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Strategic Technology Plan - 2011
Updated March 2011
OVERVIEW
This document provides an executive summary of the current environment, status of previous strategic technology goals and the goals defined for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2010. The County's technology future state vision:
Franklin County local government data center is state-of-the-art, APC Infrastructure in-row cooled that utilizes virtualization for both application servers and desktop clients where feasible. The environment requires minimal desktop support services, allowing the technology staff to focus on enabling County staff to improve their business process efficiencies through the use of technology. The County’s technology infrastructure allows County staff to work anywhere there is an Internet connection in a secure, accessible manner. The County’s technology is secure and redundant to ensure high availability and well-protected citizen data.
The Information Technology team provides the technology required to support local government administration and e-services for the citizens in a cost-efficient manner. The technology infrastructure is resilient and recoverable and able to scale to support the growth of the county, both in terms of internal processing power and services offered.
VIEW OF THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT (March 2011)
This section of the executive summary is intended to provide a view of the current environment. In this view, the following have been identified and noted: strengths, weaknesses and risks, opportunities for more effective and efficient use of technology, and finally threats that would hamper the success of utilizing technology to ensure effective operation of the County’s governmental processes.
- Technology serves many purposes in an organization, some strategic, some operational and many that are part of doing business in the current state of the world in which we live that we cannot do without. As we plan for how we utilize our natural resources, such as water, we must plan how we utilize and fund technology for strategic initiatives to simply keep governmental process at work. The County realizes that planning and funding of technology is a strategic process that must occur.
- The County has deployed a web portal with an integrated voice recognition component for the commercial land management solution that was implemented in early 2008. This web portal includes support for online payment of fees and charges assessed by the Building or Planning departments. Parks and Recreation accept credit card payments online for various events. The County needs to continue to expand online services for the citizens.
- All remaining legacy applications have been converted to newer technology or replaced with the exception of tax assessment and collection that support the Commissioner of Revenue and County Treasurer. The County has purchased a commercial tax software solution and is scheduled to be in production with that solution by January 2012, eliminating the last of the legacy software.
- Graphical Information System or GIS continues to be a key service that local government can utilize to enhance public service functions such as community development and public safety. An enterprise solution has been implemented and GIS data is supported by a relational database foundation allowing greater integration to core applications. A strategic implementation plan for GIS deployment throughout County processes is in the final phase.
- The County has met merchant level 4 of PCI compliance allowing departments within the new government center to accept credit/debit cards for payments utilizing an externally hosted application for processing payments. This certification included many organizational policies, standard operating procedures, quarterly vulnerability scans by an approved PCI vendor and annual acknowledgement by employees of these policies and procedures.
- The County has virtualized approximately 50% of County servers and continues to consolidate physical servers. The County has implemented a remote application access solution that also serves as the standard virtual private network access method. This remote access solution will be leveraged to support desktop virtualization pilot in 2011.
- The County had limited broadband options in this rural environment and many of the remote County government offices had no broadband connection. The County’s Information Technology team formed a public-private partnership with a wireless internet service provider in 2005. That partnership has resulted in all county facilities including all fire/rescue stations having broadband service as well as thousands of citizens. The County also worked with Ferrum College on a grant driven economic development initiative to expand these broadband services to underserved areas of the County.
- The County Information Technology department has strong and consistent project management processes which include bi-weekly reporting of project status, monthly Technology Steering Committee updates and quarterly accomplishment reporting to the Board of Supervisors. The Technology Steering Committee reviews and approves all projects based on business case submitted and presented by the project requestor.
- Technology staff has implemented a detailed disaster recovery plan and is in the process of locating a remote disaster recovery site to deploy a storage solution that will support data replication and rapid recovery of core services in the event of a disaster.
A VISION FOR THE FUTURE
This section of the executive summary is intended to provide a vision for the future. In order to move forward versus standing still, it is important to have vision and set goals for the future. In working with departments and County administration, the following sets forth key goals resulting in a vision for the future in terms of utilizing technology to ensure the continued success of the County’s governmental processes.
- County staff can work from anywhere at any time and access all the information they need to support their functional areas utilizing virtual technologies. These virtual technologies ensure that the needed technology is available and functioning with minimal downtime due to hardware failures providing secure connectivity to any location and any platform.
“City Hall Without Walls realized through e-Government” providing an environment where County residents, developers, attorneys, and other key users of County information will have the ability to access real estate, business license, and other information of public record. In addition, have the ability to perform on-line activities such as pay real estate bills, submit a plat for development review, check the status of a zoning review or access many other functions that historically had to be done in person with the convenience of not having to leave their home or place of business.
