Communication, Technology & Information Systems Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. Welcome everyone to the February 2025, 08:30AM CTIS meeting in the Executive Conference Room. Roll call. Suzanne Ibarra? Here. Cesar Guerrero Cesar Carvanas. Sorry. Here. There was that conversation today. It wasn't bad. And Sherry Reardon? Here. First of all, we have approval of the minutes from 01/08/2025 meeting.

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Citizens to be heard on agenda items. There are no citizens to be heard. So agenda item one, eight one seven five, award eight one seven five, award of contract to Granicus for GovQA Voya software in the amount of $29,967.51.

So GovQA is the software that we use to allow residents to submit Freedom of Information Act requests to us. And so the It is available for residents on our website, and we also have kiosks in city hall where they can go in and go to and and put in freedom of inform freedom of information act request. Last year, 2024, we received nearly 5,500 request. Wow. Yes.

You know, I I looked at the metrics on it. It looks like 99.9% of them were closed. Everything that comes into the clerk's office on average is closed within five days and everything that goes to the police department was closed within four days. So some of the highlights of GovQA are that there are workflows in the background. So when a request comes in, it automatically gets routed to whomever will be responsible for that request, and that just allows for more efficiency.

Excuse me. I don't know why I am just struggling today.

Take your time. I'm writing.

Gov QA also allows for, like, multi departments to collaborate collaborate easily within the software, again, to aid in efficiency, timeliness, and getting back to the residents on their request. So

So this is just a renewal? Yeah. It's just a

renewal. Okay. Sorry, guys.

I have a question for you. You guys have any questions? I I got yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess the question on that would be, like you said, the efficiency of that Mhmm. I mean, 5,500 requests. I mean, is there a way like, not saying, how can we report to the people to let them know, like, how many man hours that ends up detailing to on our end?

That's a great point.

You know what I mean? Like, what does that

That is something that yes. That is something that we can that we can definitely report

on.

Because I think people can be, you know, constantly wanna request stuff but realizing that like, you know, you that's a lot of man hours that we're trying to certain things when you've got 5,500 requests on

Yes. Absolutely.

I thought you

I

mean, request away. Right?

But Mhmm.

We're talking about being efficient with our city staff and everything else. It should also be not that they will, but yeah. Just curious to see what something like that would

Wow.

What that entailed over a year. Yep.

So are these actual, requests for the FOIAs or are these actual people going in and looking at FOIAs? These are requests for them. Request. Yes. I did we ever I haven't looked at it in a while. Did it ever get changed? It used to be when you flip to the next page and then you went out of one you were looking at, it threw you right back to page one. Like, even if you were in page six and you looked at something, once you looked at it and went out of that particular FOIA Mhmm. It it always threw you back.

I am unsure if that was ever addressed. Mhmm. I will look at it,

though. Okay.

I'll look at it too and see if it's still doing what it was doing, but it did it for as long as I Sure. Was looking at it.

So Okay.

I'm sure that's frustrating not just to you but to others. So

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All I got now. Alright. Thank you. Yeah. I'll use paper because I keep going dead.

Okay. I botched my my my bullet points here. So do you have any other

questions? Would be the 29,000. Is that for, like, yearly renewal? Or is that

It's an annual renewal. Annual renewal. Yes. I

have a question. Yes. If somebody

did a request on I bet you 80% of them have

to do with North Boy. So if they did a request and then there's another request and they're asking the same thing, is it kicked back like, here's the information without going through all the work? Yes. Oh, that's that is a lot of requests. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. It also has the capability if you're in there putting a request in and you use keywords. It'll sometimes try to filter up a previous FOIA to

you Okay.

So that you may stop and go, oh, this information's already been provided. You know, we get a lot of requests for, like, you know, employee salary. Right? You know, that's a every year, we get that request that, you know, all city employees' salaries. So now if you were to go in, it should just bubble right up to the top, and you can just get that information instead of it having to go to finance to pull all the records again. So it is a it's a good for file repository.

