Introduction

Municipal clients located within Ontario have specific processes for violation offences to be sent through. The two relevant processes are the POA (Provincial Offenses Act) and the AMPS (Administrative Monetary Penalty System). Municipalities will prescribe to one process or the other.

OPS-COM supports most aspects of the POA process and is considered as a Permitted Recipient under ARIS rules. The POA process is used when a violation is given to a vehicle that has no user information present within the system.

This process involves sending out vehicle data to the transportation authority (MTO) to receive additional user information, so any outstanding violations on the vehicle can be sent to court for collections.

This article will explain the process involved in the life-cycle of a violation for one municipality in Ontario, including interactions with the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) and the Ontario court system.

It is important to note these violations would be issued to a vehicle by license plate number. Unless the driver is a registered user in the OPS-COM system, the actual owner of the vehicle would not be known.

An Example

For this example, our Municipal client has the following violation life-cycle:

1. A violation is issued with 7 days to pay during which the fine amount may be discounted. 

2. On the 8th day, the fine is no longer discounted.

3. Weekly, all tickets that have reached their 15th day of non-payment are sent to MTO to do a lookup of relevant driver info.

4. Once the MTO information comes back, we will have driver info, including address and driver's license number, to store temporarily in our database. Notices of impending conviction (NIC letters) can be issued to drivers who have not paid their violations. This is done using the letter report. If something happens during the letter report that prevents you from downloading all the notice letters, they can be re-downloaded from the violation information window. 

5. If the violation is still outstanding on day 65 it will be sent to court and an additional court fee can be applied to the violation.  A file can be generated that is compatible with the Ontario Courts System if upload is available. In addition, a summary file can be generated to include all cases submitted to court in a particular timeframe.

6. When the ticket has been paid the Court will send a report back to the parking manager to let them know what the outcome was. OPS-COM Admins can use the report for information to process the payment on the violation.
   
   

Starting the Process

Up to the 15th day, the violation is following the typical rules of OPS-COM. We will start the process at day 15 when the interaction with MTO begins.

The admin will run a weekly report to determine if there are outstanding violations in the system that have passed the 15 day mark. This would be done using the 'Vehicle Lookup Export' in OPS-COM.

This page can be found by following this menu tree:

• Violations → Collections → Vehicle Lookup Export

Vehicle Lookup Export Tool

The Vehicle Lookup Export Tool opens. In our example the search parameters are:

• Minimum number of violations

• Vehicle province or state

• Issue date or by due date

• Date range of the lookup

Send for Lookup

This search returns 3 results.

To generate the required report click on Export.

Notice there are various formats for this export:

• Aris Raw Data Account: Used if you are an ARIS client using raw format lookups

• Aris Abstract Account: Used if you are an ARIS client using abstract format lookups

• Send to Collections: Used to send a report to a typical collections agency outside of the MTO process

A text file will be generated with the filename as SentToMTO-XX-XX-XX.txt where the X's are the date stamp (ie: SendToMTO-18-01-30.txt)

MTO Processing

This section details the MTO export and import back into the OPS-COM system process.

MTO Export File

Here is a small sample of what the exported text file will look like.

The file is formatted in a custom format required for the MTO to lookup driver information.

MTO Response File

The file that is returned from MTO Lookup will include driver information such as the registered vehicle owner's name and home address.

This information is temporarily stored in the OPS-COM system. As governed by ARIS rules, the information will be purged from the system after it is no longer needed. 

The document return from the MTO will look like the following:

Importing the MTO Response File

To import the information received back from the MTO into the OPS-COM system, navigate to the vehicle lookup import found under the menu tree:

• Violations → Collections → Vehicle Lookup Import
  

The Vehicle Lookup Import file selector tool opens.

Choose the file that came back from MTO and navigate to the file you wish to select for import.

Click Import. The following confirmation screen will appear.

Generation of Notices of Impending Conviction (NIC)

Once the information is imported, this information will be used to automatically populate the Notices of Impending Conviction. This letter only gets sent to the primary driver of the vehicle associated to the violation. 

Go to the https://ops-com.atlassian.net/wiki/x/JIBZB  to see all your violations have information from MTO. 

Print the appropriate letters and mail them to the drivers.

If the ticket still remains unpaid for 65 days, it can be sent to the Ontario court system for collection.

To do so, Click Violations tab, hover over Collections and click on Send to Court.

Select Court Requested Conviction Fee to add the court fee to the violation.

Some municipalities will have a fee and some may not.

Generating the Ontario Court Report

The system will generate a report in text format that would be sent to the Ontario Court.

This file is in a specific court approved format and must be customized for each municipality.

A summary file can be generated and exported to Excel.

This will contain a summary of all cases being sent to court in a particular time frame. 

Important Note

It is important that you configure OPS-COM with custom information in order to identify your organization specifically in the export to court report.

For each client sending information to MTO, there are 4 codes we would need to put in place.

NOTE - You must request a RAW Data account from MTO. They system will not work otherwise

• Case Court starts at character 3 - It is a 4 digit number 

• Case Jurisdiction  starts at character 7 - It is a 3 digit number  

• Agency Code starts at character - It is alphanumeric three letters followed by three numbers (It would look something like this BYL123)

• Disbursement Code starts at character - It is alphanumeric one letter followed by two numbers (It would look something like this M123)

To configure these codes go to System Settings and select the Collections Component.
Enter the values in each designated field and then click on save settings.

For those municipalities using the extra detailed version of the NIC letter where one notice is sent out for each violation rather than in bulk, it is required to toggle the "Include All Unpaid Violations" setting to be off.

Click on the violations menu, and under the collections sub-menu, find the sent to court report.

The Court Requested Conviction - Already Sent Report screen displays.

Click export. In excel the summary report will be displayed.

You can print a copy to bring to court the day of hearings.

This is in a format that the court recommends.

Court Requested Conviction Fee

When you look one of these violations that was sent to court you will see that the Court Requested Conviction (CRC) fee has been added.

Flagging Paid Records

Now we will assume we have gotten back a report for the Ontario Court that this ticket is paid.

We need to flag them in the system as paid. You run this report under the Collections menu as well.

Choose the option "Flag as Paid by Court". 

Enter a date range and click Search.

My ticket 7/1906 is shown. 

Click Flag as paid and the violation record will show the item as processed in the user's profile. 

These items will also show up on the Daily Processed Report with Payment type of "Paid by Court"

Additionally, when looking at the vehicle information for this violation, the MTO information will have been purged from the system.

Note the vehicle shows No Associated Drivers.