Steps to Implement BizPal
Service Alberta believes in providing municipalities the tools necessary to make implementation of BizPaL easy to manage. Below is an overview of the steps required to introduce BizPaL to your municipality.
1. Secure Buy-in From Your Senior Management
It’s important for your whole team buy-into and support the BizPaL initiative in order to make it successful. After appointing your Municipal Coordinator (pdf), the BizPaL project team will provide you with template demonstrations and presentations. Following this, local governments may want to solidify their commitment to the project by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (pdf) with the Ministry of Service Alberta.
2. Gather Your Municipality’s Permit and Licence Inventory
Focusing primarily on permits and licences related to starting up or expanding a small or medium sized business, a standardized configuration spreadsheet document will be provided to you to enter the permit and licence information. Engage your permit and licence experts to participate in the coordination of this information. Once completed, submit the spreadsheet to your provincial BizPaL Coordinator to prepare for business process mapping.
This may require you to facilitate an information session or two to familiarize staff with the BizPaL service and the type of information required. Template presentation materials are available from your provincial BizPaL Coordinator.
3. Choose the Business Types You Would Like to Map
Your provincial BizPaL Coordinator will provide you with a proposed list of industry sectors to be mapped as per North American Industry Code Standards (NAICS) (external site). You are able to prioritize, add to or shorten the list of business types you wish to map based on your municipality’s priorities.
4. Decide Which Technology Option Will Work Best for You
Your provincial BizPaL Coordinator will provide you with a Partner Technical Implementation Kit (PTIK) that will introduce the project and help you decide on the right technology option for your organization:- Web services - appeals to partners who are technologically proficient and who wish to add the BizPaL capabilities
- Inline frames (I-frames) - provides the same user experience to the client, but is easier and less expensive to implement than web services
- Hyperlink - allows municipalities with limited resources to simply hyperlink from their web site to the provincial BizPaL web site
Once you have become familiar with the options, we encourage you to arrange a conference call between you, your IT staff and the provincial BizPaL Coordinator to discuss the options and next steps.
5. Conduct Business Process Mapping
Arrange the participation of your permit and licence staff who have the knowledge to provide and validate permit and licence data. Mapping sessions will be led by a provincial BizPaL Coordinator and can typically be completed in less than one day.
6. Validate Data
The mapping session will produce a number of configuration spreadsheets, which will link your permits and licences to the typical business activities undertaken in your municipality. The information from these spreadsheets is used to configure BizPaL’s question and answer wizard.
A gap document will also be produced from the session. This document is a record of the information to be added, explained further or confirmed. This is where your permit and licence personnel will again be helpful. Your Municipal Coordinator is responsible for making sure the permit and licence information is complete and valid.
7. Enter the Data
The data resulting from the mapping session(s) will be entered into the BizPaL system via the Administration Module. After the mapping session, training on the Administration Module will be provided so you may enter the configuration spreadsheets and keep the data current on an ongoing basis. The two-day training session will take place in your municipality and is required before the configuration spreadsheets can be entered into the system. It is up to you to decide who should be trained within your group.
Alternatively, you may wish to ask your provincial BizPaL Coordinator to input and maintain the data on your behalf, to avoid the training requirement.
8. Quality Assurance and Testing
Technical staff will work with business experts to perform quality assurance through both the Administration Module and the client interface to ensure that the mapping data is correct, has been loaded into the system, and is being correctly presented to the business user.
If you would like more information on BizPaL, please contact the Service Alberta BizPaL project team.
