OIT -- normally we write our policies. And as I was mentioning earlier, our position is always about security, right. It's about how it integrates with our systems, protecting our systems so bad actors don't get in, so data also doesn't go out where it's not supposed to go. But what you're looking for is in the action plan, which Councilman Jones is, you know, when is this going to be available. We're working on it through the summer and we'll get back to you as far as where you are, because this is where the meat and potatoes of how city employees will utilize AI. So what is built in that framework for Phase is the foundation of governance and testing. We're looking at the establishment of cross-functional oversight, right, how we stand up AI working groups, our data security in our legal sense. Then we're looking at the identity case uses in data readiness. We're looking at how departments approve, how we approve the specificness of it, the AI needs and assessments, data quality before implementation, and then the launch of pilots defining the guardrails and so forth. But the Phase 2 portion is where the workforce establishes their standard tools, delivering role-based training, issuing clear guidelines on approval AI usage as well as how we track the impact via performance dashboards, monitoring KPIs and so forth, and how the city determines which department should be using what, especially when it interfaces a resident. Do we want the tool to actually speak directly to the resident. Do we want the tool to speak to the customer service rep, then the customer service rep analyzes that as our human-in-the-loop process and then they regurgitate what it says and then decipher, do they want to say this or do they not want to say that. So that's all going to work out in our action plan, which is going to be more robust in how the city is going to use the AI tools. So next would be Opal. So Opal, currently we noticed that there were some deficiencies within the project so we had to restructure it. And this is called responsibility when you are building technology tools. Everyone has been here for a while and you know that there has been systems that have gone live that were not ready to go live. And that cost us -- if you think that's a lot of money, it costs you double the amount if you allow a tool to go live when you know it's not ready. We noticed that it wasn't ready. We are restructuring to ensure that we put those things in place. Because the adoption of the training specifically was an area that we needed to evaluate as well as ensuring that all the specificness for each department was where it needed to be. I obviously cannot -- well, not obviously, but I cannot speak as far as the numbers currently where we are. I would need to either get back to you or refer that back to Rob Dubow, as far as where we are with the numbers of Opal because it's being reconstructed. But I can speak to the efficiency of the project, and it was not ready to go live. You also mentioned about hiring. So as far as the technology individuals, and then Candi can talk about AI solutions in regards to hiring and so forth to your question. So we made a lot of progress with hiring in OIT. And part of that is we hired a recruiter. So 662 interviews were conducted. And 500 of them were between June and February. And then we did another 162 between February and March. We hired 38 individuals, 27 between June and February, and an additional 11 between January and February. And so, we have been making a huge -- that additional resource alone has been helping us get ahead, because the deputies have to interview, we needed someone to go through the resumes, so we filled that gap. So what you'll start to see is us getting back and refilling those roles, and we've made a lot of progress from the last time that we were here. Candi.
Thank you for the question. I just want to speak globally to just the hiring process and the user-based AI. At this time, OHR is not using AI technology in our hiring process to your point exactly about implicit bias being introduced. I consider our candidate process to be very high touch. And so, we are going through resumes by hand. We know some of our candidates need a little bit more assistance, right. So we are calling folks when their applications are incomplete. We are following up with them on the phone and via text message and via email to get their documentation so that we are able to review their eligibility in a holistic way. And so, right now we are currently still assigning those announcements to individual analysts so that we can continue to provide that high-touch service. We are happy to have that conversation about how to leverage AI technology as we move forward. We are though leveraging a lot of technology. So while it's not AI, we're moving towards text messaging, automated notices in the system, candidates -- sorry, candidates self-scheduling, online testing, right. So we are leveraging kind of what the full complement of technological resources. We have not introduced AI though specifically to the hiring process.
Well, online testing has -- sorry, yeah. So we're doing a lot of testing online, right. So the days of bringing in kind of hundreds of candidates into the MSB on the 16th floor and testing, we're not doing that anymore. Because again, time to hire is impacted by doing that. So we are able to leverage the online testing tool in order so folks can take the test on their mobile devices, at home, things like that. And so, we're leaning into the technological space. We're happy to have the AI conversations as we move forward. But again, we want to make sure implicit bias, candidates don't fall out of the process using the technology.
Then you also asked how we came about to the policy, which I didn't answer. I think that was your very first question. So Camille and I did go to San Jose. And the consultants leading their initiative is Harvard, Bloomberg, John Hopkins, they consulted 40 of the cities. And we also went to a Google and US conference as well. So those are some of the individuals we looked at, other municipalities, in addition to San Jose who's actually leading in this particular area, especially because they actually put together a team of individuals, as I mentioned, through Bloomberg, Harvard and the other four cities that they consulted. So we're using a lot of their templates actually to build out what we're doing here within the City of Philadelphia.
-- that City Council gets a seat on the Government Committee -- the Governance Committee. We have to have a seat on that committee.
Thank you. That's your question, will City Council get a seat on the Governance Committee?
Okay. Do you want to answer that for the record please?
So we'll have to take that into consideration and we'll get back to you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Mike Driscoll, then Councilmember Kendra Brooks and then Councilmember Young. Then we'll be officially in our second round.
Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Panel. I just want to state for the record I double-down on Councilmember Bass with regard to the cameras, dumping cameras. I think each of our districts are experiencing the same problems. In last week's budget hearing with the Revenue Department, I asked the following question that I've asked in previous budget cycles as well. The Revenue Commissioner deferred to the Chief Administrative Office and Procurement. So I will ask the same question: What is the status of the refunding of the state sales tax to the city as to the enduser of material purchases, that is, the ones that the city and/or contractors can apply to the state on construction projects for eligible reimbursements?
