Town Technology Committee Meeting Minutes, September 14, 2010

Rhinebeck Technology Committee Meeting Minutes

 

September 14th, 2010

 

 

In attendance

 

Bob Demkowicz

Mike Collins

Joe Ely

Mark Fuerst

Dave Kliphon

Joe Kupiec

 

 

Agenda items, as addressed:

 

 

1. Introductions

 

Summary:

• The team welcomed newcomer Mark Fuerst
• The team welcomed back Bob Demkowicz

 

 

The team welcomed Mark Feurst, President of Public Media Metrics, to the meeting.  An introduction by Mark was followed by introductions by the team members present. The team also welcomed back Bob Demkowicz to the committee after some time away from the group.

 

A brief overview of the committee purpose (“assess and advise”) was related.

 

 

 

2. Policies and Summaries: Town Board Review

 

Summary:

• Gina was not present to summarize Town Board interaction
• A review of the team-prepared policies and summaries was conducted
• Policy adoption was declared top priority in committee actions

 

Actions:

• Dave will send an email to Gina requesting higher prioritization of policy adoptions

 

 

At last meeting, liaison Gina Fox was presented with the committee’s IT and password policy proposals.  These were to be taken to the Town Board for review.  Gina was not present at the meeting for a status update.

 

In the meantime a review of the policies and two additional summaries was conducted.  The team discussed their background and content.  The documents include:

 

• IT Policy – Electronic Systems Acceptable Use Policy, to be signed by all Town representatives
• Password Policy – Standardization of system passwords defined by Town representatives
• Email Hosting Summary – Defines need to capture all Town mail; proposes online hosting subscription
• Tech Inventory Summary – Defines need to identify all inventory; proposes that the Town fund an audit

 

The committee agreed during the course of the meeting that the adoption of the two policies should be the team’s top priority.  To facilitate, Dave will email Gina fresh copies a request that the Town Board raise the priority of the policy reviews.  An objective will be to keep communication open in order to expedite this process.

 

 

 

3. Email Usage, Hosting

 

Summary:

• Town representatives need to use their rhinebeck-ny.gov email addresses
• Positive and negative incentives for migrating to Town addresses were proposed
• Board members should adopt usage first, setting the standard for others
• Google Apps Premier (Postini) was reintroduced, considered for archiving and searching

 

Actions:

• Gina will be asked to make board members aware of addresses and usage requirements
• Dave will identify Premier/Postini costs and alert team
• Team will review Premier/Postini features and capabilities

 

 

Email Usage

 

The topic of rhinebeck-ny.gov email address usage was discussed.  For reasons such as availability, accountability, archiving, searching and FOIL, town addresses need to be used by representatives.  Gina was not available to report any status in the introduction of the address usage requirement to the Town Board.  An email will be sent to Gina requesting that the board be made aware of the necessity.

 

Mike brought up the topic of motivation, and proposed that an incentive be employed to attract representatives to use their waiting addresses.  Bob noted that negative incentives (impending FOIL requests, for example) be used as an incentive as well.  The team agreed that effort (via consultants, training, awareness campaign…) will be required, but that the investment would far exceed the cost should the future detriments.

 

The committee discussed and proposed the strategy of requesting that remaining Town Board members migrate their government communications to their rhinebeck-ny.gov address first.  Once established, board members can act as advocates for other representatives to migrate.

 

This topic is considered the next step forward following the adoption of the proposed policies.

 

Google Apps Premier and Postini

 

The collection, archiving and searchability of town email has been a committee topic for quite a while.  A potential solution is Google Postini Services, which can perform the capture of incoming and outgoing email, and archive it.  The service allows easy searching as well.  A possible liability is the expense for high numbers of users.  Google Postini, and in particular the topic of email collection, was reintroduced and briefly discussed by the team members.

 

Dave will identify the cost to use Google’s service, and forward this to the committee.  The team members can then review the service features and identify the anticipated cost to the town.

