Communication, Technology & Information Systems Committee - Regular Meeting

Hey. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the CTIS committee meeting, 05/07/2025 at 08:30 in the Executive Conference Room. Today, we'll we'll start with roll call. I almost called you Cesar. Juan Moreno? I'm here. Cesar Cardenas? Here. And Sherry Bearden? I am here. We have have you had a chance to read the minutes? I did. Okay. I know that you won't be able to vote on the minutes, but do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I have a motion to approve the minutes.

I will second it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Citizens to be heard on agenda items. We have no citizens here. The first agenda item is eight five four zero, award a contract to Granicus for annual products and service renewal and upfront implementation costs in the amount of $583,225.73 to be paid over three years.

We're gonna we're gonna let Amanda present this one. She's worked very hard over the last couple months with Granicus to kind of consolidate all of our contracts. We had if you recall, we we were probably coming in here every few months with a new Granicus bill. So we kinda cotermed everything and then entered into a three year we'd like to enter into a three year agreement with them.

So And Jenny and Rosemaria are here. So if you have any input on any of this, feel free to chime in too because we are going to introduce some some new tools. So Granicus is a company that we've partnered with for a number of years to bring a lot of different tools to the city to maintain government transparency. And so there are a bunch of different products. One is called Legistar and that's our meeting and agenda management system.

All council memos are entered and approved there. We have media manager which is the application we use to broadcast the meetings. We use boards and commissions which manages all of the non council committees. The the clerk's office, the mayor's office can post applications for any openings through this system, and it it it'll it'll kind of walk them through the the interview appointment and management of the terms. We use gov access which is actually our website application and that's one of the things that we are looking to change for this upcoming term.

We've used to help us manage our our website for for a number of years. We are looking to upgrade the platform to it's called Open Cities. And it is kind of the way of the future for Granicus' website management. And it'll allow us to come into better ADA compliance on our website. And what I forget what the So what the deadline was

Yeah. So we next year. There was a meeting a couple months back. Rosemaria and Gina from legal. We're all on meeting. There's a meeting done by the federal government. There's going to be new statutes coming into place May 2026. All government websites will be required to be ADA compliant. You know, we've always strived to be compliant, But we've never actually had tools to verify we are compliant. So that's what the OpenCities is offering us is when people put new information on the site, it will alert them if they are out of compliance, which is great.

Right? It lets people know upfront if they're putting out pictures that it would be difficult to see or aren't properly tagged. If we're using fonts that are poor for compliance, if something would not be able to be picked up by your screen reader or things of that nature, you know, it'll be a a valuable tool to help us make sure we're in compliance by next year.

Interesting. I mean, I was just gonna ask you what are some of the compliance

Yep. Rules.

Yeah. Some of the there there's we haven't seen the full laundry list, but that that right off the top, those are quite a bit of it is it has to be readable by a screen reader. Colors and fonts are are a big deal to ensure we're in compliance. Alright.

Anything more than that? Yep. I oh, yes. Yeah. Was just like I wanna make sure we cover all of our bases here. In a in addition to all of the products that I've I've also spoken about, our foyer system is is also a Granicus product. And I think we actually just renewed that at our previous meeting, is in February. So I do wanna note all of these things coming together are a three year contract paid over three years. So all of this is together. The first year is prorated because we were on kind of a real wonky renewal schedule.

So we're bringing it all together. So the first year's fees will be for all of our renewals, all of our implementations, and it's all prorated to bring us together onto one contract. Oh, one more thing to note, and this will be big for Rosemaria and Jenny. We want introduce a product called Government Essentials Service Cloud, and this will enable their team to better engage with residents. There's components where they they can send out surveys and bulletins and newsletters and send SMS messages out to folks who have signed up.

So, you know, that'll help streamline their marketing to the residents and enhance communications. So I don't is there anything that you would like to add?

Well, I sent through, what, one or two at least demonstrations that it is really it's gonna change a lot. It's really gonna get us exactly what we were looking for. So, yeah, we're really excited. We totally support this.

