Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

[Music] Call to order this meeting of the IT committee September 16th. It's the middle of September already. Uh roll call of the committee members. Mr. Hassinger, I'm here. Mr. Clark here. Mr. Carol, Bob's here. and Mr. Remlard not here or at least not yet. Mr. Robbins is present. And we have with us our special guest, William Blake, assistant town administrator. Good evening. Hi.

So, as you can probably tell, um, I had minor day surgery today and I have a dressing on my nose, so I just assume go off camera. You think we can live with that? Hope everything goes well for you, Bob. Same here.

Yep. Okay. So, our first agenda item as always is public input. Uh we do not have any attendees on Zoom. If any of us present have anything that counts as public input, now would be the time. And hearing none, next agenda item. We're a bit overdue for committee reorganization. That is to designate a person to be chair, vice chair, and perhaps optionally clerk to take minutes. I've been doing the minutes, and I can continue doing that. Right.

I I move to nominate Dave Robbins for chair.

I'll second. Okay. Let me uh Just note that uh Lucas Rimmelard is in the at least in the process of joining here. Oh, Lucas, can you hear us? Right. Well, there is a motion on the floor to designate me as chair for the next year. Any other uh any other volunteers or nominations for chair? Hearing none. I guess I'll put that to a vote. Mr. Hassinger,

I. Mr. Carol, I Carol's eye. Mr. Clark. Hi. Mr. Remalard Luc Lucas has his hand.

Maybe maybe the hand up was to signal a vote in favor. We're not hearing. We We ought to have we ought to we we have to establish Yes. communication both ways. What the heck is going on? Oh, we can hear you. Can you hear me? Yep. Yay. There we go. Now it's finally There we go. Much much better. Now we can officially say that Lucas has joined the meeting. Okay, let's see. Where were we? We're voting on chair. We're looking You're looking for a vote from him.

Yeah, Lucas. We're voting on the motion to make me continue as chair Lucas. Do you have a vote? I And I guess I'll vote I for that. All right. Let me make a note of that so I don't forget. All right. So Who want who gets to be vice chair?

I mean, I'll do it. Nominate myself. Or do I have to be nominated? I nominate Amar. All right. Thank you. Is there a second? I second. All right. moved and seconded that Amomar serve as vice chair. Any discussion of the motion hearing? None. We'll take a vote. Mr. Hassinger I. Mr. Carol I. Mr. Clark I. Mr. Rimlard I.

And Mr. Robbins votes I. Okay. Let's see. update. Okay. Does anybody want to serve as clerk? I think that's kind of optional if no one if one especially. Go ahead. Especially as good as you are, Dave. [Laughter]

All righty. So, that will that will suffice. The next agenda item then would be our update from the town administrator uh as relayed to us by the assistant town administrator in this case. I know William has at least one topic to update us on.

Yep. So, thank you Dave. Uh I sent an email around earlier. We finished our RFP process for managed IT services for the town in the middle of August. We began doing our due diligence and reviewing the proposals that we uh received. As I mentioned in the email, unfortunately, our current IT vendor uh was late submitting their proposal and under the law had to be disqualified. That led us to Entree Technologies. They were the most advantageous bidder based on what they submitted and I sent the technical proposal around uh and were also comparable in price based on the price proposal that I sent as well. We've had one kickoff meeting with Entree. Um very nice people, very good company, a lot of municipal experience from what we can divine. Uh we've put them in contact with CMD to start the changeover process. So, they're working on that in the background and the official changeover date is October 1st and sometime thereafter we plan to set up a meeting between them and this committee so that everybody is on the same page. But that is sort of the nuts and bolts of it. Happy to discuss that further if there's any any questions.

Any questions, comments? Anybody on Bob? I was going to ask if anybody on this team is familiar with Entree. Bob Carol's got his hand up. No, I just curious um who are the other biders. The other biders were uh OSF Inc. out of Maryland, Consulted out of New York, Xerox IT Services out of Illinois, and Integra out of Milford, Mass. And were any of the others um were they close?

In some areas across the board, though, not really. Um the closest one was consulted. Um but there was some difficulties there around providing the on-site support that we asked for. Okay. Just curious.

