Agenda - 11-19-1997 - 10b - Laserfiche WebLink

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I Several applications are under evaluation by IS staff to support desktop/mainframe integration. This will allow Microsoft components, such as Excel spreadsheets and Access databases, to interact ��ith databases that reside on the mainframe. 2.3 Impact Some of the ways limitations in the current system impact the county government and the citizens of Orange County include the following. • Because of the current diversity of PCs- which vary widely in age, condition, and performance - technical support is difficult and users sometimes suffer from unacceptable PC downtime. • Because the current mainframe database systems are antiquated, they require an inordinate amount of IS staff time to maintain them and generating analytic data or specialized reports often requires extensive custom programming. One implication of this is that requests for information sometimes cannot be fulfilled in a timely fashion. Using modern database management systems and relational database formats would go a long way toward alleviating these problems. • Because of reliability problems with the network, some users experience access problems. To fix these problems requires IS staff time, limiting what they can do in other areas. • Because of limitations in the network, some County employees do not have convenient and/or timely access to e-mail. This limitation makes the sharing information and other resources difficult, and it can negatively affect a department's ability to respond quickly to urgent requests for information. Very few have access to the Internet and the information resources available through the World Wide Web. Supplying these services will require additional network capacity. Section B - Initiatives In the discussions that follow, six broad initiatives are described. An original list of eighteen initiatives were developed by County personnel, including members of the IS staff and a number of department heads. They represent their assessment of both the general needs of the county as well as the specialized needs of individual departments. The task force has revised and consolidated the descriptions of those initiatives into the six listed here. 1. Upgrade the Orange County Network to include interconnection of all county offices, high-speed Internet access, and sufficient bandwidth for fast, reliable e-mail, printing,file access, World Wide Web access, and other network applications. The network should be based on standard Internet protocols, including IP addresses for all computers connected to it. This initiative should be implemented in two steps. A short-term plan should be adopted to meet pressing needs, such as bringing the new Southern Human Services Center offices on-line. This plan, prepared by the SAP2001 Working Group and IS staff, presents a list of tasks and accompanying cost estimates that need to be accomplished within the first six months of 1998. During that period, a long-term plan should be undertaken that describes in detail the architecture for an upgraded county government network, including a list of equipment and services and an implementation schedule. The plan should be done by an individual or vendor with extensive