Engaged citizens use technology to communicate with their local government through the County’s use of social media and web technologies. Elected officials utilize social media technologies to share information with their constituents and receive feedback. Public Safety utilizes social media technologies to push out information in real-time to inform and protect the citizens.
- Customer focused and ADA/508 compliant County website that is easy to navigate, a portal for providing County services online anytime and provide the citizens with easy access to County information. The County's website is an itegral communication link between the citizens and the Franklin County administration and elected officials, providing a mechanism for information distribution as well as obtaining citizen feedback.
- A rural but progressive locality where broadband is widely available to support technological growth and development.
- Local government operates efficiently and cost effectively in every manner while providing quality services to the citizens and fiscally sound budgeting year after year.
STRATEGY FOR REALIZING THE VISION
This section is intended to set forth the key strategy for aiding the County in realizing the vision set forth along with mitigating the risks and vulnerabilities that could result in interruption of services to County residents and businesses as well as County government as a whole.
An effective strategy moving forward will be a strategy that not only focuses on technology but also focuses on changes in the way in which the County conducts governmental business and processes. It is important to understand the relationship between the governmental processes, the technology utilized to execute the processes and the people that plan, implement and operate the technology. Strategy that follows is broken down into these specific areas. The reason for this is to ensure the County understands that the execution and realization of this strategic plan cannot be the sole responsibility of Information Technology but yet a combined effort between all departments within the County led by the support of the Board of Supervisors.
STRATEGY RELATED TO GOVERNMENTAL BUSINESS PROCESSES
Strategy Recommendation | FY10-11 |
Develop a Strategic GIS Plan and Supporting Technology The GIS plan will identify key uses of GIS within the County, the source of the information, details of the information to be provided and a strategy for making the GIS functions available to County departments, residents or other consumers of GIS functions. | |
STATUS: Franklin County implemented a GIS in 2004 and is finalizing a strategic GIS plan to deploy GIS throughout County departments to realize greater efficiency in land based business processes. In fiscal year FY08-09, the County assessed several key departments to define their needs in terms of GIS and those are included in the strategic plan. The supporting technology has recently been upgraded to ESRI’s ArcGIS Server and all shape-file data has been converted to relational database format (SDE). This fiscal year the strategic plan will be finalized and departmental GIS data and application needs will be addressed . In addition, training for departmental GIS specialists will be conducted on the ArcGIS Server solution. The departmental staff members will serve their department and work closely with the County’s GIS team to ensure continuity throughout the GIS. | $0 |
Develop and Fund Technology Operations Plan The County should set forth yearly budgetary appropriations to fund technology infrastructure on a continuing basis. The current equipment lifecycle for computer workstations and servers that hosts the County’s applications is approximately 4-years in terms of industry average. Funding this plan will ensure the County is not faced with a significant “balloon” payment at a date into the future to ensure continued operation of critical technology services. The operations plan should consist of purchased equipment along with equipment leased on terms subject to appropriation. | |
STATUS: The County began an annual equipment replacement plan in FY2003. The I/T department has managed to maintain the plan as the same fixed amount for six years while the number of machines included in that plan has increased 240%. Last fiscal year we began closely evaluating each machine scheduled for replacement and only replaced those that are having hardware issues in an effort to decrease equipment replacement costs. The I/T team has built the business case for moving to virtualized desktops for all possible office staff and have increased available storage to prepare for this technology. This fiscal year the budget for equipment replacement decreased as funds were allocated to pilot virtual desktop technology to further reduce annual replacement costs. |
$45,000
|
Implement Disaster Recovery Plan The County should identify a strategy to handle resumption of technology utilized to operate key processes including revenue collection and payroll processing in the event a catastrophe such as fire or flood should damage existing computer equipment. | |
STATUS: The I/T team will focus on establishing a co-located alternate data center to include one remote physical server to host several virtual servers as well as storage for data replication. The plan includes hardware, storage and connectivity costs to support essential services and applications in the event of a data center disaster. | $0 |
STRATEGY RELATED TO THE COUNTY'S TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE
This section details specific strategy as it related to the infrastructure utilized to operate the key applications including computer servers and communication networks.
