Service Learning Report: Technology Plan for the Village of Clifton, Illinois

Andrew Winkel

LIS451LE Introduction to Network Information Systems

May 8, 2017

Municipalities are constantly faced with the pressure of maintaining services while controlling costs. Civic leaders, especially in small towns, tend to be little more than glorified volunteers. The result of these two factors is that many rural municipalities have little or no guidance on technology integration and very little extra money to invest in technological improvements.

This technology plan outlines three specific recommendations for the Village of Clifton, Illinois:

1. Create a computer and peripheral inventory
2. Invest in a consolidated e-mail system
3. Improve file-sharing efficiency

Following this plan will improve services and access while being cost-conscious and realistic about the level of technological support available locally.

The Village of Clifton, located in Iroquois County, Illinois, is a rural community with 1,486 residents according to the 2010 Census.

The technological needs for the administration of the Village of Clifton continue to expand. Costs for hardware have gone down, network accessibility has improved, and functionality has made personal computers essential for most jobs. The physical office for the Village of Clifton is in the heart of Clifton on the same block as the local pool within a building that serves as the meeting hall. Attached is a community building that can be rented for gatherings.

There are two administrative assistants and one village clerk. The administrative assistants are appointed positions, and the office hours for both are from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Monday through Friday. The clerk is an elected position, so the clerk does not keep regular hours. The clerk is also the Freedom of Information Act Officer for the village. These three positions make up the administrative support for the Village of Clifton office.

In addition to the main office, there is a part-time billing employee who handles the water/sewer/disposal billing for 500+ accounts. This is an appointed position, and this employee works out of her home.

The treasurer is an appointed position. She maintains all financial and payroll records for the village. Like the part-time billing employee, she also works out of her home.

The maintenance director is an appointed position. His office is in the maintenance building, although he also has oversight of the waste water treatment facility and the pool pump house. He is assisted by a part-time maintenance employee who collaborates on supporting the essential maintenance tasks.

The part-time water employee tests water and cleans the community building. He works in the water building.

The police chief, along with the part-time officers, share an office in the village hall but spend more time in the police vehicle than in the office.

A pool director manages the local swimming pool and is responsible for the hiring and oversight for the lifeguards and concession stand workers during summer months.

As elected officials, the village president and six trustees represent the governing body of the village. There are also seven members on the planning commission who also serve as the members of the board of zoning appeals when necessary. None of these trustees or commissioners are provided with technology by the village, and instead, each brings his or her own as their need or skill allows.

The mission of all these employees and representatives is to serve the needs of the residents of the Village of Clifton, maintain services, and generally allow life to go on without disruption.

Note: This project omits proprietary hardware such as monitoring computers for wastewater treatment or water treatment computers. Instead, the focus is on office-style personal computers that are typically associated with administration and office work.

Over the last twenty years, as internet and personal computing technology has expanded, the technology needs for the Village of Clifton have become increasingly complex. Meanwhile, the technology support has been provided through either the employees of the village, trustees or other elected officials, or family members of the above. The result is a hodge-podge approach to technology integration that can best be described as treading water. The services work well enough to function but remain mostly reactive rather than proactive.

Given the size of the organization and the variety of support tasks required, the technology needs vary by position. The following table collects all of the representatives for the Village of Clifton along with the village's current practice for providing the technology/computing support:

One important technology need that has been problematic is centralized access to emails. As a public agency, all records of the village are requestable through the Freedom of Information Act (while there are a few exemptions authorized by FOIA, the point of the law was to create transparency of information, and the burden to deny a request is on the public body). The current practice has been for officials to bring their own email, which means that no single individual has the ability to supply emails were a request to be delivered to the village. Instead, each individual would need to provide emails that match the criteria of the request. Since many officials are either using their work emails, which may include confidential or proprietary information, or their personal emails, which may contain personal or private information, the ability to collect and reply to a FOIA request within the five-day statutory deadline is difficult.

Additional statutory requirements that have a technological impact are the Open Meetings Act (OMA) and the State Records Act. The OMA prohibits public business from being transacted outside the eyes of the public. For example, a majority of a quorum of a committee cannot meet and discuss public business, so for a committee of three individuals, no two of the three may discuss public business without posting notice that a discussion will be taking place with the content of that discussion clearly explained on an agenda. This is especially problematic for electronic communication which is asynchronous but collaborative; an argument could be made that the OMA is being violated if two members of a committee engage in dialogue through emails or in a shared document.

The State Records Act requires records to be maintained by the clerk according to the terms of a local record retention policy that meets the limits imposed by the act. Some records must be retained for one year, three years, seven years, or even forever. As more records move from paper to digital formats, there is a technological need to maintain those records in alternative formats.

Recommendation #1: Create a Computer and Peripheral Inventory

Since all major PC purchases have been reactive (“The clerk’s machine is running slowly. He needs a new one.”), technology purchases have been inconsistent. Some purchases have been from big box stores, others from donations. As a result of this, an ideal first step is to inventory all PCs owned by the village, and if possible, identify a date of purchase. Once complete, this inventory should be maintained and updated to help make proactive decisions about computer purchases. (Note: see Addendum for completed inventory.)

