Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

I awarded this January 8 2025 meeting of the it committee um call the role of the members Mr hassinger I'm here Mr Clark here Mr Carol doesn't seem to be here at least not yet and Mr Robbins is present so we have three out of four members online and participating we have our our honored guest Town Administrator Evan brassard and I will begin the agenda with our usual first agenda item which is public input we do not have any Zoom attendees to provide public input but if anyone of us has something that qualifies as public input as opposed to anything on the meeting agenda now would be the time and without that we'll proceed to our next agenda item the update from Our Town Administrator so whatever Ian has to bring to us we'll be delighted to listen to it and talk about it okay thanks Steve um thanks everyone for having me um we are very very busy uh at the town of Grafton mostly not with technology at the current time um most of our technology conversations are happening at the Regional Emergency Communication Center we've uh really been uh hunkered down in that uh project uh pretty seriously in the last uh few months um but at uh the town of Grafton specifically we're we're undergoing a few things one we're upgrading all the window 10 machines to Windows 11s as uh

10 is no longer going to be supported um so we're in the process of updating 113 uh machines um five of which need to be replaced they don't have the um specifications to be able to handle Windows 11 um and then I have another um somewhere between eight and 10 machines that um we're going to be uh upgrading the ram um just to be a little bit more consistent with the spec they're really not that old uh of machines they were bought just prior to me getting to Grafton um I believe with some some Co monies uh when when everyone went to laptops and they're just a little low on the spec side so we're going to throw some Ram in those and uh should be able to save us some money and have those machines last a little bit longer which is good um we are also undergoing um a little bit of a a SPEC Building on a new server for the town um the server that we have is um believe this is its 11th year um it is a very robust Dell unit um but it is no longer supported and no longer warrantied um so we do need to uh look at something uh a little more uh current and so we are building a price on that um the plan would be to move this server off site and use it as a um backup or replication server um just to add another layer of of redundancy to what we're doing um we do already have that capability but that that unit uh is a 2009 uh vintage so this one would would replace that one um and should give us a little bit more of a robust capability

um we are in the P the process as well of moving over to um Duo security software um and multiactor authentication inside the network as well as outside the network so uh you know staff is real happy about that but um we're uh we are rolling that out uh in in a few different ways one is obviously app based the other is fob based um so we should be able to to do a little little something there um and those are kind of the large uh technology things we have going on right now um we this is technology adjacent but maybe you'll find it interesting um so the municipal center is obviously a a old school building um every office has a uh clock that is run off of a central clock um it is pre um you know uh cat level wiring so it is a actually a four wire system which it's uh positive uh negative neutral and an interrupt which is what sends the signal uh to the clocks to make them all sync and so that died last week uh it is made by a company that has been out of business for 20 years um uh the B the company that bought the system uh I found this interesting when you uh go to buy parts for it when you click the link it says why are you trying to buy uh parts for an outdated system that no longer exists you should be upgrading to such and such um so we're going to figure out what we're what we're doing there um I do like uh having network uh or or you know uh clocks that are all on the

same time through throughout the building um but now that you know everybody has a computer and a smartphone and everything else it becomes less uh less of a need and systems like that can can be pretty expensive so um we're looking at what we're going to do with that I have explored RF systems a little bit um so we'll see what we'll see what happens there um beyond that uh you know we have a number of projects going that are again te techology adjacent um radio upgrades as we prepare for our wreck system I'm working with police and fire on that we are currently building out our Z Network capability um and so we spent some time in the last couple weeks um specking equipment for that um and that should be online hopefully within the next two weeks and that's a a pretty neat uh piece of tech that Fire's been using uh in Grafton for the past few years um it was never extended to police so we're we're in the process of doing that um those are really the major initiatives that we've got going on um like I said before most of it over revolves around the transition to Windows 11 and um upgrading some some machines to to deal with that any uh questions comments from anybody on the committee the um just remind me Evan the the two- Factor authentication I think that was being driven by insurance requirements right what is the what's the the date the kind of Drop Dead date on that just for my information last July okay okay um so no we have been working with them um you know I think a lot of municipalities are in the same position

that we are is that uh everything is is designed for MFA outside the network and um you know the cyber security insurance companies understand that we have unions to contend with and all these other factors that come into it so um you know we we've done pretty much everything we can from a non-union perspective that's why we have that kind of dual layer one being app based and one being fob based so Union employees are offered a fob instead of an app on their phone um and most of the Union employees seem like they understand that just putting an app on their phone is going to be the easiest thing for them in their own personal lives um but there are some that want to go with that one the fob options so we have that for them as well um so I I did remember actually Amar I don't know why your question triggered something else that I'm doing but um again not directly it's it's quasi Tech committee type of conversation but we we've talked about this in the past we have a Honeywell um HVAC system at the municipal center um it runs on a Windows 2008 server that we have replicated uh in our new server um new or server um and I I believe we're going to be pushing through into uh our Capital plan for this year upgrading the software we're about five versions behind on software it's about 10 years out of date um and so the upgrade to get us into a modern more modern interfac is about