And is there is there a way for us to know or I guess have, like, our let's say, to even know our top 10 requests as a city to just to know kinda what the issues are and what are people what's the biggest distrust. Right? What is our biggest, you know, the house that

we should That's a really good question.

That's good. It'd be nice

to know.

I think there are

a lot. Yeah.

It's gonna be police reports and things like that.

Police have a I don't wanna say a majority, but

I think it'd be cool to just know just to have understanding of what are the constituent's most biggest issues that they're finding that they wanna know more about. Maybe there'd be a better way in communication so that we can communicate more information so that there's less, you know,

if they're feeling like they're not

getting that information so they wanna pull this stuff, maybe we can do a better job of

Putting it out there for

them. Beforehand.

That's that's a really good point. And actually, Rosemarie, I can see what kind of reports I can pull. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. And then share them with you.

That'd be great. Thank you. And that would most likely not be on the police side. It would be on just the regular siding because the police side, most of it you wouldn't be able to put out Right. Yeah.

Maybe if we know, like, out of the 5,500, 30,000 are police stuff, 2,000 are salaries and, you know, just get an idea of what Mhmm. We don't have to get into the details, just more of the general

We can more proactively

Yeah. We know communicate that out. Point or, you know, truck, whatever.

They even, you know, work with that, like making it part of some part of our, either communications or even our council meeting. You know, this was the top five requests that this is some of the information that

People are

gonna put out there. Mhmm. Just to kinda minimize some of these. Sure. That'd be a great idea. Like the idea.

I I do like that idea.

Yeah. Ma'am, police.

Right. I'll have a a conversation with the clerk's office and and let them know that we that came up.

Yeah. Or general.

Does that have be exactly a court?

Where'd it go?

Motion go approved. So moved.

All in favor? Wait a second. All in favor. I you you it's spreading over here. I know. Thanks, Amanda. Know what my deal is. I'm

I'm sorry. Sorry. Maybe

it was the bump on the head didn't work

until the

high. Alright. Agenda item eight one or, yeah, eight one seven seven. Now

I'm I'm sorry. I started started something.

Award of contract to center for Internet security for CrowdStrike endpoint security solutions in the amount of $59,220.

You know, CrowdStrike is really straightforward. It it's our endpoint protection. It's our antivirus on every device we have in

this important.

Yes. It's extremely important. We have about 987 endpoints that includes things from all of our laptops to our servers, and other devices of that nature, all of our squad cars, our fire trucks. All of them have equipment. Most of them have multiple computers in them at this point. This provides protection. So CrowdStrike is one of two top tier endpoint protection suites. It's this or Windows Defender. We went with CrowdStrike because, CIS, as an organization, it's a federal organization. They are funded by Homeland Security.

We get significantly reduced cost by going through CIS to get CrowdStrike. So they assist us in managing this also. So beyond just the endpoint protection, if Rosemarie's machine was suddenly to become infected while we're sitting here, within within minutes of that happening, my guys downstairs have already gotten a phone call from, CIS saying, you have a machine on your environment that's infected. They would work to they would assist us in quarantining that machine, removing any anything that's going on. So it's even beyond just like your, you know, your your home Internet.

Right? This is like we actually have an organization that monitors our entire environment twenty four seven and assist us with that. And it's all at a reduced rate. Yeah. Obviously, you know, the federal government has a very vested interest in

Yeah.

Us at the local level, especially because we we have critical infrastructure with our water, keeping us safe and protected. Yeah. So, they assist us with the funding. It'd CrowdStrike is a very expensive package. So this is kind of a a bargain for us as a a local government.

So is this correct? CIS is it's much reduced because it's through CIS, is, federally funding assistance.

Yes. Yes. It's federally funded by the, Department of Homeland Security.