Recommendation #2: Invest in a Consolidated Email System

Given the current practice of allowing each village official to use his/her own email and the problems this creates for centralized search or archiving, and also the potential for loss or destruction of records that should be maintained according to the State Records Act, it is recommended for the village to invest in a centrally administrated email system.

Specific solution following research of available systems: G Suite from Google.

Recommendation #3: Improve File Sharing Efficiency

One of the most important issues facing an institution like a municipality is paperwork redundancy; this is a factor for all agencies supported by tax dollars (including public libraries) because they are bound by the restrictions of the Freedom of Information Act, which imposes a requirement to provide the public with any and all public records as requested, the Open Meetings Act, which requires clear and open agendas, meetings, and minutes, and the State Records Act, which requires the maintenance of public records – in many cases, for perpetuity. As work gets done by individuals or groups and multiple copies of files are generated, either physically or electronically, the complexity of document retention and retrieval is compounded exponentially. Add to this a revolving door of elected or appointed officials with varying technology skills, and the result is almost guaranteed failure to observe the FOIA, the OMA, or the SRA.

For this reason, an efficient system for sharing files between users is absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, the tools for such file sharing are abundant and confusing. Recent news stories about VPNs highlight the security advantages and mention the file sharing potential, but the tech literacy to set-up and maintain such a system are significant. Also, the sheer number of VPN services can be daunting, and large amounts of time can be invested evaluating each for cost and features. Add to this file sharing services like Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive, and it is easy to see why hiring a professional to wade through the technology can be an attractive option.

Clifton needs a system that can be maintained by the limited technology skills of elected or appointed officials as well as recognizing the limited technology budget. It also needs a file sharing system that can share objects within tiers, keeping some work files accessible in a local workgroup while opening up other files for the public at large.

Given that its service can also provide email as well as file sharing abilities, the recommended application is G Suite from Google.

G Suite from Google Overview

G Suite is Google's cloud applications bundled together for businesses and organizations. It brings together email, office applications (Google's online tools Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms), and online storage with Drive. While the office applications are not as robust as stand-alone programs like Microsoft Word or Excel, the available features cover the majority of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs for the Village of Clifton. As a cloud service, G Suite is priced at a per user per month rate, and is scalable to accommodate a growing organization, plus it has the security support of technology giant Google to back it up when problems arise.

Ideally, Clifton could contract for technology services with a firm capable of providing support. Unfortunately, the reality is that the village is unlikely to appropriate for such purposes if there are any officials capable of providing even a basic level of support without the cost. With the advantage of subscription services that move administration to the cloud, costs can be absorbed through monthly per-user costs rather than one-time or ongoing professional fees.

G Suite by Google offers both centralized e-mail and file sharing capabilities, and it doesn't require local technology consulting costs or infrastructure set-up.

G Suite has three price levels:

• Basic Plan: $5 per user per month, with 30 GB storage;
• Business Plan: $10 per user per month, with unlimited storage, emails searching, and archiving services;
• Enterprise Plan: $25 per user per month, including Business plan features plus data loss tools and querying tools.

With the Basic Plan, there is no centralized email search or archiving, so this level does not meet the needs of the village. The Enterprise Plan, at $25 per user per month, is priced out of the limited budget that the village has available. Fortunately, a la Goldilocks, the mid-range Business Plan offers centralized search and archiving and so does meet the needs of the village. Even that price point, however, is still substantial for the village's limited budget, so the best option is to only create accounts for those users with the greatest exposure to online interaction. At this time it makes the most sense to consolidate emails into responsibilities and purchase the service for:

1. Village President
2. Clerk
3. Treasurer
4. Village Office
5. Police Department
6. Maintenance Department
7. All six trustees

This is a total of 12 accounts for $120 per month or $1,440 per year.

G Suite's cloud services remove local maintenance except for administration of the product, which will be the responsibility of the clerk, and hardware maintenance, which will be kept up through review of the inventory.

It feels anticlimactic to acknowledge that the end result of all of the energy, time, and thought invested in this project is to recommend a product that is currently freely available to personal users, and that many people already make use of as a part of their daily lives. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs or Sheets, these are products that Google offers to any user willing to create an account. Recommending G Suite seems underwhelming, like there should be some special service, some elite answer, some grail technology that is both robust and open source, easy to use but secure, locally controlled but bullet-proof; but no grail technology exists. A complex solution would only fail the village, as it falls apart under the twin demands of expertise and expense. A simple solution that is proven, that removes hardware demands from the village, that removes local technology expertise from the equation, and yet provides all of the bundled requirements to improve access to information, is an answer that may not be perfect, but represents the best solution at this time.

Computer Inventory and Peripheral Inventory for the Village of Clifton, Illinois.

Inventory.pdf

Network Map for the Main Office, Village of Clifton, Illinois.

Network_Map_Main_Office.pdf