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HomeMy WebLinkAboutInformation Services Committee 04-07-1999 ST. CROIX COUNT' - INFORMATION SERVICES CO!!0lMITTEE I 7, 1999 ' 9:04 A.M. ROOM 1216-GOVERNMENT CENTER -HUDSON CALL TO ORDER APPROVAL OF AGENDA ACTION ON MINUTES DATE OF NEXT MEETING FORMATION OF Y2r% COMMITTEE LAW ENFORCEMENT PROGRAM UPDATE - TRAINING FOR MUNICIPALITIES LAW ENFORCEMENT - COMPUTER SERVICES LIAISON POSITION DISCUSSION ON NETVAYFORK SYSTEM CHANGES PAYROLL PROCESSING UPDATE W""'lrHER BUSINESS ADJOURN ST. CROIX COUNTY - INFORMATION SERVICES COMMITTEE UNOFFICIAL MINUTES April 7, 1999 PRESENT: Einar Horne, Rich Loney, Tom O'Connell, Tom Belongia, John Krizek, Ron Kiesler for John Borup, Steve Schofield for Dan Fedderly ALSO PRESENT: Julie Speer, Kathryn Beutel, Dave Schatz EXCUSED: Eugene Hansen, Dave Fodroczi CALL TO ORDER: The meeting was called to order at 9:08 a.m. by ChairmanTom O'Connell. ADOPTION OF AGENDA: Einar Horne moved to delete the discussion of the Law Enforcement Liaison position from the agenda and defer this item to the Public Protection Committee. Second By Rich Loney. Einar Horne moved to adopt the amended agenda. Second by Tom Belongia. All in favor. PREVIOUS MINUTES: Einar Horne moved to approve the minutes of January 26, 1999 meeting. Second by Tom Belongia. Minutes approved as presented. PAYROLL PROCESSING UPDATE: Rich Loney reported that Finance and Computer Services have continued working with ADP for the implementation of payroll processing, however, there continues to be difficulty in configuring ADP based on the nature of the business and diversity of County operations. We have learned that our current vendor now offers payroll processing that is based on an NT server in distributed environment and meets Y2K compliance. The IDI (Information Design Inc.) program is substantially less expensive than ADP and we plan to investigate the IDI program as an option, therefore the ADP implementation is on hold pending review of the IDI payroll program. A demo of the IDI payroll program and Accounting system is scheduled for April 13th. Rich and Kathryn also noted that we have been satisfied with IDI for many years and the support is excellent. We have looked elsewhere due to the migration from the HP3000, however, when we began the search, IDI did not offer an NT solution. IDI also offers an accounting package that includes a General Ledger program. At this time, ECHO runs the General Ledger for Health and Human Services. It is under consideration to run one General Ledger countywide . There is a concern with running three or four different systems, although there will need to be a - - - - - - I compromise in terms of requirements either on the Health and Human Services side or the General County side. Health and Human Services reporting requirements to the State are more demanding than what is necessary at the General County side. We need to be careful how to structure all users together based on state requirements and changes in reporting. Basic accounting functions in terms of debits and credits still exist regardless of the other necessities. LAW ENFORCEMENT SOFTWARE SELECTION UPDATE: We have been receiving various reports from municipalities that there is confusion of pricing on the installation and ongoing monthly charges for the ISDN lines to be able to connect to the County server for the Vision applications. Municipalities will be required to pay for both ends of the lines - the one going into their building and the one at the Government Center. At this point, municipalities do not know what it is going to cost. Kathryn Beutel requested John Olson, representative from CSI and Ameritech, to appear at the Public Safety User's Group meeting on Friday, April 9th to hand out pricing information and answer any questions that municipalities may have. There was discussion concerning the Memorandum of Understanding. Calls that come into the Help Desk by a municipality will be given lower priority than County Departments. However, the municipality will call Vision first since they pay Vision separately for license and support. At that point, if Computer Services is called in for technical support, then the $25.00 service charge as previously agreed upon and stated in the MOU will apply. The $25.00 will apply from the time the assigned tech leaves the office. Once the system is set up, we will be able to determine fairly quickly where the problem is. We will review the fees that are charged before municipal budgets are due - if numerous calls are being placed to Computer Services and too much time is being requested, then the fees will be changed at that time. Rich Loney also questioned the involvement of Dispatch on page 5. Kathryn explained that Bruce Brantner volunteered the services of Dispatch since they have staff on duty 24 hours a day. Dispatch can readily determine whether a problem is system