Okay. Any questions? Do we have the motion?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Eighty one seventy eight, award of contract to CDWG for the annual renewal of Barracuda Cloud Backup Services, Cloud Archiving, and inter impersonation. Oh, impersonation protection in the amount of $78,120.

So we've worked with Barracuda for quite a few years now. The three main things is kinda what you've read in is cloud to cloud backup. So what is that? That is called cloud to cloud backup. Oh.

So we have made a heavy investment, as you guys know, in the Microsoft three sixty five environment. Microsoft contractually is not obligated to protect our data. They are to provide a platform of services, and they will do best efforts if we were to ever have a major disaster that would cause our data to be corrupted or lost. What Barracuda does is it actually creates a backup copy of all of our Microsoft environment into another logical and physical location, which is critical. That way, if we ever were to lose it, we would then have that backup information.

We would work with Microsoft to restore our entire environment, hopefully mitigating any real amount of data loss or downtime. And then we have the email archiving. This actually is a major component to the GovQA that Amanda was talking about earlier. This is the system in which all of our our emails are archived into. So when the legal department or the city clerk's office has to do those big email searches, when we have those FOIA requests, this is where they would go to find that information.

We've been using them for years. We've always been very happy with their service. They have a a really nice, front end for searching through those archives, and, it's been an excellent service for about almost probably ten years now we've been using them. Impersonation protection is really exciting. This is this new for this year.

This we did not have this this year. We have do not have this implemented as of today. This is once they are once we have this turned on in our environment, what it'll take about forty to seventy two hours, it basically reads that email archive, understands how you write emails, and then if anybody were to ever compromise your email account, which is oftentimes a major attack factor. What they'll do is they will take over I'll use finance. Finance is also a great example for this.

Right? They would take over, like, Kevin Singh's email box. They wouldn't he wouldn't be aware of it. So he would just be doing his day to day job and they would just sit there watching. They would wait until he's engaged in, like, a contract negotiation of some sort.

And then right when that is nearing its end, they would start emailing as if they were Kevin to the other party and say, hey. These are the bank accounts you need to send that funding to. And, as soon as it would see something like that, it would realize there's been a tonal or, a syntax shift in the way the email was written and would flag it and immediately start alerting, like, this you know, we need you should have Kevin verify that this is truly him. And it sets off a whole bunch of alarms. So it kind of learns not just, like, what types of emails you write, how you write your emails, and of those things of that nature.

It also creates another layer, which I know you guys are familiar with, of the, like, cyber phishing attacks when, like, you guys get those crazy emails where the mayor is trying

to get you

to buy gift cards again.

The gift card. The only thing we're talking was

like, yeah.

I know.

He he likes his gift cards. But

it's another layer of of protection on that also that it it's recognized, like, no. We we know who the mayor is. We know what accounts the mayor writes from. This is obviously this is fake. It's spam. And it'll help kind of it's just another layer to filter that out.

Like, occasionally, they do come through because I have to, you still see them.

I called you on the July 4 before when I got a message from the mayor. I'm like

Yeah. So we can He needs to get

hard. This doesn't seem Yeah.

It would just and this the hope would

be this this is just another layer to stop those emails from ever getting to you in the first place.

Yeah. I haven't seen it as often anymore.

Yeah.

And Yeah. They're not as often, but still, every once in a while. And we know his birthday now. You're welcome. And is this all AI then?

Yes. It is. This is kind of like the first foray into kind of using some light AI tools to monitor all of that.

Makes sense.

Yep.

Any questions? Okay. Do we have a motion? Motion to approve. Second. All in favor? Aye. And then, the last one, 8194, award of contract to exclusive plus PR for social media contract services in the amount of $63,250.

Okay. Thank you for your time this morning. The communications department has been utilizing this, company to satisfy some social media support while Jenny was out on maternity leave and came back in early January. I don't know if you're aware of what Jenny's new title is, multimedia communication specialist. This approach we found was pretty flexible to be able to get the support we needed.