Thank you, Councilmember Driscoll, for the question. So in response to the ask, last year we conducted a sample, a review of a sample of our invoices to determine if we were inappropriately paying sales tax. And what we were able to glean from that sample is that in zero instances were we paying that sales tax. So we also put -- the Finance Department has a very robust process of reviewing in submitted invoices to ensure that that is not the case. So in response to the concern, we're not seeing it in the invoicing within the City of Philadelphia.
I think what I might be referring to, and I know this is a little complex, so if a contractor, let's say they're doing a school project or capital project for the city and they buy purchases for the project, but are eligible for reimbursement, are they potentially applying for that reimbursement when the reimbursement is really our money?
So my understanding is when they charge us for those taxes and if they're applying for the reimbursement and that line item tax charge is what they're applying for, the reimbursement through the state, that is not happening for us.
I made a mistake, but I'm going to keep this thing moving. Just be patient with me. Yeah, she was already sitting there. It's Member Richardson, then Brooks, then Young and then we're officially in the second round. Apologize, Member Brooks. I was moving fast.
The Chair recognizes Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you, Mr. President. I needed that acknowledgement from you. And thank you all so much for all of your work. I have to start with my thank-yous. So please don't count the thank-yous against my time. So for this morning for CAO, Camille, you know we've worked together very, very closely over the last to 16 months. But I appreciate your 17 thoughtful collaboration. 18 And Jahira Longcrier, 19 you brought her up earlier, your 20 Procurement and Compliance Manager, 21 she has done yeoman's work on the 22 contracts and the contract process. 23 I really wanted you to say the 24 words Tiger Team earlier when you were responding to Councilmember Ahmad. Also to OHR, Candi Jones, thank you so much for your commitment and ongoing work, even in the midst of the joy of motherhood. Janine LaBletta for her work with the CTE preference and helping young people access city employment. Lisa Pace and Ajee Young, we look forward to collaborating with them on our events, on our community side. And then for OIT, they're rarely recognized, but they are always behind the scenes working with us. First, to Melissa Scott and your team, we are excited about the Power Up Tour, this will be my first, to provide access to technology to vulnerable communities. And then Channel 64, they do so much more than just broadcast our hearings and our Stated meetings, but Ed Harris, Mark McLaughlin, Mike Vivas, Cody Saia and Tim Toohey, they are the secret sauce behind what folks see on Channel 64 but also what they hear. So I wanted to start with those thank-yous and appreciate the folks that we've been working with. I wanted to quickly go back to contracting and just get these questions on the record so that they're on the record and I'll get in as much as I can. But you talked about previously in responding to Councilmembers both Ahmad and Landau regarding the Pew and Bennett Midland study. And we recently shared the results of the study and the recommendations with all members of Council as a result of the continued work that we've done in this area, in addition to resharing the report that we authored from my office as a result of the hearings and the ongoing work that we've done so that you see how closely the recommendations are aligned based on the Pew and Bennett Midland recommendations. But in the report it states, Per the interviews with City staff, some departments are not aware that they could go to City Council for approval of contracts while others made a decision at some point to avoid the additional scrutiny. So I'll go through all the questions so I can get them on. Have you worked with departments to educate them on the process to bring a multi-year contract before City Council? Additionally, the report has five primary recommendations and four of them are strictly under the purview of Procurement and CAO and the functions of your office. And those recommendations are redefined and resource procurement to make it responsible for professional services contracting, develop a comprehensive citywide training program for staff, provide a standardized approach and coordinate approvals, maintain and expand the efforts to conform backlog contracts, as we heard earlier. Can you provide updates on how CAO and Procurement are implementing those specific recommendations? No detail has been provided yet for Procurement, but funding looks relatively stable across this Five Year Plan. What additional resources do you all believe are necessary to fully implement the recommendations relative to refining and redefining Procurement's role in this process? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: Thank you, Councilmember. So with regard to those comments, they dovetail nicely with a number of the general reforms that we're trying to implement. So initially, as part of the interim work, we've asked each department to bring forward some multi-year contracts, as was specifically suggested.
We are looking more broadly at making multi-year contracts more feasible and more easily implemented over the long term, and that will lend itself well to something else that's very important to me. And one of the things that's driving a lot of the reforms for me is the ability to put in place strategic sourcing as an approach to procurement, which is a very specific thing, a program of steps and tools to get contracts in place ahead of time for a number of years. And the advantage to that is it gets procurement out of the critical path of the business of paying, out the critical path of I have this need and now I have to go source it as opposed to I have this need, we already have a contract, go get it. It also solves for a lot of the emergency procurement problems. So we're looking at tackling that both through processes and some longer-term rule changes. You spoke specifically about professional services. We're looking to in the redesign of the organization, again as part of this pilot, to consolidate professional services with all other procurements. So right now in the in the Charter, it breaks out professional services as sort of officially under the Finance Department and all other things procurement under Procurement, and that's sort of an artificial construct that just exists here. We're looking to merge that on a pilot basis, pending some further rule changes that we would take more broadly across the city once we get those set. And along with moving that process in, we're developing a unified process. And having the new system through -- you can see how this is all sort of a spider web, right, it's all intertwined. Having the new Oracle system is what allows us to have a unified system. Right now we have multiple systems which kind of embed multiple processes, and we don't want to take the time to fix those systems and divert from the bigger fixes. With --
I'm sorry. That's why I asked regarding sort of the funding and the details staying relatively stable. Because with all of the additional work that we know, right, that needs to occur in order to address the number of recommendations, not only in the report, but everything that we've been talking about in, in the meetings that we've had even with the nonprofit providers and the new commission that's been established, how do you get here, how do you get there with the same staffing? Because that has been the complaint, is that we don't have enough Procurement folks to sort of work very closely with and collaborate with the department heads who are responsible for procurement in their various units. I mean, we know DHS does a really, really good job with this. They are the gold standard in city government for this work. But overall, how are we going to address this and ensure that we have adequate staffing to do so? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: So the problem is that we have a lot of redundancy in terms of number of people, which when consolidated I think will go a long way, with unified systems will go a long way towards resolving a lot of our problems. And having led organizations that do similar work at a similar volume, I know that if I -- so I look at our organization, which when I came here was about 39 people. We had 51 slots with the vendor management unit. We're upward of 58 now. I held in reserve for the first couple of months several of those slots as I was deciding what to do with the position and the structure. But in the first year because we'll be moving some of those tasks inside, but not just the tasks, but possibly the folks doing those tasks and consolidating that and rearranging the work, the first effort was to move the structure, the functions, the work, together. I envision that there might be the need for some marginal increase in funding. I don't know exactly what that will be, but it won't come into play for another 12 months because we have other things to do first to get that organization in place. And I do have a margin of about nine positions with which to change the leadership structure.
