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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1998-0703.TECH ASSESSMENTThe City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT THE CITY OF ASHLAND, OREGON July 3, 1998 Draft Report July 3, 1998 Executive Summary The Network Address, Inc. (NAI) has been engaged by The City of Ashland to conduct an assessment of the city's technology environment. To complete its task, NAI staff spent June 16th, 17th, and 18th at city facilities conducting management interviews, focus groups and site surveys and augmenting the documentation the city forwarded to NAI prior to our visit. A recap of our activities is Appendix A. The city's technology portfolio primarily consists of personal computer (PC) based, home grown application systems, and a substantial number of desktop PCs. The city's facilities are almost entirely networked for both local and wide area Novell network services. A review of the city's major locations reveals that the facilities have state-of-the-art cabling and networking equipment installed. The majority of staff we spoke with were concerned and frustrated with the state of information technology in the city. The reasons are diverse in nature and we believe this is due to the fact that little agreement exists regarding what the expectations of Computer Services are. Even Computer Services isn't totally clear on this. As a result, there is little confidence that Computer Services can meet the pressing technology needs of the departments and a number of them are pursuing their own directions. While we applaud and endorse these efforts and initiative, we are concerned that the departments are not fully aware of the challenge they face in procuring expensive application systems. Additionally, the city should be in a position to leverage every dollar available to its departments by providing a technology architecture blueprint for all to follow. Acquisition of long term, costly applications in the absence of this blueprint is of high risk. We found communication between the users and the Computer Services (CS) department to range between scant and hostile. There needs to be a greater dialog over the issues as in-depth collaborative planning, review and implementation are essential to the success of CS/user endeavors. We believe that the trust and confidence issues that surfaced from a number of people and The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 inadequate customer service, which was a repeated complaint, are a direct result of the communication problems. Note that this is not unusual based on the lack on defined, mutual expectations. The document imaging system the city has selected is very good and an excellent value. While the scope of its use is currently limited to city records and the Police Department, its has great technical and functional potential. Based on our overall assessment, we believe the city's environment has a strong foundation on which it can exploit contemporary and emerging technologies. With a minimum amount of strengthening, this foundation will serve the city well for years to come. Our analysis, recommendations and suggestions are discussed in detail in the following assessment. Assessment Assessment Criteria When undertaking an assessment, we are less concerned with the specific technology and more concerned with its suitability to meet a government's needs. That is not to say that we exclude the technology from our discussion, but our philosophy is that any number of different technical alternatives can deliver satisfactory results given a well framed environment. Each assessment criteria listed under the Assessment section below is preceded by a brief description of the considerations that each criteria represents. These considerations frame our assessment. Depending on the environment some may apply more than others. There are often tradeoffs between function and cost, need and capability, and sufficiently functional and fully featured systems. These tradeoffs are factored into the assessment based on our acquired understanding of the Ashland culture and environment. Assessment As part of our research, we included observations and obtained documentation to guide us in development of our assessment. While we noted legacy, and perhaps current technology choices, our focus was on the prospective direction of the technology environment. Customer/User Satisfaction and Service · Customer Satisfaction. Are information users satisfied with available technology? With its reliability? Are they satisfied with service? 2 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 The demand and backlog of CS services is enormous (and perhaps latent) while resource availability is low. CS is besieged with requests while user expectations have diminished to a disturbing level. We found that there is a lack of confidence in the CS department and communication among the parties is not terribly productive. On the other hand, we observed the user base to be somewhat undisciplined when it involves technology issues. There is extensive dissatisfaction among the city's technology user's with the services provided by CS. These complaints were fairly common and there is a great deal of concern regarding the direction and responsiveness of CS. The Computer Services staff was characterized as intransigent (my word) more than once. The current understanding of roles and responsibilities surrounding technology, presents roadblocks to departmental technology progress. There is little perceived value in the Computer Committee. We recommend that Computer Services develop service level agreements and a service request mechanism with all their "customers". These agreements delineate roles and responsibilities, set expectations and provide agreed upon ways to measure the performance of each. Intemal Operations Internal Operations. How is technology supported and the staff supporting it organized? Are there strategic and tactical plans in place? How is service delivered? Computer Services is primarily consumed by network and desktop hardware and software support. At one time, there was a programmer who developed systems for the departments, but he has since left. Consequently, program maintenance is minimal