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

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13 colleagues troubleshoot problems and learn new applications and work methods. Job descriptions of these users may need to be redefined or additional incentives provided to compensate them for additional services. For both technical support and training, the county should evaluate the use of outside contractors to supplement county personnel. 4. Upgrade department legacy systems, including installing World Wide Web servers to provide controlled public access and to support internal operations, where appropriate. Systems analyses of individual departments need to be done in order to determine the priority and schedule of upgrades, and plans need to be developed to implement the transitions, including costs analyses and safeguards to insure on-going operations and access during the transitions. This is a particularly important initiative. Currently, nearly half the IS staff resources are devoted to maintaining legacy systems. These systems should be phased out and the data migrated to more modern and more easily maintainable relational database management systems. Because of the magnitude of the task,the county should approach this task in several stages. During the first half of 1998, two systems analyses should be performed. The first should be an enterprise- wide analysis of the flow of information across departments and between the county and the state and other outside entities. A goal for this study is to identify enterprise-wide solutions, whenever possible. Concurrently,the county should contact other county governments as well as state agencies to explore possibilities for cooperating and sharing. The second analysis should be for a department selected to serve as a pilot project. This in-depth analysis should identify the department's working procedures,the structure of its data, and its operational requirements. The analysis should also look for manual operations that could be automated efficiently in the upgraded system. That department should be relative modest in its size and the complexity of its data. Following the systems analyses, a design should be undertaken that outlines a relational structure for the data and a system configuration. This design should take into account the role of this department and its data within the enterprise, as outlined in the first study. It should also follow the basic principle of"buying" rather than "building" whenever practical. An implementation plan should follow that includes continued operation of the old system as the new system is put in place and data migrated to it. After implementation,the experience should be reviewed to refine the process. After the pilot project, several other departments should be identified for upgrade, based on priority. Following their completion, additional departments can be targeted. In order to avoid undue expenses incurred in the continued maintenance of the legacy database system as well as support for the new system, all use of the legacy system should be discontinued as soon as practical. A reasonable time frame for this upgrade is 3-5 years. S. Provide citizens and the County Commissioners with access to information and services through the county's computer and communications system. That access should be provided wherever practical through the Internet, using the World Wide Web as a common interface, with appropriate restrictions for confidentiality.