And is that just under Procurement? Is that under Procurement and CAO? Is it just under Procurement because I have a question? That's why I'm trying to understand this. COMMISSIONER HOVEY: So those are Procurement positions. Some of them are technically CAO positions in terms of how they are created, but they're all Procurement operating functions.
Madam Chair, may I ask just one additional question to that point?
Okay. Thank you very much for the leeway. So to that point, if you all could give us a breakdown so that I'm reading the detail correctly. And then obviously when your detail is available, I will review, but if we could get a breakdown. And I' say that because in FY25, the CAO vacancy rate was 23%. FY26 was 23.6%. And so, you all are trying to do an increase for FY27, so I'm wondering if that increase is for what you are describing, because you all are requesting an additional 28 positions, which would then increase your Class 100 by another $2.1 million, but the department is only 76.4% staff. So I'm trying to make sense of the numbers. You understand what I'm trying to do?
Okay. And that's why I'm trying to see whether it's technically Procurement or CAO.
So the additional positions that we ask for are very specifically to support the CCME fellow, right. And those fellows, at least five of them, at this point are designated specifically to the Vendor Cooperative, right. And so, while they are CAO positions, they are going to feed the vendor cooperative unit, and the work of that unit will allow those folks who are coming through the CCME fellow to qualify for Procurement positions, entry-level Procurement positions. And we can continuously feed almost seamlessly from our program completion through the unit into the Procurement. So we believe we're going to be able to attend to two things at the same time.
Okay. So I'll end here then because you're going right to my next question, and I'll submit these for the record. But it's the same thing with Workforce Development and CCME. FY26, 10 budgeted positions. But from what I can see, and maybe you all can help me with this, I only see three that are currently filled. And so, if you could just break down the workforce development, the $10 million in Workforce Development money, the CCME positions, the CAO positions versus the Procurement and who's going to sit where and give us a breakdown. And I'll submit the additional questions for the record. But I do have questions even going back to the 10 million for the CCME, and how that falls into the budgeted positions versus the ones that are currently filled, the ones that are not, and then budgeting an additional million dollars for the positions outside of the CCME fellow positions. So if you could just give us a description and update and then a breakdown for CAO, Procurement, Workforce Development CCME so that I can understand the flow. Because it could be a thing where I'm just not seeing it fully because we don't have the Procurement detail yet, but based on reading the budget books and if you go line-by-line, it doesn't come together for me.
Understood. So currently there are, I think, approximately seven vacancies in CAO that are specific to CCME.
And I can also have Carol De Fries come up and speak to that. But of those positions, at this point four of them are slotted to be filled within the next month and they are specific to CCME support. They are built into the model of managing and administering CCME.
That's what you talked about and referred to at Council President Johnson's hearing, correct?
In part, yes. So then there was an additional ask of approximately 10 positions for the CCME fellow. And 11 while those positions are going to 12 be -- they need to be managed 13 within CAO because they are going 14 to support varying units, but the 15 one-on-one kind of navigation 16 support is going to come from our 17 CCME staff, right. 18 So we want the fellows 19 in proximity to CAO so we can 20 continue to do the professional development work that's going to be needed for them to be successful as they move out into the different departments.
Okay. I will submit the balance of the questions for the record, but they all flow one to another. And it's just hard to make sense of what you all are describing in the detail. And I ask those questions because of the changes that need to be made based on the recommendations from the Pew and Bennett Midland report, but also the work that you all are seeking to do in CAO and with the CCME program. And the numbers, they're spread so apart that you can't make sense of what each position is for. So even a position description for each one would be helpful as well. But I'll submit these questions for the record to be respectful of Madam Chair and all of my colleagues. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. I have a series of questions so I'm going to just ask the questions, and then you guys can answer it when I'm done. The first questions are for CAO. As the Chair of People with Disabilities and Special Needs, I hear all the time from advocates and people from the disabled community about steps that need to be taken to make sure that our city is truly accessible for all. I want to start today's questions by asking a little bit about the goals for the office. In the budget documents, the Office of People with Disabilities said that they will create a Disability Community Survey for residents. Can you talk more about the purpose of this survey and what stakeholders you will engage when you create it? What are other ways that the Office of People with Disabilities gets feedback from residents, and how best should my office plug residents into this process? And one of the areas that I've heard a lot of feedback around from the disability advocates is Christmas Village here at Dilsworth Park. What outreach has been done ahead of this year's event? If outreach was done, can you name which organizations you consulted with and what changes were made to make Christmas Village more accessible? And what is the purpose of the Digital Equity Manager in the Office of People with Disabilities?
