That and the promise of free Wi-Fi inside City Hall were two of the revelations as Payne gave the governing body an update on an IT shared services agreement with the school district. The city has paid out half of a $60,000 tab for the six-month plan that began in January with the goal of providing staff the city lacks while making Payne the manager of both city and district IT operations.
Payne presented a voluminous written report to the council, detailing the status of each of the services to be provided. The district’s “deliverables” included website development, user accounts for all city employees, completion of the Voice-Over-Internet Protocol phone system and media support for press releases, while the city was to provide several kinds of services related to local television broadcasting, offsite storage of Board of Education data for disaster recovery and sharing costs of district technical/media staff.
Many of the services were still works in progress and in comments after Payne’s presentation, Council President Annie McWilliams called for formation of an ad hoc IT committee to “share in prioritization of action items.” The committee would include three council members, Payne and someone from city administration.
Councilwoman Vera Greaves asked whether residents would ever be able to pay their taxes online and Payne said yes, though not saying how soon. Councilwoman Rebecca Williams questioned the use of various personal e-mail accounts by city employees and Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, who is also the acting city administrator, said all employees will soon use city accounts. Payne said the current plainfield.com address will be changed to a “.gov” suffix.
Williams also asked how soon the “humongous” council meeting packet could be distributed electronically and Payne said he was looking into it, with the goal “to do away with as much paper as possible.”
The discussion included other possible ways to save money by sharing services, but no specific action to follow expiration of the six-month agreement. The mayor said she has talked to Acting Superintendent Anna Belin-Pyles as well as officials in other communities and in Union County government. She said she will be discussing options “with our new acting city administrator.”
Later in the meeting, McWilliams noted the city has already had two acting city administrators this year and said there could not be another. But Corporation Counsel Dan Williamson said that was not true and a plan was in place to get an acting city administrator as soon as “technical issues on bonding” were resolved.
--Bernice Paglia
Is IT being integrated into the core work of each operating division so data is easily accessible and usable throughout the city government? I keep hearing about VOIP, websites, dot gov email, WIFI and other tangential bells and whistles, but nothing very solid otherwise. Hate to say it, but it does seem a bit like amateur hour.
ReplyDeleteAh! And there's another emergency community meeting to wring our hands and bemoan the gang violence. So ditto that bit about amateur hour. The real emergency is our Mayor/Acting City Administrator.
ReplyDeleteDo us a favor Sharon, tender your resignation. Tonight!!