and development nil. Daily service as applied to the network receives accolades throughout the user community despite their overall grumbling. The state of network maintenance is adequate, but we recommend the addition of trouble shooting and automation tools to fill gaps that currently exist in back-up and problem diagnoses capabilities. We commend Computer Services for their efforts in building a supportable infra- structure. We encourage the city to further promote and support this a~,tivity as it can yield tremendous payback. Because Ashland currently relies on its network and will so more in the future, we suggest a contingency plan (hardware, software, staffing, network, et. al.) would benefit the city. 3 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 Consistency Consistency. How many different tools, products, programs, and protocols are in the technology portfolio which essentially provide redundant functions and services? Duplication increases training requirements, maintenance, support, and expense. There is a larger than usual amount of consistency in Ashland's technology portfolio. While we believe this is particularly good, many within the city view it as overly constraining. Our observations reveal that while many constraints do exist, a certain amount are artificial and can be removed with no detriment to consistency. One unusual condition we encountered was the consistency of desktop productivity software in concert with widespread dissatisfaction with the choice of city "standard" products. Our experience leads us to believe that having a standard product list is far more beneficial than the alternative. Furthermore, there is virtually universal agreement that the tangible capabilities of the current software are more than sufficient to satisfy city needs. It is mainly the intangible benefits that the staff is concerned with. The selection of which product(s) best suit the city's overall needs is more a management decision and less a technical one. In regards to this issue, we caution that if the city desires to change its desktop products, it does so universally and with full recognition of the costs involved of conversion, training and productivity. Go vernance Governance. Where do responsibilities, authorities, and accountabilities lie within the government as they pertain to technology? What are the decision making processes? Whether staff vocational skills and technical literacy are leveraged by empowerment and enablement. Officially, there is technology governance within The City of Ashland embodied in the Computer Services department. Our view is that executive management was disengaged from Computer Services for many years, that CS has been relegated to the lower ranks within the organization, and that it provides only a subset of the functions that a governance structure encompasses. The current f~cilities allocated to the Computer Services staff is indicative of our concern, The city's technology priorities are somewhat clear, but mostly uncoordinated. In brief, more leadership must be exercised relating to technology issues. The separate and independent efforts revolving around mapping (only a subset of GIS), application procurement (e.g. Finance and Public Safety) and records management demonstrate our view of this. 4 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 Governance, in the broadest sense, addresses the decision making processes surrounding the acquisition and support of technology. This requires a concise delineation of roles, responsibilities, accountability and authority. These definitions serve local government best when there is a common understanding in place to guide the process. We found a high level of frustration among the users regarding the slow pace of technology deployment and the fact that everything was bottlenecked by CS when, in many cases, the users could sufficiently serve themselves. As a result, the city is not leveraging its resources and potential productivity gains are just that, potential. We recommend that at a minimum, Ashland overhaul its technology governance structure to make the environment more user friendly and enable and empower the technical and vocational literacy of the city's employees. In this structure, users are given much larger roles and responsibilities along with commensurate authority and accountability for their vocational responsibilities, which include departmental systems. We highly recommend that Computer Services be elevated to department stature and that a Director be engaged to lead and manage the city's technology operations and direction. Scalability $calability. How much and to what degree can the deployed technology grow and not degrade due to stress and strain of increased loads? This is more important as it relates to architecture and infrastructure and less important to specifically focused departmental systems. As Ashland's portfolio consists almost entirely of PCs linked by wide and local area networks, we find little to be concerned about as proper planning will promote the scalability of these technologies. This issue should be a concern, and addressed, in the acquisition of all future additions of hardware, software, communications, and departmental systems. Extensibility Extensibility. How easy it is to add more of the same throughout the government? How do these increases impact staffing, support and maintenance? Our comments regarding extensibility mirror those on scalability with the added observation that future technology initiatives will dilute extensibility in the environment depending upon how it is deployed. This issue should also be considered in future technology acquisitions. The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 Strategic Capability Strategic capability. Is there a coherent strategic direction? Is the technology deployed a good investment? Will it be able to support, integrate and/or play in future technology initiatives? We believe Ashland is fairly well positioned strategically. The network infrastructure, coupled with the deployment of fiber throughout the city will offer opportunities yet defined. We suggest that the city examine its commitment to the Novell Networking software. While investment in Novell has and will continue