Okay. So in terms of the conversations that we've had with other stakeholders relative to Christmas Village and how to make that more accessible, I believe Adrienne had to step out of the room. And so, if she doesn't return before the Council hearing is done, we certainly can provide that to you in writing. In terms of the survey, the survey is intended to be launched within -- one of the issue activities of the Office for People with Disabilities is they meet on a monthly basis with their commission to hear the concerns and the challenges of our community of people with disabilities. And so, the intention there is to leverage those council meetings, those commission meetings and their partner organizations to better gather information relative to how city services are impacting our communities with disabilities. One of the places where we saw this kind of show itself prevalently was during the snowstorm, right. And so, we had our constituents calling the office to make sure that we were aware that it really wasn't as simple as clearing snow, but that we were clearing snow on the corners and the cutouts in a manner that a person with an assistive device can traverse that and not only that, but we had folks who had other challenges, not just in traversing the snow, but where supportive services were coming to their homes did they have access to the homes of our residents with disabilities. And so, partnering with our other departments, I know Adrienne has partnered now with Carlton Williams to ensure that there is a weight that is put on the scheduling of how we're clearing snow relative to the activity and data that we have around where our folks with disabilities are most frequently traversing, right, and what those needs are. I'm sorry. The other question was around?
Thank you. The Digital Equity Manager, I think, as most of you may know, there is a responsibility due to a change in ADA that as of 2026 any digital communication, that it meets a certain standard for accessibility. And so, that's a pretty hefty lift, right. Our OIT partners have been doing a lot of work. Our Office for People with Disabilities along with our Law Department have been doing a lot of work to make sure that we are training our staff, number one, but number two, making the changes to existing communications, digital communication, so that they are accessible and meet the ADA requirement, compliance requirement. And while a lot of work has been done, there's a lot of work still to do. And the Digital Equity Manager is going to be responsible for coordinating that ongoing work, making sure that the training stays an ongoing presence in the workspace, so that we're not creating more digital communication that is inconsistent with the standard.
Is that information being then funneled through the Office of People with Disabilities through those convenings that you host?
Okay. And the methodology for improvement comes out of that committee?
And the other question was about which organizations are connected directly through the membership of that commission?
Again, when Adrienne is able to return to the hearing room, I would be able to provide that or we can provide that to you in writing after Council.
Okay. This is for the Office of Information and Technology. The Premier 1 or P1 database that the city uses holds a lot of sensitive data about our city's interactions with Philadelphia, information that ICE could use to abduct or detain people. Does any data from this system get sent to ICE or other federal agencies on a regular or automatic basis or must the federal government make specific requests for this information? For example, if ICE or other parts of the federal government make requests for this information, what is the process for determining the responses to those requests? And how do we ensure that we are only responding when legally required? If I have a question about the AI policy for the city, in your budget detail you say that the policy was released on March 24th. But after looking through the city's website, it seems that the data was not met or is not there. Can you confirm that you do have a new data set or if you don't, when do you plan to roll that out? And my other question is, what are the systems that you have in place for comprehensive review process for all AI tools, who was involved in this Governance Committee, and what is tasked with that approval? And my last question is, are there currently departments that are using AI that you can describe what it's used for? And I think Councilmember Landau Kind of got to that a little bit.
Yes. So in regards to your first question about Premier 1, there are strict rules that the city has as far as sharing data. We have to defer to Law with any processes or anything. In regards to that, we take our orders from Law and that's how it's disseminated. So we would defer our questions to Law. The AI policy has been up March 24th on the Intranet. So I was mentioning earlier that our policies are internal because they're for city employees and so forth, but this will be the first time where we would need to make an external tool so now the public could have access to it. So that will be part of our conversation this summer as we work through our action plan. So you'll look forward to hearing more about that and how we're going to get now the information out to the public. The Governance Committee, as I mentioned, includes Law, Integrity, Ethics, OIT and a Labor representative, but we also have areas for committees, which is the Procurement committee, Legal and then external advisors as well as far as a committee and then Technical Infrastructure committee as well. So that's the actual foundation. There was one more question.
So we have 36 AI tools. And when we release the -- we're working on how to release this to the public of course. So during the summer when we're working on our action plan, we'll work on getting the inventory together to be released. But we do take -- you also mentioned how do we go through the process of vetting. So OIT has already had a vetting process for all technology tools, where it goes through something called Project Health Check. It goes through a security analysis, but there's several questionnaires that have to be filled out. So we review the questionnaires with the -- if it's a vendor or however the tools are being administered to come into the city, and we look at from a security process data how it matches with our infrastructure. So that process has already been in place prior to AI. But we have added in features to ensure that we're laser-focused on AI tools coming into the city, so that that process is already there. Now, as far as the Governance Committee, as I was mentioning, now the other overlaying conversation is how will the city departments utilize these tools. Once OIT says, hey, it's safe to use it, the data is secure, it's efficient for what we deem as proper for the city, how the Governance Committee will then want to work through from a legal standpoint, can the department use it, and we're working with Procurement, working with Ethics, all those different things now have to go into play before we allow a particular department to utilize the AI tools for city services.
Thank you. One quick one, one last one is for HR. The Return-to-Work policy was discussed as a way to improve profits for Center City businesses. Do you have the information about any increase in business in Center City with the Return-to-Work policy?
So just in correction, I don't believe that was one of the bases for the Return-to-Work policy. The Return- to-Work policy was very much a management position that we work better together in person and that we realize more collaboration, more equity in terms of opportunity. The purpose of it was not to improve profits for our Center City businesses. I think we were all hopeful that the return to office would have the benefit of patronizing some of our community vendors in the Center City area and in outlying areas that may have been suffering from kind of the post-COVID positioning of remote work, right, and prevalence of remote work. We certainly can get any information to you about what we have seen relative to the economic health of our area businesses in Center City. But I did want to clarify that that was not the basis for the Return-to- Office policy?
I'm sorry, but we're running over time, way over time. Do you mind putting it in writing so that we can get a written response?