$80,000 um so we're working our way through that right now um but it is starting to cause us some headaches of trying to determine um we're getting failures that aren't specifically just Hardware Weare related so um it does seem like we're having interface issues with the existing software so um it's pretty much single Source there's not really a whole heck of a lot we can do about it without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade controls to a totally different system um so we're going to be working on that and and bring that forward to town meeting um in the spring yeah I I I seem to recall that almost since we installed that honeymo system we've had issues with the Control software in terms of where it can run and and access to it and you know a lot of issues that I I don't remember in any detail but it's just that's kind of you know what I'm remembering over the many years we've had that system it's it's never really been smooth yeah it certainly hasn't been smooth for the four years that I've been here um it's a very outdated um software package and unfortunately I think that they fixed uh well at least we're hoping that they fixed a lot of problems in the successive versions um that would that would help us kind of get the system back under control it it does work but we have had you know at least probably a dozen failures um that are L you could you could trace back to the software um in the past say six months so it's been a it's been a real pleasure to track down for certain for certain meanings of the word

pleasure Bob car end up that was supposed to be and people seem to really think that was wonderful when it went in it was a big jump I think from what had gone on before something about cold being shovel into a furnace yeah right you could sell the oil though in the uh furnace room yeah still [Music] can yeah so my question was so what's um what's like the Legacy apps and what's still running on that server that needs to be upgraded um so it's it's a lot of our um backup data it is um some of our mapping um software that's that's TOS there that's not cloud-based um we will be when we look at new servers we're talking about downsizing quite a bit because we aren't running apps um say that we would have been five years ago even um a lot of that is now out in the cloud and um we're just not we're just not responsible for it anymore so uh for example you know uh if we were doing this server five years ago we'd be talking about having our all of our financial software on there our banking software lives there all of that has been offloaded um and is now you know based in in a cloud and hosted by somebody else so um when we the the server and I I can't remember the the model of the server but the server that we're replacing is a really robust uh probably twice to three times the size of anything that the town would have even needed at the time that it purchased it um and so we'll be downsizing pretty considerably so there's no way to go 100% right and um go to some data center

somewhere or virtualize yeah I I think we've we're we're I mean we're we're getting there I don't think that this iteration is going to get us entirely virtualized um but yeah I mean it's going to be considerably considerably less I mean we're we're talking and the server that we are replacing cost the town 10 years ago almost 100 grand um and yeah I remember when we did all that yeah so we're looking at a server you know decades l a decade later almost that is you know we're going to be in the $10,000 range probably all all in right so but there's still the the maintenance the patching right y yeah all the Care and Feeding that goes with that where true yeah very true um we have you know think we've offloaded quite a bit um but we will have to so also on this this server we'll live the honey wall software that we're discussing right now you know building management systems which this also runs two schools I believe are on this honey will um interface or or software driver um most of our data it's really don't you know we're not a data organization and most of our data is uh um either either hosted um or replicated in a data center so we're pretty insulated from that as well so and I'm sorry Evan um the server that we're replacing um what what version is that running 08 no uh that one is 16 16 okay I believe yeah but still and service and life correct yeah and so that's why we're looking at at this current um go around we we have uh I think I might have been talking about

it right when you jumped up up we we have um the only thing we have running on 08 is the honey well system um and so what we have we have spent you know some time in the background trying to um make that work with a more modern um you know version of the of the server but it just it's I think we're getting to the point where we need to you know cut cut bait here and and just bite the bullet um we're we're starting to see fees from from the HVAC companies that are pretty exorbitant because we're not we're not current so yeah I don't I don't imagine they would like they're real invest in supporting 15-year-old software yeah and that's that's you know that's been the problem we uh you know what we've been doing is when something goes down we replace the piece of Hardware with a spare piece of Hardware that we have and if that doesn't fix it then it's probably software um this is where we're is where we're finding ourselves because um you know the hardware the manufacturers of the hardware have changed most of it is backwards compatible so it's okay um but it's not backwards comp comptible back to the software that we have so we're we're finding ourselves kind of in this black hole and we've we've uh you know pushed it off like I said all the town's pushed it off for quite a while but I've pushed it off myself for three four years now knowing that we're probably GNA we're going to get to a point where we can't do this anymore it's just sort a completely off topic but it's sort of it's an interesting contrast to the business I used to work in I did I spent a lot of years in that R&D organizations where we

we were designing telephone switching equipment and back in the day we designed that equipment with a a expectation of it being able to live for 40 years before say the same Hardware was designed and intended to you to live out in the field for 20 30 40 years and yeah and we we we approached the design and the implementation and now from that perspective but then technolog has come a long way since then yeah and we do things a lot differently yeah yeah um anything else guys um I mean I didn't I didn't include on the agenda the specific topic of it policies I know sort of our it's our it's our it's our our our major work item and uh we're kind of you know we we spent some time talking about it last year you know we've got a few you a few example you know samples of it policies of various kinds uploaded on the SharePoint um but we the way we kind of left it was we're sort of looking for look looking for Evan to you know sort of set some priorities and directions and Evan's plate has been rather full for the last several months I I didn't have any expectation Evan that you'd have much of anything for us tonight yeah I apologize that's kind of you know the main thing we that we want we want to look at going forward is find finding a way to make some progress on that of within the constraints of your available resources Evan yeah I I was going to make a suggestion um in that you know I I've been working on um