Yeah. It should also be noted. I I believe the economic development

Yes.

Yes. Is also gonna be looking looking to utilize this as a way to stay in contact with local businesses Mhmm.

So and communicate with them. This gonna be like a is it gonna be like an app to it or, like, people to sign up kinda similar to, like, you guys sign up for Citizens View? Is there gonna be, like, some type of way for people to sign like, know the difference between what they're signing up for,

I guess?

Yep. On our website, it'll allow them to sign up for different sorts of notifications. I wanna know more about city events. I wanna know more about what's happening in my government.

But will this act because we currently do stuff like that now. Right? Where we send out obviously, we send out, like

GovAccess allows us to send out all our news releases. There's about 10,000 people, I think, on that. We're trying to figure out how to grow that. Yeah. But I think this is a better way for us

to No. I I agree. I'm just wondering if there's a way to brand it so that it's you know, so people can identify that's what that is and then that's, like you said, work towards growing that Mhmm. So they know what they're signing up for, but then that way those alerts and stuff. I think it's a great idea. We just find a way to how to, like again, CitizenView app, you know what it is, what it's for,

and Yes.

I get

your sense.

What is this additional thing gonna be that then they can say, I'm gonna sign up for that.

Yeah. What are gonna call it? Yeah.

We haven't really talked about the marketing end of it with yet. I'm sure they've probably got all kinds

of little ideas. But yeah.

I mean, just the technology improvement, I think, is a big way for us to go directly to residents.

Yeah. I like it.

And I think it's Yep. As well.

I agree. And then as we go through the implementation, Granicus will help us with best practices and and really help us promote this. So

Yeah. And I I think one of key things we're looking at for it is the ability to we we can actually get feedback from residents. I I think right now in the website, we have abilities to push information, but we don't have any, there's no feedback loop on that. It's just a one way. This would allow that Mhmm. You know, the ability for us to put a survey or request information and and things like that from residents and get that that feedback.

That data back on that.

Great point. Cool.

But it would still be a website that people go to. Right?

Yep. Not not like an app like was saying. Right?

Yes. Okay.

Yep. It'll still be on

the website.

On our website. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

Alright. That's a good point. It is fully integrated. We have we have looked at other cities that are actively using this. Yes. It is seamlessly integrated.

It's on our page. Yeah. So I are you

I'm I'm finished. I'm

sure. Maybe. I just

wanna I wanna I'm looking at the numbers that we have on here, and I completely understand the prorated amount. So, like, the $20.25 is just what we've already paid in 2024, and it's going to be ending in 2025. But but we'll so we're getting the prorated amount.

So the the dollars for 2025, the $1.81 $4.52, that will bring that will get us to May 2026 for everything. Okay. Like the FOIA system, we've already paid for. So they have taken an amount off. But the reason they're

still prorated amount for 2026 is because of what's been already Correct. Paid for this till May. Yes. Okay. And then so 02/2007 is essentially what we'll pay annually, and and then it'll go up from there.

There is an increase per year

Yeah.

As there is with everything. Okay. But at the end of our three year term for 2027 is when we're at the 02/2007.

Right. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Alright. Do we have a motion?

Motion to approve. Second.

Okay. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. Okay. Our

second agenda item, eighty five forty one, award of contract to Heartland Business Systems for VMware annual renewal in the amount of $59,730.88.

So this is not nearly as exciting as the the Granicus suite. So VMware is something we've used here for, I I'll be honest, probably twenty years. This is essentially what allows us to create our virtual servers. If you go back before the VMware days, you would have to buy a single server for everything you were doing. This allows us to have a single physical device, and then we have virtual servers built on that.

This is what allows us to build those servers, manage those servers. We have about 80 servers for the city for various functions, and this is just kind of our management product. Yeah. That's kind of the the long and short of it. It's, nothing too exciting, but our our system administrators, they're in there every day. It's a it's just an everyday tool. Everyday tool. Yeah.