I already asked so if they want to respond in writing, that's fine.
All right. Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilman Young.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have first a request to be given to the Chair. I don't know if Finance can answer this question or HR. But can you provide to the Chair information on the actual dollar amount of all unfilled budgeted positions for FY25 and FY26? I think that gives us a sense of how much money I guess is out there, we're leaving on the table or what money can be allocated to other resources that we need to have in the city. So if you could provide us with that number, I think that would be helpful. And a question I have, CAO says the small and local business enterprise metrics are not yet available because the registry and goals are still being built. Can you tell us what is the implementation of this timeline? Which office owns this and will CAO be able to report department-level small/local business dollar participation and the goals? Because if we're looking here through this and we're trying to be stewards of our public funds, we want to make sure that we're actually contracting and procuring services from people who are small and local businesses. So can you tell us how and when will we be able to understand this particular metric?
Hi. On the first question, we can ask Finance to provide the Class 100 information for the unfilled positions. OHR doesn't have it. It's difficult for us to determine because there is some flexibility within what's budgeted and then what level they can fill the position. So for example, if a department is budgeted for a certain level position, they may choose to fill that at the entry- level. And so, there may be some discrepancy in salary there. But we can provide the response in writing, but Finance will have that information.
Thank you. And even if it is some leveling with the salary, just the unfilled positions essentially?
And in regard to the small and local business program, our Office of Business Impact and Economic Advancement is responsible for kind of implementing that program and metrics to track the participation across our communities. And so, we're happy to partner with them, Procurement partners, very closely with that office helmed by Nadir Jones, and we can provide the information in terms of the timeline and when metrics would be available to you after this hearing.
Thank you. That's helpful. Because we're trying to figure out and trying to verify if this reporting is not available, then how offices, departments are currently verifying whether local and small businesses are meaningfully benefiting from contracting opportunities and professional service opportunities, procurement opportunities, because based on your testimony, we don't have that information to make a determination on. So I think that would be helpful to provide us with that information. And I do have one more question, Mr. President, if you don't mind --
-- for OIT. OIT, going back to the AI policy, again your policy was published recently, requires security evaluation. This Governance Committee again, there's risk assessment, operational clearance and ongoing monitoring. So which AI tools are already approved for use which are under review, which departments are using them today? Can you describe that again for us?
So I have a complete list that I can get to you. I did read off some of them --
Thank you. So we're going to break for lunch from 12:30 to 1:30. But, members, do you have additional questions for a second round? You want the two panelists to come -- the three panelists to come back in the next round?
Could you speak into the microphone? I can't hear you.
You have a couple questions. Could you please come back after lunch briefly? And then we also have in the afternoon session, the Office of Public Property and Fleet Services. And so, we'll see everybody back here at 1:30. Thank you very much. We are in recess. (Lunch recess.)
Good afternoon, everyone. We will resume the Council session. Ms. Loughead, could you ask our testifiers to please come back to the podium.
Camille Duchaussee, Chief Administrative Officer; Candi Jones, Chief Human Resources Officer; and Melissa Scott, Chief Information Officer. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
To kick off this round, the Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips -- I'm sorry, Councilmember Jones, then Councilman Phillips, Harrity and Rue Landau.
So we may actually get you out of here relatively quickly. But how many attempts have there been -- you read about people hacking into systems all over the country, all over the world. How has Philadelphia fared in that regard?
Melissa Scott, Chief Information Officer. So repeat the question to make sure that I understand it clearly.
So municipalities around the world have been hacked into by actors that want to spread a virus, want to tamper with utilities such as water, everything from bank accounts to confidential information on criminal activity. How have we fared in fending off those types of attacks?
So we made a huge investment from the dollars from the last Fiscal and there was a 90% decrease in malicious phishing emails that have been reported. Our investment is proactive in email blocking and successful in keeping malicious lures from out of city inboxes. There's also a 69% drop in high-risk suspicious sign-in attempts as well recorded through Microsoft 365 logins, fewer phishing emails as well, directly correlated to fewer utilization intrusion attempts. Our perimeter defense is working.
Thank you, sir. Chair recognizes Councilman Dr. Anthony Phillips.
Thank you so much, Council President. I had a question for Director Jones. Earlier you said that you are working with department HR representatives around improving their ability to strengthen their processes, right. You're just going over -- are you mandating this, is this something you can mandate or is this something that is suggestive that you can work on?
So thank you for the question. So as part of the launch of CHRO Circles, we broke the HR managers up into three groups. And the leadership team at OHR and myself are meeting directly with the departments. In order to standardize, to your point we want to be able to deliver the HR service delivery in a consistent and uniform way across the city. Separately though, as part of the centralization efforts that we're looking at right now, we're looking at each HR's center of excellence. We are looking at what the relationship to the HR director looks like for HR managers, right, to your point, having accountability, reporting back, making sure there's adequate oversight from the Office of Human Resources into the decentralized HR managers. That is an ongoing conversation, but also includes reporting relationship, yes.
I asked that because I just think that if there's almost like a McDonaldization of the HR departments, every department does the same thing and that standard is being reviewed, we will have a lot more closure potentially with some of our vacancies.
I agree. I will say we have gotten a really excellent response from the HR community with the additional oversight and the support and the relationship building that we've done in the past year with each department. And so, we are hopeful that that effort will be ongoing. But again, we are having conversations about reporting structure and what that looks like for HR across the city.
Thank you. I want to commend you on the HR bus. I also want to continue to commend you on the work that you're doing with the social media publishing. But I also want to talk about something, to follow up with you about -- because we worked on the things we talked about which is great, thank you for that -- but will you implement the suggestion that I made around publishing the timeline for hiring going forward with all hiring in the City of Philadelphia?
