Information Technology Advisory Committee - Aug 15th, 2019

The next buildings scheduled for VoIP installation are the three fire stations, the police station, the Robbins library, and the Ottoson middle school. The Ottoson may be challenging because it has a different phone system than any other town building. The fire department buildings should be straightforward. The police station may be tricky, due to a unique set of integration requirements.

526 kindergarten students have registered to start school this fall. In addition, we'll have approximately 200 other new students. Some are new arrivals in town; others are switching from private to public school.

We recently had a kick-off meeting for the water meter replacement pilot. The pilot program will involve 40 homes. The departments involved are working through the implementation plan, rollout, and system data flow. The new water meter equipment will include a meter management component. Eventually, water meter billing will be done through Munis rather than ICS.

The Central School renovation is on hold until 2020, so nothing to report right now.

The employee self-service rollout (Munis) continue. We're considering a Munis upgrade in the not-too-distant future.

David Good has seen the second set of DPW renovation drawings (the IT department will move into the new DPW building once it's completed). He's working on establishing an overall timeline for the infrastructure moves. It's tricky because it involves the construction schedules of both the DPW and high school projects. Skanska is just about finished with the project plan from the high school, but Consigli hasn't signed off on it yet. We're awaiting final construction plans for the DPW facility. RCN has confirmed their ability to maintain our fiber infrastructure throughout the renovations.

Four IT department staff have conducted a number of different training sessions for town employees. We're looking into the feasibility of offering training modules through the library. These would be available to library patrons and town employees.

In-Force 911's vendor claims that their product now works on Chromebooks. This needs to be tested, to verify that it performs as advertised.

Eric Hellmuth and Adam Kurowski are involved with the town meeting modernization project. They're trying to figure out what it would take to make town meeting paperless. The IT department will increase wireless capacity in advance of the next town meeting, but that's only one of the problems to solve. Some town meeting members access documents on mobile devices, and it's not easy to navigate (say) the town budget on a smart phone. Other town meeting members use laptops, which means precariously balancing a laptop and other materials on their laps. Plus, there's the issue of battery life and AC power.

The treasurer's office upgraded their video surveillance system. They're using the standard town camera setup, and the recordings are stored in the town's data center.

We'll have several IT-related capital requests to review: one from the Library, one for Munis, and approximately six from the IT department.

David Good is continuing to weigh the pros and cons of self-hosting Munis, vs a vendor-hosted solution. Our licensing costs are close to six figures/year, and a vendor-hosted package would be around $130k/year. It's presently not clear if that's just for hosting, or if licensing is included. If licensing is included, $130k/year isn't bad deal. If licensing is not include, then it's pretty expensive.