to be productive for the short term, we don't see it as a strategic product. And the city must shed itself of its dependence on DOS. We probed the issue of year 2000 compliance but did not obtain a feel for the city's vulnerability. We recommend that this issue be pursued vigorously. Depending on the scope of the issue, it may well be too late to address in a timely fashion. An area where the city is deriving only a fraction of its current benefit is with its pseudo GIS systems. Ashland is not reaping the traditional benefits of a contemporary GIS, nor will it be ready to exploit the major advances in feature and functionality that are on the GIS horizon as GIS systems are evolving as the next generation of "municipal management systems". There is an opportunity for all city departments to benefit both individually and collectively from its capabilities. The city currently has ArcInfo on the shelf and should consider using this top flight product. This is another area, however, where we caution management to approach this issue in-depth and obtain a full understanding of the costs, expectations and governance issues surrounding a GIS. The recently acquired document imaging system has both tactical and strategic potential. While reducing the amount of paper and facilities needed to warehouse paper is a noble goal, the true value in document imaging comes from gains in work productivity and service quality. This implies process re- engineering and access to imaged data. This in turn implies network and integrated technology environment. These, along with "groupware" applications are important inclusions of any technology direction. Suitability · Suitability. Does the technology perform in the way the city needs and expects it to? The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 The city's current hardware suite seems suitable while the software suite appears to reaching the end of its useful life. That is, the home grown applications serve the needs of certain departments to varying degrees while overlooking the implications to the city as a whole. Both suitability needs must be met. As departments select technology for their individual needs, it will almost certainly be suitable for the acquiring department, but not necessarily suitable for the city as a whole. This occurs when these departmental systems lack strategic integration capability into the city's technology environment. We urge that collaboration on system acquisition be built into the procurement process. Otherwise duplicate expenses and dis-integration are often the result of pursuing Architecture and infrastructure should guide suitability considerations. Suitability, extensibility and scalability are best addressed under the architecture and infrastructure umbrella. Manageability · Manageability. Is support of the technology labor intensive? Are there tools that permit rapid diagnosis and repair of problems? We consider the Novell LANs to lend themselves to manageability. A number of key products are in use in support of the LAN and we recommend filling out this suite of products. On the other hand, we found no discernable tools to manage problems, backlogs, change and other elements within the environment. We believe these tools are important in managing and delivering customer service. We recommend that the city include technology management tactics in the development of its architecture. Specifically, these should include service delivery, centralized network management, access and security management, asset management, change management, problem management, software licensing and version control, and configuration management and control. Architecture Architecture. A technology architecture is an umbrella under which deployed technology fits together. Based on the technologies that fall under the umbrella, a blueprint is designed that incorporates only those techn~ologies. We seek to discover if there is such a blueprint from which technology acquisitions are overlaid? If so, does this blueprint adequately serve the needs of the government? We found a very coherent strategic technology network architecture in place. We also noticed the absence of integration, data or umbrella architectures in Ashland. These architectures, along with the city's well defined infrastructure, are The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 among the most important components of a technology environment. They will play a major role in the development of standards and procedures. We recommend that The City of Ashland develop an architecture that fully incorporates its infrastructure and that is user friendly and principally developed to support an integrated technology environment where products can natively inter-communicate among one another. The selected architecture should yield a rich alternative set of solutions to the individual departments. We recommend that the city make inter-connectivity among systems the primary objective which can encompass any and all of the departments, and/or independent agencies. We believe this architecture is essential in the preparation for public access. Infrastructure Infrastructure. A technology infrastructure is akin to the water and sewer pipes within a municipality. In this case its copper and fiber, its topology and. protocols, its capacity and potential. We look to see if there is a (well) defined infrastructure. If so, can this infrastructure support the current and strategic technology needs of the government? Does it provide communications capabilities both with the government and to external sources? The city has embarked on a state-of-the-art infrastructure implementation. We believe the completion of this physical infrastructure to be among the highest priorities, if not the highest priority for the city. It is a critical enabling technology. This infrastructure, when coupled with the ever important architecture will advance the causes of many of the other assessment criteria discussed in this report. We recommend that the city formally define and articulate an infrastructure that includes networking requirements, physical connectivity standards for the use of fiber and copper cabling, wireless technologies, hardware capabilities and compliance features, bandwidth