 

 

 

4. Cloud Computing: Google Apps Research

 

Summary:

• Storing documents in the “cloud” continues to be a solution endorsed by the committee
• The Tech Committee is using Google Apps as a case study for the town
• Moving documents and applications to the cloud will also eliminate need for inventory

 

Actions:

• Dave will redistribute team member accounts
• Team will utilize Google Apps for committee documents, email , calendar…

 

 

The possibility of having town documents stored remotely (in the “cloud”) as opposed to on local computers was discussed.  The team’s unanimous consensus was that storage in the cloud would be a positive step for the town.  Moving documents out to the cloud would minimize the support needed for town computers, particularly with regard to the installed application base and required upgrades.  The team offered many reasons why the move to remote storage and support would benefit the town and reduce costs.

 

Google Apps is currently the de facto application suite for the development and storage of documents in the cloud.  The Tech Committee has its own Google Apps implementation for experimental purposes.  These experiments are ultimately meant to act as a case study for the town, demonstrating that a distributed team could better collaborate with these services.

 

Dave will redistribute the committee Google Apps account to the team members.  The team will then continue its evaluation.  Ultimately the Yahoo email group will be moved to Gmail with Google Apps as well.

 

The team noted that an additional benefit of migrating to cloud document and application management would be eliminated need for a technical inventory.

 

 

 

5. Change Management Procedure Policy

 

Summary:

• The committee is still in the process of assembling a Change Management Policy

 

Actions:

• Dave will attempt to complete and edit the existing version, then send to team for review

 

 

The Tech Committee current has a preliminary, unpolished Change Management Policy.  Editing is still required before the first official pass of the policy can be sent to the team for review.  Currently the policy identifies five key actions: Policy Adherence, Recording and Notification, Backup Procedure, Change Execution and Testing.

 

Dave will attempt to edit and polish the current version, then send it to the team for review.

 

 

 

6. Miscellaneous

 

Summary:

• No further status on ZEO document organization at this point
• The ZBA purchase recommendation was revisited
• The general outline for committee email group policy was defined
• The need for an RFP for Audit was reviewed
• Availability of the committee’s Five Year Plan was highlighted

 

Actions:

• The ZEO Document Organization topic will be removed from the agenda
• The ZBA Computer Purchase Recommendation topic is considered closed
• Dave will attempt to define a simple guideline for group email acceptance
• RFP for Audit topic will remain on agenda for now
• Dave will point committee members to Five Year Plan on Google Apps site

 

 

ZEO Document Organization

 

Paul Niedercorn had created a process for the organization of ZEO documents about a year ago.  The process had been due for a review, but Paul has not been available for an update.  Since the process has been implemented and documented, this topic will be removed from the next committee agenda.

 

 

ZBA Computer Purchase Recommendation

 

At the last meeting, Gina noted that the zoning board was in need of a new computer.  The question of whether to buy a new computer or to buy or employ a server was put to the committee.  The team agreed that the appropriate solution at the time was to purchase a new, low-cost computer.  Gina was not available at the meeting to review the results of the recommendation.  The topic will be removed from next meeting’s agenda.

 

 

Email Group Policy

 

Dave questioned how to handle requests by members of the public seeking to be added to the committee’s email group.  Some debate ensued, but Joe clarified that any user should be able to review group email on a “read-only” basis.  Mike and others pointed out that there is legitimate reason to request user identification and address.  Ultimately it was decided that new members to the email group could either join anonymously in a read-only fashion, or contribute to the group if they provide identity.

 

Dave will hopefully migrate the email group to Google Apps from Yahoo, and create a simply email group guideline document.

 

 

 

RFP for IT Audit

 

The RFP for IT Audit topic has been left on the team agenda for review at each meeting.  A potential benefit of an internally requested audit would be the facilitation of a long-needed tech inventory.  However, the team pointed out that the implementation of cloud document storage, Google Apps for example, would potentially eliminate the need for the tech inventory.

 

Regardless the benefit of an internal audit would be great- as well as the cost- so the topic will remain on the agenda until a time when the possibility should be proposed to the town or the topic become obsolete.

 

 

Five Year Plan

 

Dave highlighted the fact that the committee has a Five Year Plan document, a collection of topics that team members should review for familiarization.  Instead of distributing it for team review, Dave will provide a link to the document on the Google Apps document site.

 

 

 

Next Meeting

 

TBD, Fall 2010 at 7:00 pm.