So we have actually. We implemented since we last spoke, we didn't get a chance to follow up with you on what we implemented. But yeah, so in two ways: One, we have the timeline being communicated to candidates after they apply for jobs. We also published it on the website, as per your request. And so, there's a -- I can share the graphic after this conversation. But we created a graphic that is very transparent with candidates, showing them each part of the process with an associated timeline, right. So the two weeks of posting, the four weeks of review, the six-to-eight weeks of testing and being called by departments, we publish that on our public-facing website. So it's not just applicants that can see that information, it is citywide. So I will share that with you as a follow-up.
Okay. And then also, can you just go over to what is causing the biggest delays when it comes to the civil service exam or just hiring delays in general? Is it the exam development, the eligible list or department hiring decisions? And how much is the salary for the CCME fellows? And I just want to -- yeah, because I'm curious about that. That's 28 positions.
So for the timeline, I'll answer that part first. So on the OHR side, our process takes about 30 to 45 days roughly, depending on the type of exam. Where we're seeing the majority of the delays are on the departmental side after we established the eligible list, but that's that work with the departments, right. Like that consultative work with them in order to streamline their process, it's also leveraging our technologies, right. How are we scheduling interviews, how are we kind of speeding up once a list is established and available, we need the timeline to where we're contacting candidates and then getting actual butts in seats is what we're working on shortening.
And Chief Administrator Officer Camille, would you just tell me when should we see -- thank you again, Candi. When should we see those SLA timelines delivered that we discussed earlier in the last round?
The end of the next quarter. Okay. All right. Thank you. And I just want to also commend -- go ahead.
I'm sorry. I wanted to answer the question about CCME fellows, the salaries.
Okay. So I do want to commend Chief Information Officer -- Innovation Officer Melissa Scott for some work that she's doing around the 311 mobile (Applause.) As you all know, 311 has a significant problem in the city. And I'm hoping that the 311 people will be working closely with OIT on that issue going forward so --
May I have a point of information please, Dr. Young(sic).
On the 311 app, could you just clarify how we will address if the issue has been completed in realtime? Because often times we do get calls and something will say it's completed and then it wouldn't be completed, and then the constituents will give us an earful saying, why is this the case, so how does the app address that part?
-- the Customer Relation Management system. The issue is that -- so first, if you don't mind, I just want to explain what 311 does.
So 311 takes in the service request across different channels, they log these requests and categorize them. Then they route them to the specific departments and then they track the statuses and provide the updates to the residents and they do reporting. That's what their system does. But what they really are, they're a call center. But everyone treats them as if they're the department that does the work. They're really a centralized unit that everything comes in, it's like a bus station almost, right. But the issue is that the systems do not integrate with that 311 system. So what you're seeing is the data not being presented to the resident correctly. So, for instance, an abandoned car, the constituent calls in and they say, you know, I'm reporting this abandoned car. Then the system tells them that it was completed. And then the resident looks out their window and says, but it's still there. Because when the Department of Police picks up that particular case, they're saying in the system we have it and the system is interpreting it as it's complete, so they send it over to the resident as complete. No, it completely transferred to the department. So what we're going to do is we're going to work with -- we need all the departments to come together and to work on proper SLAs. We need to know how long does it normally take in order to remove an abandoned car so we can clearly communicate that. Then we want the system to show where they can -- the resident can go in and see I submitted it, someone is now working on it and then it's being completed. But in order for that to happen, you need integration between all the systems of the other departments.
And when is that going to happen? Is there a 311 integration task force?
Yeah. So the timeline we have is from May to September we're going to gather the requirements. What that means is we need all the departments to have a representative to participate in this conversation. You know, the Mayor talks about intergovernmental, interdepartmental cooperation. This is not an easy feat. This is difficult because we need everyone to be engaged long enough to get the information. Once we get that, we're going to go out to RFI, a request for information, to see what applications fit. But what's really important in what I'm saying here is each department has to be engaged so they can tell us what specifically do they need so we know how we need to integrate with their system. Every system is different. So we can have one central source of truth now, which will be 311 after we finish that. So we go out to RFI, we see whatever what systems work best. And what you'll see in FY28, then we'll put the request in for the funds for the solution. And if the money is available, then we'll be able to procure the proper solution and start to integrate it so now we can finally fix the problem. The reason why it hasn't been tackled is because it's interdepartmental cooperation that needs to happen. 311 themselves cannot solve this. They're just a call center.
Yes. However, I still believe it's 311's responsibility because it is the platform that our constituents call, right. And when they do call, they're expecting a complaint or service request to be completed in realtime, right. Because again, when I get that note saying it's saying it's completed and it's not completed --
-- rather it's departmental cooperation, sharing of information, I'm just looking at the end goal on our end is when that person sees that it's completed, we officially know it's completed. But I understand it's a work in progress is what you're saying to integrate this system and bring all the department heads to the table to talk about what this system needs, correct?
Yes. And what you've been seeing prior to this time is OIT putting a blind eye to 311. Now, here me as the leader of OIT, I'm saying, hey, no, we're responsible for solutions, we're going to help you build this solution, we're not going to leave 311 out on the island thinking that they can solve the solution. As the leader of OIT, we're going to get in the middle of it and we're going to help solve this problem.
Before you leave off that, it didn't used to be. Under Sandra Mills -- that's a name many people won't remember -- she ran 311 and what she employed was a dozen and a half to two dozen actual caseworkers. And so, they might have had a book that thick and remembered when you called, got back to you personally to say it is done-done, not half done, but done- done. And I don't know when we evolved away from that.
Yeah. There's definitely a disconnect between the communication through the system and the department. The department actually does the work, but when they're communicating back to the 311 system, what they're communicating is incorrect and that's why it's going to the resident incorrect.