Last fall, since about last fall, we've been getting a growing demand for more social media services from several departments across the city. So our goal this year is to expand our social service media and to increase it with newer platforms. Expanding that would require additional support, which is why we're asking for the continued use of this outside service. Exclusive PR is a women business certified agency by the state of Illinois. It is a minority owned business with extensive experience in digital marketing and social media services including bilingual.

Engaging exclusive PR for contract services offer the most flexible way for us to maintain our current outreach and increase it. Since engaging the firm, our social media numbers have increased on multiple platforms, and our outreach to residents has been better because they're more familiar with our community at this point. This would be I we were able to negotiate a monthly retainer at a reduced amount, and this would be an eleven month contract with a six month out option to opt out in thirty days notice. We would be tracking metrics across the board to evaluate whether or not this vendor would want to be brought back in the next year. That's basically my report.

Questions?

I wanna hear you. Got one. Wanna get So what platforms are we currently using?

Okay. Let me pull up her. We are so, like, for example, our content interaction was increased by 70% on Facebook. Our total views in October I'm happy to provide these statistics for you too as well. K. Our total views in October were up to 231,000. In December, we had a 126,900 views on Facebook. Our content interactions on LinkedIn have also gone up by 4,177 impressions. We are averaging about 30 new followers, is about one new follower a day. In January, our reach was up to 57,900, is up 25% from the prior month.

So these are all the statistics. So in my opinion, they've really proven that they're making a difference. All the departments we've interacted with this company, Jenny was gone, was very happy with their services. So we thought it'd be a nice opportunity to continue growing without having to necessarily add staff.

And you mentioned new platforms. What other

Instagram is something we don't have. Okay. We are also looking at platforms such as Blue Sky. Some of the other communication specialists in Waucombe that we work with are also exploring other options. So these would be all the things that we're gonna discuss with them because this is sort of more their specialty. Mhmm. Do you

have anything to add, Joan?

Yeah. Ultimately, they'll be helping us with creating the content. But at the end, we're still gonna have control over the messages, the creative the creatives, the content calendar. And they're not just gonna be helping out this communications department, but they're gonna be helping out the fire department, economic development Bicentennial Park. Park.

I get that.

EMA. So all of these departments, she the company has interviewed. We asked them to interview to find out what the needs were. Every department is needs help. Every department wants to grow. We are in the process of adding a social media policy. We have just added a health portal to communications, so now all the employees will have access to that. So it's almost like like IT has and facilities. So we we absolutely see things just going up in terms of numbers. So

So I think we we know there's a need, right, with the gentleman saying, I could just give you my total right now.

Yeah. Exactly. Why don't we have our own Yeah.

Why did I drag my butt down here?

My my question would be I think it's a great idea. Do we know so I guess, do we are we gonna have different channels for like, the fire department has their own right now. Police department has their own. We got the city of Joliet, government one. Are they gonna be managing all those different channels or are we just doing just the one? Is this contract just for the city of Joliet? No. I know you mentioned, like, by the department and all that, but how is that that's a lot of content. Right? So are they gonna be working to help create content

Yes.

For each one? Yes. Okay.

So what I'd ask them to do is to find out what the needs were of these departments because these are all departments that either have existing platforms or wanna start new platforms. For example, economic development wants to, I think, add two or three depart two or three platforms. We've asked everyone to just pause until we have a social media policy.

And so much is stale anyway. It's it's nothing more nothing is more frustrating than when you go on to something looking for and it hasn't been updated and, you know, it looks like, you know, so

These numbers show definitely that we are increasing our our numbers and viewership. So we are we're getting there.

I know.

It's slow scale up.

Yes. The other question would be the type of content. Right? So, like, is it gonna be more so I think, like, when we release, like, press release articles, people don't tend to read and publish a PDF or a whole is it do we have examples or is there, like, samples of what type of content we can be expecting? Like you said, are you still creating the creative? Are they doing the creative? Are they

It's a little bit of both.

