imagineCALGARY Partners had a chance to get the inside scoop on imagineCALGARY Target prioritization and its role in business planning at a peer learning event June 24. The City of Calgary organized Sustainability Priorities and Business Planning: a Peer Learning Event as a unique opportunity for Partners to learn about how The City has integrated imagineCALGARY into its operations.

A capacity audience of Partners attended the event, held at the Calgary Public Library. Jesse Row, Director of Sustainable Cities for the Pembina Institute, and Chair of the imagineCALGARY Steering Committee, served as moderator for the discussions. “Getting sustainability into the business planning process is essential if you want to have anyone pay attention to it,” Jessie said in introducing the speakers.

Linda Spencer, Manager of the imagineCALGARY Transition Team at The City of Calgary, provided an overview of how The City was able to prioritize the 114 Targets within the imagineCALGARY Plan. “The imagineCALGARY Plan is the most complex plan any municipality has ever developed,” Linda says. “People have told us the kind of city they want to have, and this provides direction and context for all kinds of planning initiatives.”

Using a methodology that was pre-approved by City Council, The City first determined which of the Targets were in areas where The City makes a contribution. This first step in the methodology reduced the number of applicable Targets from 114 to 87. The second step analyzed Targets in which The City plays a significant, strategic role, and brought the number of Targets down to 22. The third and final step looked at grouping the remaining Targets, and developing Focus Areas.

These Focus Areas are Success of our Citizens, Healthy Rivers and Watershed, and Climate Change.

In terms of lessons that were learned throughout the imagineCALGARY Target prioritization process, Linda stressed the importance of the formal methodology. “Having a preset methodology that has been agreed upon by the highest level of the organization was a saving grace,” Linda says.

Heather Reed-Fenske is The City of Calgary’s Program Manager, Business Plan and Budget Coordination. She’s leading the Business Planning and Budget Coordination (BPBC) process for The City’s next three-year business planning process, which will be operational from 2009-2011. “Council gave us a mandate to use the imagineCALGARY Plan in our business planning,” Heather says. The imagineCALGARY sustainability priorities are now being used with other corporate strategies to influence corporate planning and budgeting processes across the organization.

The challenge for The City’s business planners has been to establish what they could do within the three years of the business planning cycle to impact imagineCALGARY Targets that were going to be achieved gradually over the next 100 years. “We realized the importance of taking small steps,” Heather says. “We needed to start now – we couldn’t leave it to the next three-year cycle. It was important to make headway into this now.”

In fact, the use of the imagineCALGARY sustainability priorities has already helped to shape priorities across the corporation. “As a tool to focus the priorities of Council, it has been quite a success,” Heather says.

Copies of both Linda’s and Heather’s presentations are available for download.

In addition to the two formal presentations, the event included an opportunity for Partners to ask questions and share their perspectives on ways to keep building progress with the imagineCALGARY initiative.

“The imagineCALGARY Plan isn’t about predictability – it’s about adaptability,” Linda added. “The next steps are about capacity building, and creating a structure that will allow us to continue to make progress in realizing the imagineCALGARY Vision.”

The City of Calgary's use of the imagineCALGARY Plan in strategic business planning was profiled in the July 2008 edition of Municipal World.  You can read the article here.