I got you. I'm clear with you on that. I got confidence that you're going to get it done --
-- but it's an extreme priority for us in terms of doing constituent services. And then one last part and I'll give it back to Dr. Phillips. You also talked about I guess under the new system, in my mind I'm thinking it's like the DoorDash (Applause.) When you apply for DoorDash, it says you place your order, preparing your order, order about to be picked up, then you know it's about to get to your house. Is that how the model would be in terms of -- and I think this is along the lines of Dr. Phillips was saying. If we could let people know you applied for this pothole to get addressed, we're reviewing the pothole, next we're inspecting it, completed. I think that's dope.
Yes. As far as the mobile app is concerned, that integration --
Excuse me. For the record, not dope -- awesome.
Yes. That feature is part of the new interface that we're building now inhouse for the first time, our first mobile inhouse built, that feature is being built in. The issue is that we still have to solve the miscommunication and misinformation of the data. So once we get that tightened up, it will work exactly as you mentioned.
Shout-out to the 311 team. We saw them at the Block Captains Rally, and they were down there doing a good job and engaging the people, all the teams was. But I did have a good time talking -- I don't know the young man's name, but he was down there excited about this app that was coming. He actually showed me. He's like, let's go on the phone and showed me.
Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips. Back to your time.
Thank you, Council President. Yeah, that DoorDash -- that Amazon dashboard is what I've been getting at with 311 and looking forward to you continuing that effort to fix all that. And just my final question was for Chief Human Resources Director -- oh God, I've just butchered your title, Candi Jones. What accountability mechanisms exist when hiring delays occur after OHR completes this portion of the process? Does the data show the time it takes from the date the job announcement has been made to the actual hiring, to the interview to then also the offer?
Great question. Yeah, so the data shows all parts of the process in a high level of detail. We have it globally for the entire city and then we also break it down by department, so we report out that information. So we know exactly which departments are taking which length of time, to your point, from the eligible list to the actual hire. So that part of it we can share with Council as well.
So we do -- sorry, sir. We do follow up with the departments about their time to hire. My leadership team works very comprehensively, very closely with HR managers about what their bottlenecks are, what we can do to improve their service delivery on that end. And so, that is ongoing work.
I just want to make a 10-second comment that one of the things that I'm hoping that Chief Administrative Officer can review with you is the idea of having a separate unit focused with arborists that will just be for neighborhoods. Right now our tree arborists are doing the pruning and the cutting. They're spread throughout the entire city, from our parks, other related issues. But they're not dedicated just to residential tree-pruning and cutting, which is why we see delays. We do not have just so you know, Chief Administrator Du -- Camille, we do not have any service level agreements that are strong when it comes to arborists in the City of Philadelphia. So I'm just hoping that we can have that change going forward. If you want to speak on that.
We do partner with Parks and Recreation. Our understanding right now, they've had a lot of retirements within like that tree maintenance worker job classification that we discussed. So I think they have about eight vacancies right now. There are some ongoing conversations and partnerships that we have with Saul to be able to do some upskilling, to be able to get more employees into that job classification. But we continue that work and we do work very closely with Parks and Recreation. We're happy to do so with the Chief Administrative Office as well.
Thank you. Councilmember Rue Landau, Councilmember Jim Harrity, and then Councilmember Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Member Harrity. I need to jump ahead for a second. Sorry. I have a few more questions and I'm going to rattle them off first. But the first is around tech procurement. The second is around digital navigators and the Verizon franchise agreement. The third is more about OIT and data security. So going to tech procurement, you know, tech vendors say it takes too long to secure or extend a contract with the city beyond pilot status. What is the normal process for a tech vendor to be selected to receive a city contract? Do these vendors traditionally have a similar timeline to other vendors and is there a way in which we can fast- track tech vendors who show promise via pilot programs with the city to a long-term agreement? There are good examples nationally in California, locally in Montgomery County, where they recognize the purchase of technology is unique and therefore offer more fragile -- flexibility, sorry. With the Verizon franchise agreement, I know that we got, what was it, $2 million to add more computer systems into our rec centers. And so, I wanted to know how that's going, how we're doing there? And then with the connection to OIT we keep talking about, I know there's vacancies at OIT that we're trying to fill. There's vacancies in other city departments as well. Are we in any way focused on changing job descriptions to add tech qualifications to them, for example, at the libraries and the rec centers where we have computers and we know so much of the public comes in, in order to utilize our computers to apply for jobs and otherwise? I would love a detail also of the vacancies at OIT, kind of the top-level vacancies, so we can see if there's any way we can tweak them to help fill them and to tweak that list, if needed. That can come after today. And the last one, I just wanted to go back to -- we've asked a couple of times about OIT and data security. And I asked and I didn't feel like I got a straight answer. And then when Councilmember Brooks asked, she was told that would be with Law to answer that question. And I really want to be assured that everywhere we are collecting data, regardless of when we are fully implementing our AI policies and whatnot, that we know that these are secure, and also double-down that I think this is extremely important. And the reason why, Council must have a seat on the AI Governance Committee.
Okay. So you want to go in order, tech procurement? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: Sure. I'll start with tech procurement, and then a little bit of that is yours and it can segue into yours. So with respect to tech procurement, timelines can be a little bit longer than other types of procurement, particularly because of the cyber security requirements, which can lengthen the negotiation phase and it's less frequent that firms will just sign onto our terms and conditions also. So in terms of average lengths of time and procurement, those things get dragged out. Additionally, with respect to your comment about piloting, that's an area of concern to me in that when you go down a pilot if the strategy is well- defined up front, then you get into difficulties with fair and open competition, where you've preselected a pilot and now it becomes the foregone conclusion and solution if it succeeds. You really haven't gone through any sort of competitive sourcing. And so, unless you affirmatively go into that as some sort of exception where you're going to sole-source and pilot it, then that becomes problematic. It is possible to pilot more than one provider or technology or solution, and I've seen that done very successfully. But right now, the city's process does not necessarily automatically build that in. It is something that I intend to build in into our business processes here to leverage more frequently the proper use of piloting. Because as I said, we often get ourselves jammed into a corner where we either break the rules and continue on down a sole source and it's not fair and open or we do something outside of a pilot and then it's not properly tested. Does that answer your question?
