Communication, Technology & Information Systems Committee - Regular Meeting

We are here, 01/08/2025 for the CTIS, committee meeting, in the Executive Conference Room in attendance. Suzanne Iverra, Sherry Reardon, Cesar Cardenas cannot be here with us today. First of all, on the agenda is approval of the minutes. I

did read over the minutes and I'll make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Motion passed. Citizens, we heard on agenda items. There are no citizens here. So agenda item one, eighty fifty nine. Who's taking it?

So this is our Mimecast approval. This is just kind of a renewal. We've been using Mimecast for two major issues here, is email protection and web filtering. Email protection is is every time an email comes into the city, it has to go through the Mimecast filtering. This will do its best efforts to block phishing attempts.

So if you can imagine, I know you guys sometimes see phishing get through. It is blocking literally tens of thousands of phishing attempts, like, every year. And then we also it blocks things like malware, suspicious links, things like that. If they try to get through the filters, it tags it, they recognize it's a problematic email. Those things don't even get into your inbox.

The other part of this is it's our web filter. This is really big deal. This is we don't want city staff being able to get out to a collection of things. Things, unsafe sites, Mimecast, almost hourly, gets updates on what sites are unsafe in the world. There's just a a lot of different tools that are used to analyze the the web in general to find those sites and things to put on there, but then also to block things that we would find inappropriate for the workplace.

One of the reasons why we use Mimecast is our web filter is they offer what's called an agent. So the agent is something we install on individual devices. The agent allows us so if you take your laptop home and you connect to your home Internet, the agent still enforces all of our rules. So you can still not use city assets to do things that we have deemed inappropriate even if you're on your home network. It doesn't you don't have to be on the city's network to get the protection.

Mimecast still blocks all of that. It also allows us to just understand better what the Internet is being used here for the city. It gives us all that kind of reporting and analytics of where people are going and things of that nature. But we've been using this since 2020. We've been happy with the product, and this is just kind of our yearly renewal.

Do you have a question or anything?

It's kind of a weird question, but wherever I carry my tablet, is my location known everywhere I go with this tablet?

That is not a Mimecast feature. Okay. How do you answer that, though? I so it is you have a Verizon connection on your iPad. So I think we technically, we would know where the iPad is based on your Verizon connection, but that's not a that's not a MyCast feature.

Okay. I'm sorry.

No. No. That's it's a legitimate question.

Because, like, if it's lost, if it's stolen from me, because I do period everywhere, are you gonna be able to recover or

at least Yes. We'd be able to do at least do a a find your device type Okay. Situation and see the the general area that it's located in.

So I get notices frequently that a whole bunch of messages are held in Mimecast, and I don't mess with it at all because I shouldn't because those are that's the bad stuff.

Typically, yeah. That's usually spam, to be honest. And you get those notices when they're sometimes a message will fall into this kind of, like, a gray area of, like, maybe it's legitimate. So they'll put that into that holding email and send it over to you Uh-huh. So that you could release those if you wanted to. I have I don't think I've ever released any email out of there. It's almost always spam. Yeah.

Okay.

This is just a question, just curiosity. So I understand if we can monitor what websites we're using for bad, do we do it for any reason for the purpose of good collecting information saying, okay, you know, is is there anything in that side of it?

We use it a lot for troubleshooting and analytics. Okay. So if somebody tells us that they're having a problem or, like, hey. Every time I connect to such and such site, we're having problems. It it does give us another avenue of looking to see, like, if there's a problem with that website, if there's a problem with our connection to that site. But other than that, no. We do and there is not we do a lot of just tracking in general to see where our traffic is going Mhmm. And if there's any spikes in activity and things of that nature.

Okay. Alright.

I'll make a motion to approve.

Alright. I have a second.

All in favor.

Aye. Alright. The next item is eighty sixty seven.

So this is just another standard renewal here. This is our Xerox managed print solution. So we went out to bid it might be four years ago now. Xerox won the won the RFP. We are now in our this will be our last year. So what we we did is we had a three year contract with two one year options to renew. This is our our second option to renew. The so managed print, high level, is we don't typically maintain the printers ourselves. Right? We have a Xerox professional come in whenever a printer goes down.

