Goodbye QuickFind: Who Works for the City?
Part 2 of 12 — Vancouver City Hall: Following the Paper Trail
Remember when you could look up City of Vancouver employees online?
For decades, Vancouver had something called QuickFind — a public employee directory that dated back to the 1990s.
It wasn't glamorous.
It wasn't cutting-edge.
And by 2024, it was almost certainly showing its age.
So let's start by saying something important:
I don't think replacing a 1990s-era website is suspicious.
Technology changes.
People change jobs.
Departments are reorganized.
Links break.
Information becomes outdated.
A public employee directory that began life in 1996 was obviously going to need a serious overhaul eventually.
But here's where I start asking questions.
If QuickFind was obsolete, why wasn't it replaced?
On June 24, 2024, public access to the City's QuickFind employee directory disappeared.
And according to reporting and FOI material, the City subsequently faced requests for information about its staff directory.
So instead of asking:
"Why did City Hall secretly delete QuickFind?"
I'd rather ask:
"Why did Vancouver retire an outdated public directory without creating a modern replacement?"
That's a very different question.
And I think it's a fair one.
Why does an employee directory matter?
At first glance, this might sound trivial.
Who cares if you can't search for the name of some City bureaucrat?
Well...
We should.
A city government is made up of thousands of people.
There are planners.
Engineers.
Building officials.
Procurement officers.
Real estate specialists.
Clerks.
Bylaw officers.
Managers.
Directors.
General managers.
People making recommendations to Council.
People administering decisions made by Council.
People responsible for public safety.
People handling public money.
People responding to Freedom of Information requests.
And people whose names most citizens will never know.
That's normal.
Government has to function through a professional civil service.
But democracy also depends on citizens being able to figure out:
Who is responsible for what?
Think about what happens when someone disappears from the directory.
Imagine you're a journalist.
You wrote about a City department six months ago.
You knew who the director was.
Now something goes wrong.
You go looking for that person.
They're no longer listed.
Was the position eliminated?
Did they retire?
Were they transferred?
Did they resign?
Were they dismissed?
Was the department reorganized?
Who replaced them?
When did the change happen?
Without a public directory, one simple piece of public information becomes harder to establish.
You may have to search old Council reports.
News stories.
Archived documents.
FOI records.
LinkedIn.
Departmental pages.
And sometimes none of those will give you the answer.
And this becomes especially interesting right now.
Vancouver has experienced a number of significant senior staff departures in recent years.
The City Manager changed.
The City Clerk changed.
The Deputy City Clerk changed.
The Chief Building Official changed.
Other senior positions have also changed hands.
Those aren't necessarily suspicious.
People leave government.
Organizations reorganize.
New administrations bring new priorities.
That's democracy and administration.
But when there is significant turnover at the same time that the public's easiest way of seeing the City's organizational structure disappears...
Well...
It makes tracking those changes harder.
That's simply a fact.
And that's why I think the QuickFind story belongs in this series.
This isn't about nostalgia for an old website.
In fact, I'd argue the opposite.
Vancouver should have something better than QuickFind.
Imagine a modern, searchable public directory showing:
Name
Position
Department
Responsibilities
Official contact information
Date appointed
Date position changed
Current status
And perhaps links to relevant Council reports or departmental pages.
That wouldn't be a step backward.
It would be a huge improvement.
It could actually make City Hall more transparent than it was in 1999.
So why don't we have that?
That's the question I'd like answered.
There's another piece to this.
Freedom of Information exists partly because governments hold information that the public needs to be able to access.
But FOI should not have to be the first stop for basic information about who works for the government.
If a member of the public wants to know who the City's Chief Building Official is, that shouldn't require an FOI request.
If a journalist wants to know who heads a City department, that shouldn't require an FOI request.
If citizens want to understand who is responsible for a particular decision, they should be able to find that information easily.
Transparency shouldn't be an obstacle course.
And here's where I want to be especially fair to City Hall.
Maybe there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Maybe the old system was expensive.
Maybe it was insecure.
Maybe it was technically impossible to maintain.
Maybe the City was building a replacement that hasn't materialized yet.
Maybe there are privacy considerations.
Maybe there are other legitimate reasons we haven't considered.
If so, great.
Tell us.
Show us.
Explain it.
Because that's exactly what transparency is supposed to do.
What we know
QuickFind was old.
QuickFind was publicly accessible.
It disappeared from the City's website in 2024.
The City has subsequently dealt with FOI requests concerning its employee directory.
And today, it is harder for an ordinary member of the public to use the old-style directory to see who works for Vancouver.
Those are the facts.
What we DON'T know
We don't know that QuickFind was removed to conceal staff changes.
We don't know that its removal was connected to the $6 million in severance payments.
We don't know that City Hall intended to make journalists' work more difficult.
And we shouldn't claim any of those things without evidence.
That's not how we're doing this series.
We're following the paper trail.
So here's the question for Vancouver:
If the old public employee directory was no longer good enough...
Where is the new one?
And if there isn't one:
Why not?
Because perhaps the most transparent solution would be incredibly simple:
Build a better QuickFind.
Give the public a current, searchable window into their own municipal government.
And let people see who is there, who is responsible for what, and when the structure changes.
That doesn't belong to one political party.
It belongs to all of us.
Your turn.
Do you remember using QuickFind?
Did you use it for work, journalism, research, contacting City staff, or just curiosity?
Do you think Vancouver should have a modern public employee directory?
And what information do you think should be public?
Let's talk about it around the water cooler. ☕🤪
And please — don't just agree with me.
Check the sources. Do your own research.
If you find something I've missed, tell me.
If the City has a good explanation, let's hear it.
If you have documents, bring them forward.
Because this series isn't about telling people what to think.
It's about making it easier for people to see.
Part 3: Where Did All the Senior Officials Go?
#Vancouver #CityHall #QuickFind #Transparency #Accountability #FOI #MunicipalGovernment #CivicEngagement #PublicInformation #FollowThePaperTrail
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