management, physical and logical addressing, protocols and security. These are important factors in the acquisition of departmental systems. Complexity Complexity. Does the complexity of the technology environment adversely impact stability, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness, and the ability to deliver service? Does it require excessive manual intervention? We measure complexity by evaluating the level of difficulty it takes to expand and maintain the technology environment. The environment as defined in Ashland is very straight forward. This is due to its focused definition around the 8 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 network and the Novell LANs. The LANs and WAN are elegant yet simple. To prepare the environment, we believe the current network should be enhanced and moderately reengineered to provide robustness, stability, management and to support the projected demands. When the city chooses to expand outside of its current technology base, which is both likely and recommended, the absence of architecture and infrastructure definitions can increase complexity, cost and support of the environment while decreasing stability, if not appropriately considered. Funding · Funding. Do the funding models adequately represent the needs of the technology, its deployment, support and maintenance? Funding for technology ventures seems to be allocated to departmental budgets, including Computer Services, and a technology "fund". The authority over these dollars appears to be with Finance and CS. We think this is causing friction among the parties and inhibiting technology advancement. In general, we do not endorse the concept of a technology "internal service fund". Funding methodologies and commitments are only coherent when wrapped around an understanding of the city's goals and objectives. While we didn't find ill-advised expenditures, we are concerned that the city is on the verge of making major purchase decisions without the benefit of a full understanding of the "total cost of ownership". We recommend that funding, with commensurate authority and accountability, be delegated to the departments for the costs of training, departmental systems and departmental infrastructure construction and the Computer Services group for support of the infrastructure. Cost Effectiveness Cost effectiveness. What criteria are used to select and procure the technology? Is the technology being exploited to achieve optimum performance? For the most part, we believe that the city has chosen an effective route to technology deployment. We also believe that the city's under-spending on technology is a primary cause for the latent demand in the applications arena. To optimize future expenditures, the technology ought to leverage prior expenditures and future investments as they are made. 9 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 Standards, Policies and Procedures Standards and policies. Do policies and standards exist to guide the user community and suppod a common technology direction within the government? We found a number of standards and policies in effect in Ashland, mostly de- facto or decreed, and a dearth of technical documentation. These standards are a source of widespread irritation among the staff and less effective than they could be. As the city clearly plans to expand its deployment of technology, standards and policies should be developed prior to this deployment and be compatible with the overall architecture. We recommend the city (re)develop and communicate standards surrounding desktop technology hardware, software and configurations, document imaging, and the physical infrastructure. We recommend the development of procedures for acquiring technology, requesting infrastructure services, obtaining access and defining service levels. Additionally, policies defining authorities and enforcement of the technology access, security, standards and procedures are essential. Maintenance · Maintenance. Is the technology maintainable and sustainable? Is there a ready and reliable source of hardware, software, service and staff resources? PC maintenance is almost entirely performed by Computer Services. Program maintenance is covered through CS and an outside contractor who is a former city employee. With the exception of network administration, we believe hardware and program maintenance will be best when outsourced. We recommend that the city totally discontinue its development of application software and purchase off-the-shelf, vendor supported software instead. This includes maintenance. To avoid anarchy and chaos, this needs to occur in the context of an overall technology umbrella. Security · Security. Can an appropriate level of security be applied to the desired implementations based on regulatory requirements and internal policies? LAN security appears adequate for the environment. With the addition of application systems and more pervasive Internet access, this issue becomes an increasing concern. Security considerations are an important component of every acquisition decision. 10 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 Training · Training. What are the commitment and resources allocated to training? Are these consistent with the needs? We found the training situation in Ashland most intriguing. There is almost unanimous agreement among the users that training is insufficient and inadequate. On the other hand Computer Services made a good faith effort to arrange for training on Windows 95 and the Groupwise product. There seems to be several reasons for this disconnect. First, the timing of the training was out of sync with the implementation schedule. Second, the methods of training provided were questioned. Thirdly, and from our perspective the most important, the users lack an understanding of what their commitment to technology and their roles must be. We recommend that Computer Services be responsible for developing training requirements on standard products for city staff and coordinate the administration of this training with external providers. We also recommend that the individual departments be responsible for securing training for their staff on all software and for both their staff and external users on