Strategy Recommendation | FY10-11 funding |
Email System Upgrade The County’s email system is approximately four years old and needs to be upgraded. This upgrade will provide additional email storage, increased integration with other internal collaboration solutions and enhance communications. | |
STATUS: The County needs to upgrade the email system to the latest software version and replace the associated hardware server. This upgrade will position the County to provide even greater unification of communications between email and telephony. | $0 |
Complete Telephony Conversion at all Remote Offices To reduce monthly telephony expenses, ease maintenance and support and provide for future growth, the traditional PBX was replaced with a state-of-the-art Voice-over-IP solution. The conversion to a VoIP system allows the County to include all departments (including all remote locations) onto one phone system and reduces the dependency on external support of the legacy system and annual maintenance costs. | |
STATUS: The County completed a Voice-over-IP pilot in spring of 2007. The conversion of the telephony solution from the legacy Nortel PBX system to a Cisco VoIP solution was completed in 2008. Last fiscal year the County converted the Social Services agency to the County's VoIP system. | $0 |
Expand Broadband Service Areas throughout the County, Connecting all Outlying Offices to the County Network Support and improve the existing technology infrastructure to provide wider geographical areas with broadband options. Connect all outlying government offices to the County’s network utilizing virtual private networks over public internet or direct fiber connections. | |
STATUS: The County entered into a partnership with a private wireless provider in the fall of 2005. This partnership has resulted in expanding broadband coverage to approximately 70-75% of the County. The County provides infrastructure space to the provider on any County owned tower, water tank or other structure in exchange for services. This partnership allowed the County to implement a wide-area network (WAN) connecting all County facilities and provide broadband to all fire and rescue stations. The County then deployed VoIP over this network to most of the County facilities resulting in a 36% decrease in telecom expenses. | $0 |
Convert Telephony to IP Trunking Convert current telephony PRI input to SIP trunking to realize greater savings in communications cost. This change would drastically reduce the long distance charges possibly eliminating the need for detailed long distance reporting and individual long distance codes . | |
STATUS: This change would greatly reduce billing requirements and would require approximately one day to setup IPT port and testing. The County could realize as much as $12,000 in annual savings. The County must move all faxing to an outsourced Internet fax service prior to conversion as provider's SIP trunking does not support faxing. There is little to no cost for this conversion, however, there is a large effort required to document all departmental faxing requirements, train end users on alternatives to faxing and then train the end users on using an external hosted service for documents that must still be faxed. | $0 |
STRATEGY RELATED TO APPLICATIONS SUPPORTING KEY GOVERNMENTAL PROCESSES
This section details specific strategy as it related to the applications that are utilized by departments within the County for key processes such as assessment, revenue collection and payroll processing.
Strategy Recommendation | FY10-11 funding |
Implement Comprehensive Local Government Software Package The County should identify requirements for key governmental processes and evaluate and select an off the shelf software package to support key governmental functions within the County. The County will recognize the following key benefits from moving forward with this strategy. · Stable technology that departments and residents can rely on for key functions · Significant increase in overall functionality available to departments within the County · Establish the basis for providing additional services to residents such as Internet access to information. · Remove the reliance and resulting risk related to reliance on a single individual for support of the County’s key applications. · Avoid having to continue to develop on a platform that could potentially not be supported by the software vendor at a point in the future. · Gain significant efficiencies from an integrated platform that shares functionality and information. | |
STATUS: The County has implemented a commercial software solution built specifically for the public sector to support the financial and HR/payroll functions for both the County and the schools. The financial portion of this solution was implemented in July 2005 followed by the Utility Management module for the new water system in August 2005. The new HR/Payroll application was implemented in January 2006. In 2007, we implemented the Employee Self Service portal providing employees access to their information via a secure Internet site. In January 2008, the County went live on a commercial land management solution supporting the Building Inspections and Community Development functions. A Citizen Access Portal to that solution, allowing citizens to conduct services online, including payment of associated fees was implemented in 2009. This fiscal year, the County is implementing a commercial solution for tax assessment and collection, which will retire the last of the legacy applications. This project will bring a lot of change to the business processes within the Treasurer and Commissioner of Revenue offices resulting in improved business operations efficiencies. The solution will allow the Treasurer to accept credit/debit for tax payments and will include a web portal later in 2012 supporting online tax payments. | $470,000 |
Develop Internet Web Site to Support e-Government Vision The County should begin a process to identify key functions that would provide significant benefit to residents and businesses within the County if they were accessible through the public Internet. The County should then develop a web site that can provide these functions to the key users of County government functions. This will allow citizens to see they tax dollars at work servicing their needs. | |
STATUS: In 2010 the County deployed an updated Parks & Recreation event registration program that includes the ability to pay fees online with credit cards. Staff also converted primary Parks & Recreation web content into the County's Internet site solution. | $0 |
Improve Intranet Site for Increased Efficiency The County’s Intranet has grown quickly and become an integral part of internal collaboration. This internal web portal should be easy for departments to update and access and should capitalize on existing technologies to provide as much support for business processes as possible. | |
| STATUS: The County technology staff is currently deploying an open source content management system to replace the existing Intranet. This new system will allow departments to manage their own internal web content and it will also be the test environment for evaluating this solution as a replacement for the current Internet solution as that requires replacement to take advantage of new web technologies. | $0 |
Implement Enterprise Document Imaging Solution The County departments are required to maintain many written records that result in an exorbitant amount of paper storage. This storage takes up a lot of physical space, makes it difficult to locate documents when needed and presents a bit of a fire hazard. | |
| STATUS: The County implemented a commercial solution in 2005 to provide custom printing solutions for supplemental tax bills, accounts payable checks, payroll checks and direct deposit vouchers. The vendor of this solution provides some additional modules that work in conjunction with the printing software and document scanners to deliver a comprehensive, secure and scalable documenting imaging solution. The IT staff have requested funding for FY11-12 to implement these additional modules to provide all County departments with an efficient, secure and comprehensive document imaging solution. . | $0 |
STRATEGY RELATED TO THE COUNTY'S TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATION
This section details specific strategy as it related to the technology organization utilized to manage the planning, implementation and operation of technology within the County.