Uh uh two things. Um our current vendor couldn't uh had some problem. They wanted to bid and they failed to or did they just not end up bidding? They wanted to bid. Um, unfortunately, the person delivering the bid got caught in Pike traffic and was about 35 minutes late. Oh my goodness. Oh, and unfortunately under 30B, there's no wiggle room when it comes to time.

Oh. Um that sounds like when you're going for NIH grants, um people, you know, zip down in the last 20 minutes to Washington to deliver the grant. My wife worked in in in research uh that was funded for forever. Um and then the other one is where is this company based and where is their closest site? Uh they are based out of Westfield, Massachusetts. So they're only about 10 minutes further away than CMD was.

Okay. So we should be able to see them when we need them. Yep. So uh they'll still be in two days a week, 15 hours for the next nine months. We wrote that into the RFP. Um, which brings us to the start of the next fiscal year at which points there's plans to create that IT director position we talked about I think two months ago.

Yep. Yeah. So, I think yeah, it's kind of unfortunate that CMD wasn't able to get their bid in on time. And um in 2020 hindsight, of course, you you you could say that gee, I wish we'd uh allowed for more delays and not tried to get in there at the very last minute, but that's as you say, well, there's not, you know, there, you know, the the deadline is a hard deadline for better or for worse. But I I'm I think I'm pleased that we have a another a a local company here that's been doing business in the Commonwealth with cities and towns for I think I got the impression from their their proposal there that they've been around for at least 25 years, maybe more.

Thought I saw 40. Yeah, 40. Yep. And if I could just piggyback off of that, Dave, we did call their references. Uh we spoke to Adams, Westfield, and East Long Meadow. Uh called others and unfortunately weren't able to get into contact with those communities. But those three had nothing but positive things to say about their experiences. Uh and I ended the reference check with would you hire them again? And all of them said yes without hesitation. Are any of them as far away from the company as we are

geographically? I don't know. I think Adams might be comparable just heading west, but I I do not know. Was Marlboro on their list? Yeah, I saw Mar Templeton. It was all over the state. Yep. Yeah. Well, And it's a four I think you saw it was a 4hour SLA to get somebody on site if needed.

Yes. In addition to the hours they will already spend on site. So while it's unfortunate and we're sad to see CMD go, I think that this is sort of the best way a bad situation could end. Yep. Yeah. From from at least everything I've seen and heard, uh we uh we were very satisfied with CMD and sounds like we can expect to be equally satisfied with Entree. Yep. And I I cannot say enough good things about CMD. They've been very professional and helpful through this changeover process. So I think the next couple of weeks will be smooth sailing.

Sounds good. Any other questions or comments about the uh IT services? I did and it wasn't clear to me whether the new municipal Wi-Fi gear was included under this quote or if that's separate. Any ideas, William? The new equipment in the park. Yes. Off top of mind, I want to say yes. We provided them with an asset inventory to build their board off of, and I believe that was on there, but I can double check and I can follow up. Okay.

All right. Anything else? Anything else William has you have to pass on to us from either yourself or Evan? Anything else? Anything else happening in the IT world in town? No, sir. Know about? Nope. This is this is the big stuff at the moment. Yep. And other than that, things have been running pretty smoothly. Yes. Okay. any any considerations for adopting AI? None that have been discussed at this time. To what?

Well, um we use it exclusively for minutes, procedures, um policy, all of those things. It's a it's a godsend for me meeting minutes. Yeah, I use it for meeting minutes as well for work. Yeah, agreed. And to that point, I do remember we discussed doing a uh AI use policy I think two meetings back. Um there's been no movement on that at this time, but that is still on the list of things to do.

Okay. So I think you I I think you have to have AI because everyone else does, not because it doesn't. That depends on what how you use AI. use it for things that it's actually good at or you you just narrow down the

and of course that's somewhat of a value judgment too depending how you look at it but don't want to get too far off track here but I'm frequently amused by reading reading how lawyers are using AI to write briefs that turn out to be fict full of fictitious citations. Yeah,

that that sort of thing I don't think we would want particularly want to get into things where AI AI is amazing ability to hallucinate really gets into it if we can avoid that. But anyway, yeah, I don't want to get too far off the topic on that. Um, the next agenda item we have is an update on the public Wi-Fi project. Um I shared with all of you the uh you know the answers that Fiona provided to the questions that we raised at our previous meeting. Um at this point that's yeah like she's she's answered the questions that we that we had. Uh based on that do we have any follow-up questions? It's um I I could go out and find it if I wanted to try it at this point. It would be there.

