Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Information Systems Department

To:	Dave Corliss City Manager
From:	Ron Hall Information Systems Director
cc:
Date:	April 13, 2007
Re:	2008 Budget Request

Overview

This document summarizes the Information Systems Department budget request and important issues for the 2008 budget year.  Information Systems is primarily an internal service delivery department that supports the technology needs of other departments.  The department’s technology support covers the following primary areas:

• Desktop computers, servers, networking and security
• eGovernment services (in tandem with City Manager/Public Information division)

• IBM i5 midrange system housing all financial & building inspection software
• Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Document imaging
• Telecommunications   

The Information Systems budget, aside from personnel costs, largely consists of expenditures for annual software license fees, computer and peripheral maintenance, and telecommunication-related expenses such as Internet connectivity, telephone trunking, and data circuits.  Since these costs are for the most part not optional the department’s budget needs are tied to market increases for these services.  Additionally, most of these services are in support of the entire organization rather than department-centric.

Given the challenge of annually increasing software and hardware maintenance fees, the submitted budget still complies with the city manager directive of maintaining a no-increase in budget outside of personnel costs.  This was achieved primarily by reducing expenditures for potential outside consulting fees needed for specialized applications such as document imaging.  With our increasing focus on improving staff skills, less reliance on consulting is expected for 2008 and subsequent years. 

Significant Issues

Other activities under consideration that would directly impact this department include the consolidation of the Planning and Neighborhood Resources departments into a single Planning and Development Services department at the Riverfront facility.  This move would require careful planning of network and telecommunication requirements of the new department at the new location.  Additional voice and data cabling, telephone and voicemail service will be required with such a move and further underscores the need to replace the City Hall Rolm telecommunication system with an adequately sized solution.   Additional consideration will be given to improved software solutions for the Planning and Development Services area by enhancing or replacing software applications.

Another potential project under consideration affecting this department is 3-1-1 service for citizens.  In brief, 3-1-1 service is a single number to call within a specified area for non-emergency city services.  The extent of 3-1-1 service would be a consideration, i.e. whether to also include county and school district services.  Typically the 3-1-1 service rings into a call center of appropriately trained employees.  The 3-1-1 call may also link to a citizen request database system to track the request and subsequent actions by staff.  The citizen request software, under consideration as part of the eGov budget, could be acquired first and then linked to the 3-1-1 service if and when approved.

Program Improvements

• Data protection project for mission-critical servers ($36,448) – A key department goal is continually improving our disaster recovery preparedness efforts as the organization’s reliance on technology grows.  This program improvement is a combination hardware and software solution to provide synchronized backups of critical city data servers to a secure offsite storage area.  Critical servers that support city email, municipal court, GIS, document imaging, active directory and Citydata would have data replicated in “real time” over fiber optic to the data storage at the wastewater plant.  In the event of a failure of the city email server for example, the backup fail-over system would immediately take over to eliminate downtime in email operations.   

• Telco system replacement for City Hall/Riverfront ($170,000) – The Rolm 9751 telco system for City Hall was purchased in 1993 and is significantly past the time when scheduled replacement should occur.  This is a large system of over 60 trunk lines, 150 phones plus 60 analog ports for voicemail, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), modems, and fax.  There are two call centers (Utility Billing and Building Inspection), six T1 direct connections to other facility phone systems and to the AT&T Plexar switch serving the remaining city facilities.  This system is at the end of the product life cycle and is more than a generation behind current phone systems.  Two examples that underscore this are that the speakerphones are only simplex capable (meaning one person at a time can speak) and the backup method for saving the phone setup configuration stored in the switch is to floppy diskette, a very dated storage medium.  

To maintain consistency with our Siemens telco infrastructure it is recommended that this system be replaced with a hybrid VOIP-capable Siemens HiPath 4000 switch.  Replacing the City Hall system in tandem with the consolidating move of the Planning Department to a new location would be an appropriate time to consider system replacement. 

• Document imaging improvement (Application Enabler) ($72,000) – This improvement would add an unlimited user license for the Application Enabler module as part of the city’s existing OnBase document imaging system.  Application Enabler would allow any software application in use by the city to link database records to corresponding images stored in the OnBase system.  For example, an accounts payable record in the city’s accounting system could be linked to the associated scanned invoice and be made retrievable by a single keystroke.  The potential uses for this module within the organization would significantly increase the usability of the existing system.

The submitted budget request will enable Information Systems to maintain existing services, software licensing, and hardware support to all departments.  Your approval of the base budget and consideration of the program improvements is requested.   Please contact me with any questions or comments concerning this request.

Respectfully,

Ronald W. Hall

Information Systems Director