wide or isolated to a particular municipality. Again, a municipality will be able to contact Vision directly if they have problems whether it is during the workday, after hours, or on a weekend. Motion to accept MOU - Tom Belongia. Second by Einar Horne. All in favor. There was concern with the length of time it is taking for the installation of the program. The main problem is with the outlying smaller municipalities in terms of receiving funding. Consensus was that the County needs to take care of our own issues and need to keep the project moving forward. Computer Services will be judged on how soon the Vision project is up and running. Discussion of what if municipality says no to hook up. Since the municipalities all have their own contracts, the only thing that would be affected would be the shared cost of training. If a municipality drops out of the project, on an average one training day could be deleted from the training schedule so this should not have an effect. One other outstanding item is that Bruce Brantner needs to decide on the conversion for CAD - Tiburon/Clues has proposed $5,000.00 for an electronic conversion versus hiring someone to manually enter the information. The County Board authorized approximately $300,00 for the project excluding conversion costs - this decision needs to be made to determine if we need to ask for additional funding. TRAINING FOR MUNICIPALITIES: Municipalities have requested to sit in on the Windows and Word training provided by Computer Services. Vision will provide the training for the Vision modules. Motion by Einar Horne that municipalities are responsible for their own training on the standard computer programs of Windows and Word. Second by John Krizek. All in favor. There was concern if these services were provided by Computer Services that we would be taking away from services provided by the Public sector such as WITC. FORMATION OF Y2K COMMITTEE: Kathryn Beutel indicated that Computer Services is continuing to update computer equipment and software programs for the purposes of business operations within County departments. John Krizek reported the need for a Y2K Committee to create contingency planning for countywide purposes. This committee dill develop plans on a County wide basis to respond to the following types of situations: unable to connect to State programs, prepare for power failures, create disaster stations and shelters, Y2K information dispersal to County residents, create emergency response. teams. Committee members will consist of representatives from the following departments: County Board, Administration, Department on Aging, Emergency Government, Emergency Communications, Health and Human Services, Highway Department, Maintenance, Law Enforcement, and Computer Services. NETWORK SYSTEM CHANGES: Computer Services staff modify the network on an ongoing basis in order to improve management of information. Many of these corrections are made globally and different messages show up the user's computers at the desktop. However, Computer Services is not into the position of being "Big Brother" - since we have changed to a distributed processing system it simply allows us to make these changes centrally and more efficiently. Although programs or fixes can be added or deleted from the PC at our control, information is given to the individual users. Computer Services staff members have been instructed to leave I notes on the monitors if they work in someone's office when the user is not there. If we bring down a computer, it is with the user's permission. We will notify everyone ahead of time (not just department heads) of scheduled updates and changes. However, there are times when problems occur and the fixes need to take place immediately, whereby advance notification will not be possible, Kathryn Beutel indicated that Computer Services staff often come in early in the morning for administrative purposes so that disruptions don't take place during the work day. There needs to be a policy concerning access to sensitive documents and privacy is an issue. Users need to continue to realize that once they have files on their hard drive, that person is responsible for the security of those files and backing up those files. OTHER BUSINESS: Update on Y2k - it will be necessary to update key files for various Microsoft applications but there are free program patches available from Microsoft to run and update these key files. Users will not see any difference in the way the applications work. Computer Services will determine the easiest way to update the files - it may be possible to update the programs electronically. POSSIBLE AGENDA ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING: Security ethical issues DATE OF NEXT MEETING: May 13th, 9:00 ADJOURNMENT: Motion to Adjourn Einar Horne. Second by Tom Belongia. Meeting adjourned at 10:15 a.m. Respectfully Submitted By: athry Beutel