That's the impression I got. I haven't gone out and tried to find it and it hasn't been announced as available. True. There was something about um getting signs made, I guess, to put out. Uh it is up and running and it has been publicized on the town website.

I don't know about physical signs, but the information is out there. I don't I don't just go scrolling around the town website hoping there's something new that I want to know about. Um that's that's a pull you need to push that people there ought to be um happy comments from citizens. Oh, good. A new thing. Um, if you u put it out there in, you know, in general circulation on uh on the public media.

So, yeah, I'm looking at the website and I I don't even see it. I'm going to have to look for it. Sounds like it would be fair to say that the committee would recommend that more be done to publicize it more widely that it be more widely publicized. Yes. So moved. Yeah. We'll take that as a consensus that that that's that is the committee's recommendation. Don't need to formalize it, I don't suppose. Okay. Anything else on the public Wi-Fi?

Has anyone tried Has anybody tried it? Will, have you tried it?

I have not. I know Fiona has. I have not. [Music] I think I remember thinking to myself maybe the last time we talked about it. I should take a take myself up to the common and just see assuming it's there. See how it easy how easy it seems to me to be to get into it and use it. But I imagine it should be pretty easy. I haven't haven't actually taken the time to do that. I really should.

I'll be interested if it's uh avail whether it works over at the um whatever it is the ice cream place in uh cuz I can see people sitting Oh, I I don't know. They may already have something, but um I could see people sitting there having coffee and and ice cream and using the uh the Wi-Fi. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I found it on the website, too.

Yeah. Where what did you have to do to find it? I just went to the search box and I typed Wi-Fi and it came up pretty quick there. Yeah, that's what I did, too. So, you had to guess. Had to look for it. You You had to guess that after all these years with nothing out there, um that you ought to go look. Yeah. I just on my screen it's showing up on the under the latest news and updates when I go to the homepage. Oh, really? Yep. It's there.

There's four announcements. The the going from left to right, it's the rightmost announcement, but those those things do change. There's not a lot of, you know, it's basically Oh, I see it now. Yeah. the latest announcements. If I just happen to stumble on to it, well, you know, I don't go to the homepage. I have links to the uh meeting materials and the uh

agenda center that I use. Um you just people don't wander around looking for trouble uh looking for, you know. Anyway, I think we made the Yeah, under that latest news, you have to scroll to the next set of tiles. Yeah, it depends on how much screen space on your particular screen the page is occupying. Watch the fold. Watch below the fold. Everything's very important.

Yeah. And it just reinforces the point here that I think we're in violent agreement that while you work a little bit, you may have to work a little bit, you can find it. If you if you seek it, if you go looking for it, you'll find it. But the there's a point to be made that it should be should it could be made more visible. I mean this this is again sort of sort of launching into a topic we discussed at some length in our master plan working group that oh there seem to be a lot of opportunities for improving communication between the town and the citizens. you know this seems like every everybody sort of learns things and gets their news in a different way and you know well we're not going to solve that problem here but suffice it to say that there there's a lot of opportunity to do more here both in in the narrow sense of this uh Wi-Fi service and in the broader sense of keeping our citizenry better informed

yeah something might be said at the selectman's meeting when there are different things being mentioned but persons.

So, um since we're kind of picking at this Wi-Fi thing up, who's the custodian for that? I mean, who's the administrator and um you know, who who who's going to be in charge of it in what capacity? Just making sure everything stays up and running and function.

Yeah, that and then it would be interesting to see um you know the usage, right? statistics and then you know monitoring if it's up or not up right all that sort of stuff right it comes with a cost you know overhead so who is that the the new IT vendor yeah that would probably live in the town administrator's office like all of the other technology so it would be our office in consultation with the vendor

right um well once this new vendor gets onboarded and kind of gets settled in. It probably would be a good idea to see some analytics, right? Who's using it, where they're using it, how long they're using it. Yeah, I think we'd be interested in the in knowing a little bit about that. Yeah, that's kind of where it's going. They they should report out to the IT committee. Okay. See who's watching Hulu, right?

