Toronto really needs to update its technology, and it’s bad to do it

The Toronto City Council is experiencing some technical difficulties.

The past few years have seen a relentless flurry of high-pressure lobbying by tech companies against Mayor John Tory, council members, and high-level Toronto bureaucrats. This month, the city lobbyist registration shows 231 active companies registered to lobby on technology-related issues.

The companies selling their wares include major players like Google, Amazon and Canada’s top telecommunications companies, plus dozens of smaller companies backed by venture capitalists. The city council seems eager to adopt some of this new technology, but it’s not clear whether politicians and bureaucrats have any idea how to really assess its usefulness and effectiveness, or know how to implement it.

Let’s back up a bit. It makes sense that the tech industry sees an opportunity with the Toronto government. The city is not exactly at the forefront. For example, a report from last year revealed the city still relied on 1,355 lines of fax machines to conduct business, at an annual cost of nearly $150,000. (The city has since announced plans to transition to a cheaper “virtual fax solution.”)

So it’s fair to say there’s room for improvement. But the city’s track record with such improvements is troubling. A auditor general investigation in 2021 found that the city had spent about $183 million over the previous five-year period on software licenses, maintenance and support for more than 3,300 programs. They are good at spending money on technology. They are less good at using that technology to deliver better results.

Take, for example, the story reported last week by my Star colleague Ben Cohen, telling us about a new “artificial intelligence predictive modeling” tool adopted this summer by Toronto Public Health to forecast water quality at two beaches in Toronto. Some analysis suggests that the AI ​​has correctly predicted whether the water is safe to swim in less than half the time. Sophisticated technology can be outdone by a literal 25-cent solution: tossing a coin.

Or check out Star reporter Ben Spurr’s recent stories about the city hiring vendors to run online training programs for ride-hailing drivers who work for companies like Uber or Lyft. One of the vendors offered software so rudimentary — and easy to mindlessly speed up — that the city is now asking drivers who finished the program too quickly to go back and do it again.

And then there’s the sad saga of Toronto’s attempt to replace its old and not-so-fun eFun online system for signing up for recreational programs like swimming lessons. The multibillion-dollar project that has been repeatedly delayed is on track to take about six years to finish. By the time it launches, our local arcade registration system will have spent more time in development than the first iPhone.

As the city council wrestles with technology, the stakes are higher. There are a growing number of companies offering artificial intelligence as a way to solve local problems, and some of their ideas come with significant ethical and privacy concerns. Recent lobbying activity at City Hall has come from companies touting AI’s ability to detect potholes, respond to 311 complaints, remotely monitor patients in long-term care facilities, and recognize faces in recorded video.

Could some of this technology be useful? Yes. Could any of this violate our privacy and also not work particularly well? Also if. Should we trust the city council to separate the good from the bad? Nope.

More safeguards need to be put in place. More transparency, too. The city, in its favor, has developed some guidelines for its “digital infrastructure”. As part of that, they promised that a public registry of city initiatives using AI will be launched before the end of this year. Let’s keep them steady.

But it’s also time to get all important technology-related decisions out of the back room. In the next term, the new council should create an advisory committee tasked with overseeing the use of AI and other software. The committee could be made up of staff from the city council’s technology services division, tech-savvy councilors (hopefully there could be at least two or three), and members of the public with technology and privacy expertise. Give them a say before major purchasing decisions are made and have them oversee new and existing projects.

Would this kind of oversight delay the effort to modernize City Hall? Perhaps, but I would argue that the status quo of intense lobbying and expensive software purchases is not really conducive to more efficient and effective government. Instead, in its rush to shed its old-school technophobic reputation, the city council risks becoming something much worse: easy prey for Big Tech.

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