It's good enough. I also want to know do we have enough tech professionals in the procurement process so they're doing a full assessment of the products that we're using? COMMISSIONER HOVEY: We have some -- I would say we don't in Procurement necessarily have enough. But Melissa has professionals on her side of the team that do, do that sort of thing. And as we look to centralized procurement, we'll look for the right location for those people to reside.
Okay. Thank you. COMMISSIONER HOVEY: You're welcome. Thank you.
Okay. I want to jump to the data security because that's the easiest answer. So having the data secured versus sharing the data that is being requested is two totally different things. Securing data has to do with someone accessing data unwanted, right. And so, the question is, is our data secured and are we defending our data from bad actors? The answer is, yes. Through our particular tools and the vendors that we allow in, we have a standard 65-question data security questionnaire, so we are managing and securing our infrastructure here within the City of Philadelphia. But the question that was asked was --
-- sharing the data. And I don't have any authority as the CIO to just go share the data with anyone. That is a legal process, so I defer it and I defer it again to Legal. The second question is whether or not -- let me see what I have here -- oh, you mentioned a franchise agreement, but I believe that the question goes in line with it's a grant that we wrote.
It came out of my head. It was basically my understanding was that the city was going to be hiring digital navigators, that we did get this franchise agreement that we were going to get computers in rec centers. So two things, how is that going? And the second thing is, have we considered changing some job descriptions for library or rec center personnel to include some sort of tech basis so that we can have people help people even more with the computers in our libraries and our rec centers?
Okay. So the 200 laptops was a grant. It wasn't part of the franchise agreement. The franchise agreement added 180 -- it added broadband service to 183 recreation centers, which is not, you know, the laptops, right. Okay. So we have completed -- there's 183 and we completed 160, so it's going well.
So you're saying we're going to have broadband access in rec centers, but no computers?
-- apples with oranges. So you said the Verizon franchise agreement, which is a document that was signed, right, which allows for -- and part of that agreement is for high speed broadband services. Prior to me assuming the position as CIO, there were no laptops given out anywhere, right. So that's something, right, that I put in the budget for last year. We hired the digital navigators, but the navigators are there to provide the digital skills training classes, which we are actually executing now, so that's going well. So I just want to make sure we don't confuse the franchise agreement with the digital navigators because that's an initiative that I established within OIT, which is separate from the franchise.
I am very proud of your initiative that you started with OIT. This is not about handing laptops to people. This is about if we're going to have high speed internet in a rec center, that we actually have some computers in the rec center so people can be able to use them and then digital navigators there on the spot to help people use the computers.
Okay. So I'm not sure if you're aware that we're in a federated structure here at the City. Central OIT is not over Parks & Rec's IT department. I'm not sure if you're aware. So if you have a question in regards to what IT is doing in the recreation centers, I don't have any authority over that. However, we still try to work together. So in our department we wrote a grant and we gave out 200 laptops that are being deployed to the recreation center. And we also logged 479 adults and youth since that time, so we went out and we trained and we gave digital skills classes to those individuals. There's another grant that we wrote, the 2 million that you mentioned. And million goes to Happy Hollow Recreation Center. It contributed to the HVAC, the computer lab, e-sports. And that's going to be completed December, the end of December of this year. Then the other million went for --
Excuse me. Point of information. How much is going to Happy Hollow?
1 million that we wrote a grant for and we worked with Parks & Rec for that, Happy Hollow.
Okay. I know about Finnegan. Okay. Please proceed. I don't want no smoke. Vice-Chair of Parks and Recreation from the 8th (inaudible), it's okay. I was just trying to get clarity of information. Please resume.
So that million stands for their electric, the computer lab, it's helping e-sports, and that will be done April 2026. Now, let's go back to these laptops. So we just gave out 2000 laptops. So I'm kind of confused about the questioning whether we're going to give laptops or not. Are you specifically saying recreation centers? Because then my previous answer would answer that, the IT the way we're structured, they don't roll up to me in order for me to do that. But what we have done is wrote the grant for the 200 laptops, which have been distributed to Parks and 8 Recreation centers. And we also 9 gave out 2000. I -- 10
I 11 will say again I am very proud of 12 you handing out 2000 laptops. I am 13 not in any way talking about that. 14
16 I've had a lot of people ask me -- 17 I won't. I think I got enough of 18 my question answered. Thank you. 19 Okay. I think that Director -- 20
And then Candi wanted to answer the job description changing piece.
So globally -- and thank you for the question. So globally, OHR is responsible for maintenance of the classification plan. So through our process, we do review all 1000 civil service job descriptions on a pretty regular basis and presents changes through the Civil Service Commission. So last year we did about 71 changes. Part of that though, to answer your question, we have established new pathways into IT-related roles, from library assistant, right, so they go to -- let me go to my notes real quickly -- so they can go to digital resource specialists and then promote to computer user support specialist. A lot of the IT-related roles, the non-IT engineering don't require a four- year degree, which is also a part of our goals, so they require certifications and things like that. So we're continuing to look at job titles where we can provide these additional pathways to IT and also other areas. We have not explored that on the Parks and Recreation side, but I have taken a note so we will work collaboratively with Parks and Recreation to identify if there is a potential pathway from Assistant Rec Leader into some of these IT titles. And so, we're happy to report back on that information once any progress is made.