Information Technology Advisory Committee - Feb 21st, 2019

Work continues on the school district's social media policy. It's been reviewed by the Superintendent, and will go before the school committee next. Eric Hellmuth reviewed the policy on behalf of ITAC. Currently, the town has somewhere between 130--150 social media accounts.

The town is looking at installing new Munis modules, and upgrading others.

The online Kindergarten registration system for fall 2019 is up and running. There've been approximately 400 registrations so far. Registration is done via a Powerschool module.

VoIP installation at the Hardy and Thompson schools is complete. Three more sets of installations are in the pipeline.

We've chosen a water meter management vendor. They've got a nice software package, with a lot of data integration facilities. That's important for us, because our meter equipment comes from a mix of manufacturers. Framingham has a similar system; a few people from town will visit them, to see how everything is hooked together.

David Good and Steve Nesterak visited Winthrop's middle and high school, to see their security systems and learn about their security policies. Winthrop has a multi-compartment entry system and a set of procedures to minimize the number of doors opened, and the number of times they're opened. Our school district may consider some of these ideas. Winthrop also has a set of standards for network and audio-visual equipment.

We've gotten a first look at the design plans for the DPW renovation, and continue to work with RCN on migrating core town networking infrastructure. There may be organizational changes in the IT department in conjunction with the facilities changes.

The town is still examining the feasibility of running fiber to our two water towers, as part of a project to improve emergency services radio coverage. The big question right now is how much trenching will be involved. Trenching is expensive.

We're having some issues with the In-Force 911 system. It's not working as advertised, and some functions aren't available on chromebooks. We're working with the vendor to resolve these issues.

The town is reviewing the computing procurement process for schools. We try to do a technology refresh every couple of years, and we're moving more and more towards Chromebooks. The long-term goal is to use more web-based services, which are device agnostic.

Talks with YouTube continue. Google has agreed to remove material that students have posted to different YouTube channels. Google will remove material from older kids, as well as those covered by the Child Online Protection Act.