They also deal with sending the supplies. So as soon as one of our print devices is starting to run low on toner, it phones home basically and says, hey. They're gonna be out in the next week or so, and new product gets sent to us so we can swap that out. And then we also use Xerox for everything for you know, you know, you guys have all used printers. You you know printers are a pain.

But if something breaks on them, they don't even need to oftentimes call IT. There's a every printer has a sticker on it that has a phone number. They just call the support line, and they send a Xerox technician out to get the repairs done. We have a few local guys that come out and they're they're usually here within usually four hours or so to get things worked on.

That's impressive.

So this is maintenance and supplies?

Maintenance and supplies. What we do is we have a we have basically a flat monthly fee Mhmm. That covers us up to, you know, roughly 85,000 black and white prints and about 68,000 color prints, and that's all kind of in that monthly fee. And then we have overage costs. If we print too much color one month, we pay an overage fee.

What we're asking for for this is just a not to exceed amount. That way, and this is we found that about $95,000 will cover us for the whole year. This also allows us to add new devices to our contract. Typically, we buy a few few printers every year, replace some stuff. If we hopefully, we replace. I I very much have been trying hard to get rid of printers in our environment. Yeah. You know, as we move to devices like this, I I hope we print less and less. Mhmm. And we've been very successful in that.

I I wanna say if we go back five years, we're we were probably at more, like, the 160 devices throughout our environment. We're at about a 120 now. And every year, we look for we look for ways we can consolidate and go from a couple devices in a wing to maybe just one device that is more multifunction and can support the whole wing, you know, at a higher capacity and reduce our overhead.

So I'm sure you're just storing it all. Every everything we used to all print. Mhmm. You know? I just went paperless in my office. What a nightmare, but it's over. It's just getting rid of it was the the task. But, yeah, it's a great it's a great savings.

It it really is. It really is. I I find that I don't personally, I don't print very much. Yeah. I mean, very rarely, but it happens. And and some areas do still obviously need a lot of printing. But Right. We we've definitely worked that. They also assist us in that. It seems kind of an odd relationship, but they they do help us find ways to, like, reduce our printing.

And that's they've been a big partner in actually reducing the number of printers we have. I I think for them, it's more just to place a more powerful, more robust device in a wing instead of having a lot of you know, we've definitely moved away from we don't have Desk. Long ago, we got rid of, like, all of the, like, individuals having a a printer on their desk type situation. Right? We're definitely at the the stage where we just have larger print devices in the hallways and things like that.

Well, then, it made sense because because they were just printing sensitive data.

Yes.

But now that you have to waive your badge to get your print Absolutely. You know, nobody can see it. So Yeah. It makes sense. So this 95,000, that includes the monthly fee?

That does.

Okay.

Yeah. This would be our our total print costs for the year. Okay. And this is a not to exceed amount. So if we don't if we don't actually spend it or if we don't have any overages throughout the year, we would actually be under the 95.

Okay. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. I'll be like, aye.

Any old or new business?

Yeah. I just wanna convey to you, and I hope you can convey this to the people in IT that they never fail me. They never fail me. It it seems like every other meeting, I'm coming in. Like, I came in on Monday night. I hadn't gotten any emails since December 24. And I'm like, oh, it's just really quiet. But, no, the agendas and everything, like, I couldn't get a single thing on my end. I don't understand why. And I didn't bring in my phone, so I didn't have the authenticator. The whole thing, I come back Tuesday morning. It's ready to go. Like, they have never failed me ever. And I really they're not, like, frontline. You don't see them talked about at council and stuff, but I really, really appreciate everything they do.

They're amazing. Amazing. They never make me feel less than because I don't have great technological skills. I just cannot convey how they're the heroes to make us look good on the front lines, all of you guys. So I wanted to make sure you, like, give them some kudos, thumbs up because they do an amazing job. Amazing.

Thank you.

I second your opinion because I

I was just here myself

on So

okay. We have no public comment. Do we have a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye.