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HomeMy WebLinkAboutItem 02City of Lakeville Administration Department Memorandum To: Mayor and Members of the City Council From: City of Lakeville Technology Work Group Ralph Vetter, Information Systems Manager Copy: Justin Miller, City Administrator Allyn Kuennen, Assistant City Administrator Date: August 27, 2018 Agenda Item: Report on Activities and Recommendations In 2017, the Lakeville Technology Work Group was formed by a request from City Council to identify opportunities to enhance City operations and delivery of City services to the Community. The group is made up of nine community members with over 250 years combined information technology experience in strategy, leadership, implementation, management, and use. Their knowledge and skills come from a wide range of occupations in both the private and public sectors including two members from Lakeville’s local high schools. The Technology Committee members include: • Michael Hubener – Area Operations Manager – Family Dollar • Ellen Kroehler, VP-Technology and Business Information Security Officer – Thomson Reuters • Patrick Peterson, SharePoint and Office 365 Productivity Supervisor – RSM US LLP • Mike Reardon, Communications – City of St. Paul (Retired) • Dr. John Ricketts, Distinguished Engineer - IBM Corporate Strategy (Retired) • Josh Ruegg, Information Technology Liaison Office of Information Technology – University of Minnesota • Gianna Rucki, Student at Lakeville North High School • Amy Schmidt, Content Publishing Supervisor - HealthPartners • Irwin Sowah, Student at Lakeville South High School • Ralph Vetter, IS Manager – City of Lakeville 2 | Page In its initial meeting, the group identified two main objectives: • Identify opportunities and make recommendations to improve City services through technology. • Assist in developing long term goals, priorities, and strategies in the use and expansion of technology and infrastructure within the City and community at large. In the work group’s first year, the focus of discussion was on the following areas: • City Services and City Information Systems • The Dakota County Broadband Network Initiative • Future Technology Opportunities for the City’s Youth CITY SERVICES AND SYSTEMS For the work group to make recommendations on technology use for the City, the first step was to gain an understanding of technology use within the City itself. All City staff were asked to take an on-line survey that asked questions about what technology was available and how it was used. The group received approximately 70 responses. With this data, the work group performed a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). The most common responses and themes were identified, summarized and placed into each of the following areas: STRENGTHS • City Departments address the needs of their respective departments very well • City Departments are comfortable and adept at working with technology and technology tools. (Hardware & Software) • City Departments have data readily and easily accessible to them. • Many departments utilize social media. • Most departments are timely in their responses to public requests for information. WEAKNESSES • Many departments have too many manual processes that they felt could be automated. • Many departments lack collaboration tools such as plan review/markup, communication, and centralized data repositories. • Most departments lack strategic and/or continuous improvement plans (CIP) that include systemic and/or technology initiatives. 3 | Page • Lack fully deployed electronic systems for financial management, payroll, and human resources. • Current systems are underutilized by most departments and are not resourced to develop and maintain them. (SharePoint, Laserfiche) • Some department phone systems need to be upgraded to ensure communication with community. (Revenue Loss, Customer Service) OPPORTUNITIES: • Improve sharing of information (data, files, etc.) across departments • Implement tools to make departments more efficient. (Plan review, collaboration, communications.) • Utilize existing systems to manage documents and data. (Laserfiche, SharePoint) • Improve process and procedure for using applications more efficiently and effectively. • Define workflows to reduce paper documentation. • Convert existing manual processes to an automated process. • Implement electronic tools for financial review by City leadership. • Implement technology tools for community self-service. (Example: e-Pay, Rec-Trac, permits, etc.) • Expand the training and usage of the GIS system across the organization. • Identify and implement additional technology tools to improve communication and provide information to the community. THREATS: • Increasing frequency of cybercrime leaves City services and citizen data vulnerable to outage and loss. This is especially a concern with devices connected to the Internet without user/administrator authentication, firewall protection, encryption, or intrusion detection. This includes the “Internet of Things,” such as pumps that can be monitored and operated remotely via Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). Can devices be controlled manually if automated control fails or is compromised? Other cities have suffered cyberattacks on their infrastructure from overseas as well as domestically. • Lack of continuity planning and disaster recovery testing makes the City vulnerable to a disruption of services should a disaster strike. Has the government continuity and disaster recovery plan been tested? For example, where would city hall workers relocate if that site were destroyed by a tornado? Is the data they need to do their jobs sufficiently protected off site so that a single disaster won’t destroy both primary and backup copies. 4 | Page RECOMMENDATIONS The Lakeville Technology Work Group recommends the following to capitalize on strengths, pursue opportunities, address weaknesses, and counter threats: STRENGTHS-OPPORTUNITIES (Making technology and systems better.) • Develop and implement a technology review process as part of the City Strategic Plan to better serve the community, the City, and inform the annual budget process. • Invest in and develop SharePoint collaboration tools. This should be a high priority. Departments will need to define their respective needs on collaboration. (i.e.: what to share internally, what to share externally, what is considered “hot” vs. “historical”, define search criteria). • Minimize manual processes. Many processes can be done with current technology tools and staff should develop efficient workflows that use those tools. • Develop a plan to provide/improve training of staff to better utilize existing technology tools. Staff is technology capable and open to using technology tools more effectively. • Convert the City’s paper documents into digital documents and implement tools for community members to access them via self-service on-line. (Integrate Laserfiche) • Create champion groups to help support and train on existing technology tools. WEAKNESSES-THREATS: (Utilize technology/systems to address weaknesses and prevent issues.) • Perform a security assessment. Use an outside organization to determine weak points in City infrastructure and systems. Remediate findings to prevent security issues seen in the news and IT industry. • Develop a business continuity and disaster recovery plan (build the plan if it doesn’t already exist). Industry best practice is to perform an exercise once per year and at a minimum exercise the plan every three years. Deficiencies should be remediated. • Create organizational and departmental strategic plans that include identifying and implementing technology or improving current technology use. Review plans on a regular basis. Include milestones, key performance indicators, and accountability. Strive to be innovative instead of “keeping the lights on”. The technology work group formulated these recommendations based upon industry standards, best practices, and member experience. Budget was taken into consideration; however, the work group feels that most of the recommendations provided are low/no cost 5 | Page initiatives that will not dramatically impact the 2019 budget. Any major technology implementations initiated to address the recommendations will need to be included in the 2020 budget and subsequent years. DAKOTA COUNTY BROADBAND INITIATIVE Over the past several years, the cities of Dakota County have worked on the formation of a Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) that would allow for the creation and operation of an institutional fiber network that would allow for the efficient sharing and operation of physical network assets amongst its members. The JPA also includes plans for the development of a commercial network infrastructure (C-Net) to enhance economic business attraction, business retention and job creation. Official formation of the Dakota County Broadband Consortium (DBB) and the City of Lakeville’s membership occurred in December of 2017. In the City of Lakeville’s 2017-2019 Strategic Plan Summary Report (January 2017), the first strategic priority is Business Retention and Expansion. In its “make good things happen” section, that report recommends “provide strategic incentives to facilitate residential, commercial and industrial development.” Therefore, the portion of the Dakota County Broadband Network plan for building a commercial fiber network (C-Net) creates an opportunity for economic growth for the City of Lakeville. The report also shows that Lakeville business employment grew at 9% per year from 2009 to 2017 or almost 80% overall during that nine-year period, and continued growth at that level will create demand for C-Net. A key goal of the DBB’s System Plan would allow member Cities to seek internet service providers for economic development purposes. The DBB will be a wholesaler of C-Net infrastructure rather than competitors with internet service providers who will offer retail network services to businesses. Implementation and expansion of a C-Net also creates an opportunity for the City of Lakeville to provide increased ISP service options for its residents. RECOMMENDATIONS Because the development of the Dakota County Broadband network is in its early stages, insufficient information is available for the work group to make a recommendation on how much the City should invest in the C-Net. However, enough evidence exists of this type of network being successful in other counties and cities within the state and across the nation to warrant the formation of a City Task Force to explore and analyze the economic benefit to the community. This task force should be made up of members from both the business and technology segments of the community and provide recommendations to City Council on 6 | Page potential development of the commercial network portion of the Dakota County Broadband Initiative. FUTURE TECHNOLOGY OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE CITY’S YOUTH With the inclusion of two Lakeville High School students, the work group discussed and investigated opportunities to improve or add services that would benefit the younger members of the community. A student survey was conducted at both Lakeville North and South High Schools to gain an understanding of students’ technology use and interaction with the City. The group received feedback from students on two areas, Internet usage and what information are they most interested in learning about or from the City of Lakeville. A summary of the results are as follows: • Students are most likely to use their cell phones to access Internet for communications, social media, and information gathering. Most students have unlimited data plans. • Students generally do not know about City technology or services that could apply to them. • Students do not want to be over burdened with too much information. They would prefer to receive information that is pertinent to them. • Students would want to hear about City opportunities and events that relate to them. Having reviewed and discussed the survey results, the work group is making the following recommendations: • Utilize social media with student specific content as a method to communicate with them • City should continue working with schools as method of obtaining feedback from students • Create opportunities for student contributors to develop student specific content for the City’s social media. Suggestions to accomplish this include: o Create clubs or organizations for involvement o Create internship opportunities for students o Pursue how the City can assist in funding or hosting a City student website or portal 7 | Page o Explore use of students in ESTEM (economics, science, technology, engineering, math) programs to develop and update a student website or portal In addition to the recommendations to engage the students of Lakeville, the group discussed partnering with athletic groups within the community to possibly broadcast athletic events on the Internet. With the City expanding its fiber infrastructure, there is an opportunity to provide connectivity from many of the City parks and athletic complexes that these groups could utilize for “live streaming” of athletic events. This concept could be explored further by the work group as the City nears completion of the fiber optic network. TECHNOLOGY WORK GROUP NEXT STEPS All members of the City of Lakeville Technology Work Group have expressed a desire to continue to work together to help the City in improving City services and exploring more options for the use of technology for the benefit of the community. They have all enjoyed the “think tank” process and find great value in the work they are doing for the City. In September, the group will contact Lakeville Public Schools for recommendation on two new students to serve on the work group as replacements of its departing college bound members. The group will formally begin meeting again in September 2018 and will continue work until the end of May 2019. To focus its efforts for the next year, the City of Lakeville Technology Work Group is requesting feedback and recommendations from City Council on areas of interest, importance, and priorities for the improvement of technology and services for the City of Lakeville.