Anyone? Any questions? Nope.

Motion to approve. Second.

K. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Okay. And then we have a presentation from Laserfiche Empower Conference, 04/14/2025 to 04/17/2025 by Keith Williams, application support analyst.

Okay. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. So I attended the Laserfiche Empower twenty twenty five at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The conference consisted of about 57 sessions that you could take. About 20 plus of them were hands on labs where you could actually work with the products that they were talking about.

We discussed laser feats 12, which is the next level up from us. And some of the benefits of Laserfiche 12 are it's gonna have enhanced security, enhanced performance. There's gonna be new admin tools that make updates at the component level easier. You would see a display, and you would be able to pick out components and say, I wanna update this particular component. It also provides a snapshot of your environment.

You can look at your environment and see how it's functioning, the health of it. There's a feature that that's actually gonna make it easier for us to test our laser fish forms business processes. I attended a session about integrations with other applications where they introduced we were introduced to partners who could assist us with integration setups. We were also introduced to other resources that we can be used for setting up integrations. Integrations when we say integrations, we mean, like, being able to interact with other applications.

Like, our plan this year is to be able to integrate Laserfiche with GIS, DocuSign, and the FOIA system. Attended a session on troubleshooting overview where they gave helpful information about how to troubleshoot the application when things don't go as planned or things go wrong. Also, they even discussed they gave us kinda helpful tips on how to reach out to support, you know, if we have issues, what kind of information should we gather before we have those discussions. They also discussed workflow workflows and laser fish are like a work horse. They allow tasks to be done the same way, and they discuss best practices in setting up these workflows.

And they they discussed Laserfiche integration with AI, which is coming later this year. So that's gonna be something exciting to look forward to.

How with laser fish interacting with the GIS and the FOIA, how does that benefit the GIS and the FOIA? I mean, I I just don't understand that.

Well, like now, we have a situation where we have say, have special event forms out there, applications that citizens citizens can go out apply and say they want to have a special event at the city of Joliet. But right now for them, we require them to show us a site map. So they have to go out to Google, get a site map, and then upload it into Laserfiche forms.

But this would take care of that.

They'd be able to integrate with

it. Yeah.

Yeah. Another great use case for that is the and this is something personally I've I've wanted here for for a very long time, so I'm excited about this integration. Is if you're on the GIS map itself and you click a property and we are we're integrated with Laserfiche, all the documents associated with that parcel of land would then present themselves as options. So you could actually go that way. So we're kinda moving around the map, which is is very common here. I mean, everything in local government's based off of, you know, a PIN number and a parcel of land. It gives you that quick connection to all of our document repository without having to go search for those things.

What would be some of those documents that you'd be happy that just popped in that you would be looking for?

Any anything anything from water bill records or, you know, yes, your liens, your your deeds, if if we have that there.

Giving you the

only You know, plats are a big one. If I click on a link, I I'd like to know what subdivision that's part of and what when we platted that, what phase that was built in.

We're finding the most recent plat. Yeah. Because that's a tough one where we're to find

the Yes.

Survey is in.

Oh, especially when they change names

Yeah.

That that trips us up all the time when

It's just a development the PIN

number or the So that would be another change of name?

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, there's a there's a lot of those kind of records that get associated back, and right now they're stored in different ways. This would kind of, you know, clean that up.

Yeah. So even though

you would still have to go through all

the records, you wouldn't have to go find other

records Exactly. Exactly.

Associated with the panels. Right?

Do we intend to move to 12? Is that what our plan is?

We do.

Yes. Okay. 12.

Yep. It's on the it's on the road map for this year.

Okay. Great. Alright. Perfect. Any other questions, guys?

Guys? No? He lived up to the hype.

Alright. He lived up to

the hype. He knew what he was gonna do. We're excited. So everybody's excited. Are you completed with your presentation? Okay. Thank you very much, mister Williams. And we have public comment. Are are you ladies wanting to say anything? No. We don't. We don't have a a closed session request. So adjournment.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.