And worse. Are we another thing? See see what sites are being blocked if any. Yeah. Are are we blocking anything on the parks Wi-Fi? Yes. So, it's the same block list for like the municipal Wi-Fi. I guess I'll have to test that and see.

Okay. Well, we'll u I guess probably revisit that.

Yep. I think if if nothing else, we should after some period of time when the public has had opportunities to use this, it'll be interesting to see how much use it gets and what we what we can what we can measure about how it's used. I think I remember Fiona saying something to the effect of that sort of viewing it as a trial period something. There was a there was a term that was used and I don't remember what it was but anyway it's up and running. Hopefully it will uh it will see increased usage as more people will become aware of it and take the opportunity. Anything else on that topic? Um next topic on the agenda is IT policy which we've been sort of looking at for quite some time. And I think the last thing we kind of concretely talked about was to review the current IT policy and discuss what we thought might be worth changing on that. I haven't uh I didn't really prepare anything for this meeting on that topic. I don't know how much uh yeah any any thoughts about where we should go or what we should plan on either anything you want to talk about tonight or uh some more specific thoughts about doing something at our next meeting?

Yeah. Did we have specific policies that we were going to look at yet or were we still kind of in the planning phase for that? Does anybody know? So, we had a bunch that we uploaded to the one drive, a bunch of sample ones. I forget the municipality. I had a bunch from North Carolina, I think, or or somewhere. Um, so, so we have, you know, um, a bunch of reference ones,

but last time we met, um, memory serves, the school has a a strategy document, right? And, um, I downloaded that and, you know, it talks about staffing and goals, objectives, all that kind of stuff, right? That you would see in a strategy document that one would potentially use AI to write. And that would be the let the natural starting place and you know it probably makes sense when this new IT vendor gets on board and kind of gets their feet wet right to broach this all with them and I don't know if we have you know um consulting services with them advisory services how you know they would work with us on that or not but you know that would be the place to start um you know to put together that overall strategy plan and then you know we run off and execute. So we've got you know bits and pieces. We've got the school plan which kind of has a good straw man. You know we could use that just change you know a lot of the school language and what they're doing to um municipal right and then go from there. Okay,

that would be my suggestion. Sounds reasonable off the top of my head. Um, yeah, with a with a new IT services vendor coming in. Um, I know we've had discussions in the past about the extent to which our IT services vendor is in is or should be involved in making the IT policies for the town. But to the extent that certainly to the extent that they can contribute to that discussion, you know, bring their expertise, uh, I think that it would probably be valuable.

Yeah, we should absolutely loop them in, right, and see where they where they come down on that. Um, I guess since William's still here, is is there anything broken? Is there anything outstanding? Is there anything, you know, that needs or could potent potentially need to be addressed from this new um vendor? I mean, sounds like CMD had stuff, you know, in pretty good shape and everything. There's nothing really outstanding, right? Yeah, there's nothing Grafton specific that is broken or that is in

immediate need of replacement. There's a couple of things that were end of life that CMD was planning to replace, but again, that was captured in the asset inventory and yeah, I'll just take that over

kind of what I would just call like BAU kind of stuff, right? Normal and customary, you know, just happens. So, okay. So, that's good. Um, yeah. So, I'd be I wouldn't want to, you know, prejudice them in any way. You know, see what they come in with. They're fresh. They're new, right? see what they bring and um you know let's all like listen to what what they have to say and maybe they you know bring some good ideas and uh some recommendations you know I I don't know sometimes when these companies come in they want to do their own assessment right and they have uh assessment instruments you know they'll assess they'll they'll do you know their network stuff and they'll look at all the assets and the inventory and then probably, you know, some questionnaires kind of thing, right? I mean, that's how I would do it. And then, you know, from there, they should own it and put together a plan. Uh, so is that William, will you'll be will you be managing these guys? Is that your role?

