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HomeMy WebLinkAboutInformation Services Committee 01-26-1999 X ST. CROIX COUNTY - INFORMATION SERVICES COMMITTEE 26, 1999 A U- N A, 8:30 A. M. ROOM 1281- GOVERNMENT CENTER CALL TO ORDER ADOPTION OF AGENDA APPROVAL OF MINUTES DATE OF NEXT MEETING LAW ENFORCEMENT SOFTWARE SELECTION - UPDATE INTERNET APPROVAL FOR DEPARTMENTS IN 1999 REMOTE ACCESS SERVICES OTHER BUSINESS ADJOURN ST. CROIX COUNTY - INFORMATION SERVICES COMMITTEE UNOFFICIAL MINUTES January 26, 1999 PRESENT: Eugene Hansen, John Borup, Dan Fedderly, Tom O'Connell, Rich Loney, Tom Belongia, John Krizek, Dave Fodroczi ALSO PRESENT: Kathryn Beutel, Dave Schatz EXCUSED: Einar Horne CALL TO ORDER: The meeting was called to order at 8:45 a.m. by Chair Tom O'Connell. ADOPTION OF AGENDA: Rich Loney moved to adopt the agenda, second by Dan Fedderly. Agenda was adopted as presented. PREVIOUS MINUTES: Eugene Hansen moved to approve the minutes of January 7, 1999 meeting, second by John Borup. Minutes approved as presented. LAW ENFORCEMENT SOFTWARE SELECTION UPDATE: A representative from Vision software will be here on January 28th to work on contracts with the municipalities. It was questioned whether another presentation is necessary from Vision? Representatives from this committee have seen the program. A large amount of money has been reserved for this project - Julie Speer from. the County Board has been working on the project as well and is aware of the capabilities. Charges to the municipalities were discussed for use of Computer Services staff time. Committee members agreed there should be half an hour minimum charge at $25.00 per hour. Municipalities will be charged on a per use basis. There may also be initial setup fees involved with the ISDN line installations, communications equipment, and routers. Basically, a site visit will be charged to the municipalities. These charges would act as an offset for property taxes from City residents. Vision Software will be responsible for most of the setup and installation of the software program. The Computer Services Help Desk will not be available for questions on the Vision software components. Municipalities will only be using our server space to store data - all they do is gain information from the County server. Queries and processing will take place locally on their own workstations. From an administrative standpoint, it was questioned whether we have identified the potential impact on Computer Services concerning calls for help. As proposed, municipalities would pay the $25.00 per hour for services. Computer Services staff will not troubleshoot municipality hardware problems - such as installing workstations or printers. Each municipality will have their own license number giving access to the Vision program. They are buying separate from the County. i Historically, Computer Services time involvement has been a problem with Clues. We are experiencing the worst case scenario with Clues now - a general assessment is that 40 percent of one Computer Services staff time is spent in law enforcement. With Vision, we would be able to have the municipality contact the vendor directly. If Computer Services staff time is required, it was agreed that the municipality would be invoiced monthly with the invoice being generated from Computer Services. Money gained would apply to the general fund revenue and would offset total operations. There would be no consideration for revenue to Computer Services - this would be a separate revenue budget. The expense is already budgeted. A paper trail would be necessary with the daily time sheet reflecting the charge back. Computer Services will develop a billing document showing the time recording per municipality. It was also questioned whether it will be necessary to add to Computer Services staffing levels because of Law Enforcement. St. Croix County and the municipalities will have the privilege of renewing and modifying a Memorandum of Understanding as a written agreement. Service charges will be covered in the MOU. Motion by John Krizek to draft an official MOU between the County and municipalities and forwarded to this committee for approval. Second by Dave Fodroczi. All in favor. Motion carried. APPROVE DEPARTMENTAL INTERNET ACCESS REQUESTS: Dave Fodroczi moved to approve Internet access for the Zoning Department. Second by Tom Belongia. All in favor. Motion carried. REMOTE ACCESS SERVICES: This option for communications was originally a proposal for St. Croix Industries & Maintenance in New Richmond to access resources from server (ECHO) and NT, e-mail. Computer Services staff looked at best way to give access to the main building. PCAnywhere is a widely used program but also wide open to security. Human Services budget allowed a contract through DataSource to configure the Remote Access services for these connections. The solution will also work here in Hudson for future use. For example, the Register of Deeds would benefit whereby title companies could dial in and access records. It was decided that the Register of Deeds would need to bring the request directly to this Committee so that details can be examined. We have security in place to deal with, system as if sitting directly to server - monitor and restrict access. Technically, the usage is in place, security is established and restrictions are in place. Access is blocked out from anywhere else. The NT security restricts access - if a user dials in, can only access his own information. The question for remote access outside of the office setting is based on an employee level. Depends on the level of user access - permissions are defined once the user is dialed in based on the user name and password. It is not possible to block where the call is coming from. Once this capability was in place for the Sheltered Workshop, it is not necessary to spend any more money in order to offer the flexibility of remote access services for employees. Discussion then took place on the establishment of employees' access from home and work from home. For example, when employees are out in the field, do they need to come back to the office to file reports? Remote access would allow real time documentation in the filed. There was also the question of accountability of time. John Borup related that his sense is that this usage is commonplace in private and public sector and corporations actually encourage work from home. John would support access from home for key managers. Dan Fedderly agreed that electronic access shouldn't confuse personnel issues with efficiency and effectiveness - if there is an opportunity to access data from home, and in effective manner, then it should be allowed but on a limited, as necessary basis. It was agreed that a blanket no to all employees was not reasonable and that prior approval is necessary for access. Approval to requests would be made on an individual basis - the request would be evaluated on the individual filling the position. There would also be the necessity to clarify the separation of mangers and vendors accessing the system remotely. Vendors are trying to reduce their costs and can do so by either accessing our data electronically or making their data available electronically. A discussion of virus protection was also an issue if outside vendors will be accessing our system. The existing policy needs to revised and defined in detail. Further discussion concerning alternatives to direct access to live files wold be a County web site with common files being posted to the site. Data would reside on a separate server that would deal with day to day type of data that would be informational rather than real time. Once this information was created, it would not change or be dynamic. With the open records law, there could be no recouping of money for this access, however, there would be a savings in terms of managing staff resources and answering requests. It was decided that this should be discussed with County departments in the future as a project goal. There is an issue with time concerns in Computer Services at this time, with the main focus being on conversion of programs and files and Year 2000 issues. OTHER BUSINESS: Kathryn Beutel informed the Committee members she will be having surgery on February 23 and will be unavailable for meetings until late March to early April POSSIBLE AGENDA ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING: DATE OF NEXT MEETING: None scheduled at this time ADJOURNMENT: Motion to adjourn by John Borup. Second by Dave Fodroczi. All in favor. Motion adjourned at 9:50 a.m. Respectfully Submitted By: .n athr n Beutel