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

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. 9 sounding board for the county's senior technical staff and the commissioners and as an additional technical resource available in an advisory role. 1.3 Impact If such a system were in place, some of the ways it would benefit county government and the citizens of Orange County include the following. • The county's basic infrastructure, including communications, personal computers, and software will be brought up to a basic standard. This will reduce maintenance costs and provide a basis from which continued upgrade and development can occur quicker, easier, and with minimal interruptions to department operations.. • A human support system will be developed to provide fast response to hardware, software, and network problems. part of this program will be diversified training that includes instruction in the use of the upgraded systems for general users and more specialized technical training for IS staff. Help desk services will also be available, providing quick responses through both telephone and e-mail. • All county personnel will have fast,reliable access to e-mail. This will result in more efficient communication among staff as well as faster and better responses to emergencies, messages from the County Manager's office, requests from County Commissioners, etc. The public will also be able to communicate with county offices through e-mail. Both internal and external uses of e-mail reduce paper processing, handling, and mailing costs. • Citizens will be able to contact their county government more easily. They will be able to access a variety of data through the Internet using familiar World Wide Web browsers from their homes, offices, schools, libraries, and other public places. They will also be able to conduct some kinds of business and obtain certain services through the network. • Outdated departmental systems will be replaced with current technology, allowing faster and more flexible access to financial,budget, personnel, and purchasing data. This will eliminate much of the extensive custom programming currently required to access these data. These systems will be particularly helpful to County Commissioners and other who need nonroutine analyses of data.. • Part of the review and upgrade of the foundation infrastructure will be to plan for emergencies, including natural disasters, so that county operations and services will be interrupted as little as possible. Currently, operations could be seriously interrupted by a car hitting a single telephone pole; such exposure will be removed. • Departments will be able to provide long-term document access so that individuals may easily locate the information they need from any location through the network. Access will be controlled to allow the public at large, particular groups or departments, or specific individuals to see only appropriate documents or data. The system will also allow the sharing of draft documents for collaborative authorship, reviewing, and early "heads up" notification. 2.0 Current System 2.1 Infrastructure The county's current computing environment includes three main technologies: personal computers (PCs), a central mainframe system, and the Orange County network.