We already like, when we do press releases, they're already creating those content.

But they're not just copying and pasting and putting that out as a post as a the press release that already got released by everybody else. Right?

Because No. They're they're drafting more, I don't know, robust

I would say easier easier to digest content. Right? Because that's what we need. Because people are quick to scroll by, but we need to be able to show a photo with a headline or something that just they can relate to it a lot easier.

Yeah. We know. A headline and then you click on it to see what the heck is.

Well, you know, because people don't, you know, again, you could you know, we release a lot of press releases now. Mhmm. And then I think, like, again, the gentleman that came in, we put out the information of what this tax hike was Mhmm. But they're not reading that. But then, again, the patch has the the right headline that's gonna engage people. So I think we have to be proactive as well as the city to put out the right type of headlines that are gonna get people's attention because then they say, why didn't anybody say that? Well we did but we did it in a way that they're not digesting that information. So I think having that strategy together to figure out what that is was not just

Right.

Having that press release, copy and paste press releases that we can do or you guys can do and actually creating some content that people can

can release. Right. And we read because we know that we should be informed by it and not everybody cares.

Right. You said I've been meeting regularly with EMA, with the economic development department. They all have a desire to grow their platforms, to put out more information, to highlight their businesses. For example, yesterday, we put out social media posts on, you know, slip and fall and prepare for ice. So all of these departments have a need, but

Too late to work.

We're limited in our abilities to get all of our duties done, which is why this extra help has been, like, a blessing, really.

No. A it's a definitely, it's a it's a it's a need because I just believe we're getting information.

And it's a minimal cost for what

Yeah. Yeah.

It is a possibility.

It is saving us a lot of money in terms of, you know, all the other expenses tied to print because everybody is moving more in that direction. So we are really working hard on the whole digital side. Mhmm. This includes videos. They're also going to do videos for us, you know, like, just in house kind of things.

Do you do the monthly calendar through that? Or the the the The calendar? Not calendar, but our the The news center?

Yeah. The news center. Sorry.

No. We we do that. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah.

It was great.

Thank you. You know, would you one of you whoever would do it, would one of you be willing to, on the the night that we do our CTIS report, just address that one. Sure. There's so much in it that I'd really like people to be well informed about all these different things.

I think I think a a fun fact that I learned during our campaigning, that the Joliet patch was the number one news source And of it was the largest patch out of all the patches in The United States. The Joliet patch was the largest one, most viewed, most because again, people go to Facebook. So in my opinion with this, I think very putting a very good emphasis Facebook and obviously LinkedIn and all that. Mhmm. But, yeah, I think there's there's there's a great opportunity here for us to give more information to people Mhmm. About what's going on and and Even righting wrongs.

You know, even righting the wrongs.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

You know, where people are could I don't wanna I don't wanna get tit for tat, but, you know, where if you're sort of mirroring what that headline is but correcting it with the the correct information, If you know what I mean by that. Like I said, I don't wanna just be like, oh, you know.

And I think even the the last when you mentioned the social media policy that we're replacing, think it was, you know, giving department's guides, right, and they're gonna put out their own content, make sure it's like this, like that, and states this so that they it all stays cohesive between the city and the messaging is still the same.

Legal and IT have been working with me for since probably last May to put together the best policy. We're this close to getting it approved. And then we'll have some guidelines Yeah. Across the board. We'll be able to track all of the platforms. The the goal is to ultimately, like, for example, on YouTube, we wanna be able to have one overarching city of Joliet and then have sort

of A different channel.

Subchannels underneath it. So we're building the city of Yeah. Joliet brand a little at a time.

Mhmm. It's exciting. Yeah. Think I like it. Yeah. Do we have a motion?

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Old or new business not for thank you. Old or new business not for final action or recommendation? Okay. No public comment. There is no public. Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Okay. All in favor? Aye.