departmental systems. Staffing Staffing: Are staffing levels adequate to meet the objectives of the technology and programs dependent on the technology? The placement of responsibility and accountability within the government influences staffing levels. Computer Services specifically, and the city in general, is understaffed with respect to technology resources. The backlog of work is horrific and defies management. Currently, CS is well equipped skill-wise and time-wise to handle network management and administration, but little else. The demands upon CS far exceed their available resources. There is little time to effectively plan and manage projects, and symptoms rather than problems are attacked. Furthermore, communication and relationships between Computer Services and the departments has been relegated a very low priority rather than the highest. We found areas of technical excellence among the staff, but little benefit derived from their talents. We attribute this to an overly restrictive atmosphere and the absence of management support. Staffing for technology needs to be considered organization wide. However, we consider addressing staffing issues at this time, without a well understood governance structure, and without knowing what skill sets are required, to be ill advised. As labor typically represents about seventy percent of 11 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT the total cost of technology, it is more important than ever to base staffing decisions on the foundation of an overall direction. Enabling the technically proficient citywide staff also augments the overall pool of technology resources. There also appears to be a deficiency of experiential, contemporary technology vision and skills throughout the city. This needs to be addressed in the evaluation of additional staff requirements and training for current staff as well. We recommend re-focusing the CS group to provide support for development and maintenance of the infrastructure. Levels to support this will be necessarily based on the scope of the infrastructure. Staffing to support departmental systems and desktops should be left to the departments to justify. This provides an effective method to measure increases in productivity and better evaluate the true costs of technology. Public Access Public Access: How is the city positioned to provide and accept information electronically to and from its residents? As technology penetrates the home, citizens are beginning to expect this capability. We believe, no local government can ignore the implications that technology will have on this subject. In our discussions, city management perceives a future need for public access capability. To enable this capability, public access requires an infrastructure that the city has almost entirely implemented. A web site is just the start. The high level architecture that we refer to in this report is a pre-requisite to public access as it positions the entire city to exploit this capability. It then falls to the individual departments to introduce access to their services. As an example, if Ashland intends to develop a robust GIS system, it can then exploit access to its GIS databases by developers, realtors and planners alike. July 3, 1998 Summary We believe that the city has done its citizens and itself a great service by building a network and strategically deploying fiber optic cable. To exploit the potential of this foundation, standards based client/server systems, departmental integration and robust telecommunications must follow. Ashland needs to prepare-to effectively assimilate and manage this technology. As the cost of additional infrastructure support will be a relatively small piece of total technology expenditures, addressing the needs and destinations for funding allocations will help Ashland to determine priorities, the costs of each technology project, and determine the viability of each. This is far easier to achieve when the departments are the "owners" of the projects, costs and funds. 12 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT July 3, 1998 The City of Ashland would be well served by a master technology plan to guide it for the next three to five years. The components needing the most attention involve governance, architecture and departmental system functionality. These are much more important than the hardware and software ultimately selected. The City of Ashland must then be committed and true to its plan. This furthers the objective of the plan which should be to increase cost effectiveness by improving productivity and liberating the technical talent within the city. The full benefits of GIS, document imaging, and departmental systems will not be realized without this foundation. Consistent with the contents of this report, we suggest that the city consider deferring additional technology acquisitions until it has a plan in place. We also urge Department Directors to be fully prepared to expend an appropriate amount of due-diligence before investing in departmental systems. One final observation. For technology strategies to be successful, management commitment and essential leadership is required. Today's modern technology environment needs someone who can direct when appropriate, collaborate when appropriate and defer when appropriate. Someone who can plan and spearhead the development of standards, policies and procedures. Someone who will instill the trust and confidence of the management team and discipline all staff as well. A complete position description, with objectives, for this role should be a top priority. 13 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment DRAFT APPENDIX A July 3, 1998 Meeting Attendees: 06/16/1998 Mike Freeman Phil Lind Pat Hopkins Paul Nolte Jill Turner Greg Scoles 06/17/1998 Department Heads Dale Peters Pete Lovrovich Keith Woodley Matthew Freiheit Paula Brown Finance Focus Group Joni Ellis Pat Caldwell Karen Huckins Cindy Hanks Jennifer Meadows Gar Arnsdorf 06118/1998 John McLaughlin Adam Hanks Barbara Christensen Derek Severson Scott Fleuter Linda Hoggett Sites Visited City Hall Civic Center 14 The City of Ashland, Oregon Technology Assessment Main Fire Station Police Headquarters Public Works/Engineering DRAFT July 3, 1998 15