U, Evan will probably be managing them more, but it will definitely be this office. Um, but based on our initial kickoff meeting with them, what you just talked about is in their plan to put their I think the the management software on the town machines, figure out what's going on, figure out how many thing uh terminals they're dealing with and building their understanding of our inventory. Exactly. Yeah. They'll go out and sniff the network and find everything.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So for us right now going forward uh do we think we should be we should sort of defer further discussion of the of IT policy details until we have our new vendor gets a chance to get on board and we can sort of resume the discussion with them involved or do we want to try to uh take and review all the materials we've had and uh maybe come come prepared and at our next meeting to you sort of have have something at least roughly a little bit more put together. You know, take taking what we've taking what we have and uh trying to produce a bit better of an outline at least of where where we think we might want to go with it. I know what's what's everybody's sense on that. Best best for us to kind of defer much further consideration till our new vendor has has a chance to get on board and help us with that.

Seeing as the the ones that we had that we uploaded probably been there a year and a half, maybe longer, and there's been no action. I I I would make the recommendation. let's, you know, see what this new vendor brings and where they want to start and kind of give them a grace period, right, to to their thing. We may find that there's some some elements of that that uh that

maybe turns out to be outside their scope, but I wouldn't make any presumptions about that right now. How far away would we think them meeting with us is? Ideally October or November. Hope hopefully not too long after they come on board.

Okay. Cuz I think maybe what we want is a conversation between us and them and maybe you um about this subject. I think that might lay a a a foundation to help us uh find our way

because they may have they may have different priorities or the ideas or experience and um probably this isn't quite the best time to jump in on our own and then have them come along next month and uh when we do something Yep. That sounds like it would be probably the most comfortable for us as to you know and if they're starting October 1st. Um, probably we we typically try to meet early in the month, but uh it's been it's been really kind of spotty lately, but so I'm thinking maybe after a few weeks, so early November might turn out to be a good time to uh you meet with them. So, unless unless anybody has any different ideas, it sounds like we're we're pretty much all thinking the same thing that uh yeah, let's uh let's sort of hold on hold on to our thoughts and uh see if we can't uh really yeah, get get something get something moving when we have a chance to uh get our new vendor involved and we can take advantage of their experience. and knowledge and what they've learned about the town's it to help us set some directions. Any just any anybody have any different ideas? I'll I'll go with that.

I agree with that. Yeah, I agree as well. Okay. Then uh the next item on our agenda is to review and approve previous meeting minutes of which I think I've got three April, May, and July that I sent out to everybody. I don't I've already accept the minutes as drafted. Seconded.

All righty. Moved and seconded that we approve the minutes as drafted. Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none. We'll take a vote. Mr. Carol. Carol's eye. Mr. Clark. I. Mr. Hassinger. I. Mr. Remlard. I and Mr. Robbins votes I. Motion carried unanimously. We're about at the end of the agenda. We always have a possible executive session on the agenda, but I know of no topics that need to be discussed under executive session. So, we will move right to and before I

before I recognize the motion to adjourn, I I I would like to take a moment to think about our future meeting schedules. We had been for a number of years meeting the first Wednesday of the month. Uh that's proven to be problematic for William. I'm assuming that's still true going forward. William, for me personally, yes, that is correct.

And while we don't necessarily need William at every meeting, u certainly we want to make it available, give him the opportunity to participate as much as possible. Um, we were sort of trying to do second Wednesdays, but I'm Does anybody have a sort of a regular conflict with Wednesdays in general? Second Wednesdays in particular? No, no,

I think I'm okay. My third Wednesday, well, even that's not really a problem. Now the second Wednesday might actually be better as um beginning of the month typically it's busy time. All right. So yeah the second Wednesday in October falls on the 8th though just as a note. Yeah. Yes.

Which works for me. I just I was just bringing that up as a

Yeah. Yeah. So for the time being at least until we see a a need to do things differently, we will plan on our meeting schedule being the second Wednesday of pretty much every month. I say pretty much because there you know once in a while it may be that we have nothing useful to meet about. In fact, the let's see the second Wednesday well okay one two the second Wednesday of October is three weeks away so it's probably okay. All righty. I just wanted to kind of make make sure that we all are okay with a slightly modified regular meeting schedule. At which point now I'm ready to recognize Bob Hassinger's motion to adjurnn. Seconded.

Moved and seconded that this meeting be adjourned. That's not debatable, is it? That's not debatable. Mr. Carroll. Carol. I Mr. Clark. I. Mr. Hassinger. I Mr. Rimlard. I Mr. Robbins votes. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you for your time and we will meet again next