To address the AMANDA related improvement points as part of the 2013 review, the Planning and Development Services Department, at the time of this Internal audit, was undergoing an implementation of the Evolve system, from the vendor, EVOLTA, which is to be completed in August 2020. This system is to replace AMANDA and the SharePoint site in terms of submitting, recording, tracking and managing planning and development related applications for the department. As per management, this system is expected to digitize the application submission and processing phases, which currently are manual across the different types of applications.

Scope

The scope of this internal audit included an assessment of the controls in effect for the period January 1, 2018 through to December 31, 2018.

Internal audit objectives

Overall purpose of this internal audit project was to review controls over the Planning and Development area and to provide insights into the process which may be considered by management in improving the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of current control practices:

Policies and procedures for planning and development

• ● planning and development policies and procedures exist, are periodically reviewed to remain relevant to current legislation and changing circumstances, and support adherence with requirements on interaction points between various stakeholders /departments;

Planning & development application processing

• ● pre-development assessments are conducted and monitored as per requirements of the Official Plan, in a timely manner, and incorporate necessary changes as identified through documentation of information received to support decisions;
• ● interactions between internal and external customers/applicants and key City departments occur and defined/required information is exchanged in a timely manner to support management in the planning and development decision making process; and
• ● processes are designed and implemented to enable continuous oversight of the results/outcomes desired by Planning and Development Services for consistent processing of internal and external applications.

Specific scope exclusions

Given the nature of the work, risk considerations and budgeted effort, the following elements were excluded from the scope of this internal audit:

• ● the design, implementation and operation of the Information and Technology (IT) environment and IT general controls, end user computing controls, IT application controls, data integrity of reports used in IT dependent manual controls;
• ● controls over the completeness, accuracy, reliability and validity of the evidence, information and data provided by management during the course of this review;
• ● capital project management;
• ● processes related to the building department including policies and procedures, and processing of applications for building permits;
• ● processing of planning applications other than zoning, site plan control, subdivision, condominium, part-lot, and minor variances;
• ● adequacy of the Official Plan and Zoning bylaws in adherence to the Planning Act (i.e. extent to which it remains relevant to the changing circumstances within Windsor and to current provincial legislation, policies and appropriate guidelines);
• ● appropriateness of key performance metrics to measure customer satisfaction/experience;
• ● appropriateness of authority levels and chain of command; adequacy / reperformance of assessments conducted to evaluate compliance of applications with key requirements;
• ● determination of development charges and other user fees; and
• ● customer service, complaints and customer satisfaction.