NYC Parks Drives Transparency Using Oracle's Primavera Unifier

New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation’s manages about 600 capital projects each year with the admirable goal of keeping 30,000 acres of land and 5,000 properties safe and enjoyable for residents.

But keeping citizens and elected officials informed about the status of a capital plan projected to reach $4.6 billion over the next ten years was becoming a challenge. 

“We determined very quickly that [we needed] a public website to [present] data related to all of our projects that we were capturing in Oracle's Primavera Unifier,” said Diane Jackier, chief of capital strategic initiatives. She recently spoke to attendees at the New York City Oracle Industry Connect 2018 conference.

“At the end of the day, we have seen are a lot of positive benefits from making all this data go public. It increases accountability and transparency for both the agency and the individuals who are working on these projects.”

Help from Oracle's Primavera Unifier

The parks department launched CapitalTracker, the public-facing website, in less than five months. External and internal users can click on a map showing hundreds of ongoing projects.

People can then drill through 16 data fields associated with each project. Information includes a general description of the initiative, its completion status, and a timeline based on average time frames for procurement and construction. Once a contract has been awarded and registered to a contractor, CapitalTracker shows the dollar value of the project.

The department had immediate access to information and detailed status summaries. This helped them complete 18 percent of its projects early, while the remaining 80 percent of the landscape projects are finishing within 30 days of their scheduled completion dates.

“We’ve seen the added benefit of improving communication between both the Capital Division and other parks divisions,” Jackier added.

Increased visibility is also helping contractors. A large contractor used to struggle to determine when it needed to install its portion of projects. “Now, it goes to the CapitalTracker and sees when the project schedule,” she said.

She admits that department executives were initially apprehensive about making so much information publicly available. “We were scared of all this accountability and transparency,” Jackier says. “But at the end of the day, it's been a really good thing.”

View Jackier’s presentation on demand.

Read a complete wrap-up of Oracle Industry Connect 2018.

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