Strategy Recommendation | FY10-11 funding |
Establish a Technology Steering Committee As stated earlier, planning for technology and the use of technology within the County is the responsibility of ALL departments, not just Information Technology. The County should establish a steering committee that meets regularly to address planning and management of technology within the County including prioritization of Information Technology resources. This committee has the shared responsibility of ensuring technology resources are being applied to appropriate tasks and projects. This will ensure Information Technology works on issues that are important from a governmental business perspective as determined by the departments in the County. | |
STATUS: The County formed the Technology Steering committee in fiscal 2003 and revamped this committee in 2010. The committee meets monthly to review project progress and evaluate all new project requests. All new project requests must include a solid business case presented by the project requestor. The committee reviews the business case, the impact to other areas/projects and overall costs and benefits before either approving or rejecting. | |
Increase Staff Knowledge Consistent with Current Industry Best Practices Moving forward with technology, it will be necessary to move the Information Technology staff along with the evolution of technology in terms of their knowledge. The County can accomplish this as new technology is migrated into the County’s environment through commercial or in-house training. | |
STATUS: The technology department is actively setting staff developmental goals on an annual basis. These goals include job specific training provided either in traditional classroom setting, webcasts, reference books and e-learning courses. | $7,000 |
Increase General Technology Knowledge and Awareness The County should take advantage of an opportunity to more fully educate employees on the technology that is currently available to aid in the execution of key functions within the County. By providing training to County employees on the use of tools and software currently available, the County should realize an immediate return on investment in terms of enhanced productivity and efficiency. | |
STATUS: The technology staff provides “Technology Tips & Tricks” to County employees through an internal blog format covering information on many different technologies and technology areas. In addition, the Helpdesk software utilized by the County includes a ‘solutions database’ feature that staff are working to populate with basic information related to frequent technology issues or challenges in an effort to provide end users with a knowledge base for self-service. |
Business Domain Model
Key Business Functions
This section of the document takes the key departments as identified by the Technology Director and County Administrator and maps the Key Business Functions related to these given departments. This information is a result of the interviews that were conducted with the individual departments.
Department/Entity | Key Business Functions |
Administration | · Provide Support for Board of Supervisors · Administer Functions of County Departments |
Clerk of the Circuit Court | · Clerk of Record for Land, Deeds of Trust and other Legal Recordings · Probate Officer · Jury Management · Passports · Hunting and Fishing Licenses · Weapons Permits · Marriage Licenses |
Commissioner of the Revenue | · Assessment of Real Property · Assessment of Personal Property · Assessment of Rollback and Public Service Corporation Taxes · Tax Relief · Supplements · Abatements · State Income Tax · Mapping |
E911 | · Manage E911 Call Center |
Finance | · Financial Reporting · Risk Management · Budget Management |
Information Technology | · Operations · Telephony Systems · PC Troubleshooting and Repair · Application Development · Infrastructure and Network Management · Web Maintenance (Intranet and Intranet) · Report Design and Development · GIS |
Building Inspections | · Permits · Inspections |
Mapping and 911 Services | · Manage E911 Call Center |
Planning | · Comprehensive Plan · Planning Requests for Property · Erosion Permits |
Public Safety | · Fire and Rescue · HazMat · Search and Rescue · Confined Spaces · Animal Control |
Franklin County Public Schools | · Student Information System · Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable · Payroll · General Ledger (Expenses) |
Sheriff Department | · Law Enforcement · Operation of Jail · Transport Inmates · Execute Warrants · Court Security · Criminal Investigation · General Patrol · Timesheet Management |
Department of Social Services | · Financial Assistance and Social Services Programs · Internal Personnel and Accounting · Accounts Payable |
Treasurer | · Collects, Maintains and Disburses Local Funds · Collects and Deposits State Funds · Collect and Hold Funds for Others · State Income Tax |