The city plans to install Cognos 8 BI software from Ottawa-based Cognos Inc. over the next 12 to 18 months for 1,000 users. The software will be used to assess performance metrics for everything from the time it takes to repair a pothole to aggregating the revenue from parks and recreation programs, said Chuck Meadows, Atlanta's chief of budget and fiscal policy.

The project -- which will cost US$2.1 million for the software, plus additional money for consultants to put it into place -- will replace Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and performance management software from CorVu Corp. in Edina, Minn. The city has used the CorVu software since 2002, and, while it could be used for basic reporting, "as we had it installed ... [it] wasn't robust enough" for more complicated reporting, Meadows said. As a result, users had reverted to manually loading data into Excel spreadsheets to report the performance of individual departments.

While some city departments perform similar functions, they all were reporting on those functions differently, he noted. "We weren't able to supply our budget analysts or the chief operating officer with real good data without pulling that information manually through those various reports and presentations."

The city, which has been using Cognos BI software in its financial department since 2005, evaluated BI options from Oracle Corp., Hyperion Solutions Corp. and OutlookSoft Corp. Despite an existing link with Oracle -- whose human resources, finance and procurement software the city now is putting into place -- Oracle's BI tools and the others reviewed didn't allow officials to create analysis models that mirrored their unique business processes, Meadows said.

For example, the city's processes vary from monitoring high-end data management procurements to monitoring projects like garbage collection efficiency. "[With Cognos], we will be able to look at things like the cost-per-acre to maintain a park, the cost-per-work-order for field level operations and the average manpower and materials costs to repair a traffic light or resurface a mile of a city street," he said.