we've redone all of the select board policies for the town of Grafton um I think we have two left um and I was going to suggest that maybe we could move um William off of that project as soon as he's done and have him um kind of spearhead the policy um discussion here um and that might make things move a little bit quicker um and and maybe get you guys engaged in that um faster as I keep getting pulled off and other directions yeah for some reason Evan it is not your uh your top responsibility in this town can't imagine why depends on the day what I walk into yeah um but yeah I think I think that would probably be more um uh prudent and probably satisfying to those of you that are sitting on this committee to to get some some forward momentum going um he's been really good at it with the other projects that we've undertaken as far as policy goes so y so um yeah maybe we'll we plan on hearing hearing more about that talking more about that next month yeah I mean I can I I did we've already discussed it in my office uh to a to a certain degree um so I I I think with no without objection from the the committee that's the direction I would head in yeah sound okay to you guys Bob Bob and Mr sounds good okay thank you yeah so basic basically whenever whenever you and William between the two of you are are prepared to continue the discussion

with this committee and uh we can get to work on that whether whether that's our meeting next month or or Beyond kind of depending upon what you and William can set up between you yeah our our initial conversation was that it would be um for next month um so because I'd like to get that I'd like to get that moving I'm I'm going to be um pretty much in the budget here um that's all I've been kind of doing between the wreck and the budget uh been been pretty that so right well we will plan on that okay great and of course if anything comes up to require the plans to change um I don't know about anybody else but I'm flexible okay well I appreciate that yeah any anything else that anyone has for Evan I think the uh the rest of our agenda is kind of B paperwork okay we've got our annual report that's due at the end of the month we've got one set of meeting minutes we uh we we can review and that's about it okay um well then I will uh sign off and um you know you'll start working with William at your next meeting um but I'm around so if you great think let me know thanks thanks for your time tonight EV yes absolutely have a great night everyone happy New Year you too Happy New Year bye all right so next agenda item I circulated a draft annual report for this committee it's mostly the same boiler prate that it is every year but U tried to fill in uh what we did last year and and what we plan for this

year and any comments suggestions yeah I mean I think it captured what we did and what we planned to do pretty well so I was I was happy with it thank you for putting it together I suppose a a motion would be in order to approve the in the annual report as drafted for submission to the Town administrator's office for inclusion in the annual report Town annual report second moved in second and a discussion on the motion I'm sorry David I was just reading through it oh Evans you want to you want to read it before you approve it oh come on that's concurrently I'm I'm doing it real time here but yeah looks good thanks again um I Omar thanks for pulling this together I know having to have done this in the past it's not always a whole lot of fun so when just refresh my memory I saw the minutes so the last time we met was back in August yes wow we may have tried to meet yeah but not quum right yeah I think yes I I've was hoping to schedule more meetings but we were largely waiting for Evan to have something for us to talk about with policy and Evan kept not having anything for us so there was no other reason to meet but yeah yeah yeah no I I recall all that I was just um I didn't recall that was as far back as August wow yes I that that did strike me when I was re

reviewing our you my meeting notes and everything and yeah I real it has been since August anyway there is a motion on the floor regarding the any Report with no further discussion Mr Carol Carol is I Mr Clark I Mr hassinger I and Mr Robins votes I motion car unanimously I have the report done they they they want it by January 31st so I think we I think we'll we won't miss that deadline and yes our next agenda item is to review and approve the minutes of August 7th make a motion go ahead B I just said move we move we approve second motion made and seconded that the draft minutes of August 7th be approved as drafted any discussion of that motion they did just on the topic of minutes i' I've been reviewing all the minutes we the minutes posted to the town website uh the the most recent one was June or July of 2022 I've been going through everything I have since then Allan did write up a lot of it uh minutes of several meetings after that you never got them posted I'll take care of getting those posted then i' good so they're they're done and approved they just haven't been uploaded yes there's there's several that had been done and approved just hadn't been uploaded uh so I will I will take care of that and there are a number of a number of meetings for which minutes were never written I started work on uh on producing minutes for the minute the meetings that Allen was unable to

produce minutes for or since Alan yes the August 7th meeting is probably the one after alen was no longer on the committee but anyway I'm I'm going to I'm going to try get to get our other minutes caught up and posted to the website but for now we've got just our most recent meeting and no further discussion on the motion Mr Carol yeah Carol's I Mr Clark I Mr hassinger I and Mr Robins vot I motion carried unanimously I'll get those minutes posted and we don't have anything any topic for which executive session is required so that agenda item we will pass over and uh we are we've reached the end of the agenda I will we adjourn so wait before we adjourn was that at some point was there a candidate that was interested on and they didn't show up yeah oh was that what happened yeah there was a right d yes did not show up for the select board meeting at the time they were going to interview and appoint the candidate they pushed that off to a subsequent meeting and by the time the subsequent meeting rolled around the candidate had apparently dropped yeah so they pulled back no we still have a vacancy uh sometime within the last last week or two there was an announcement of committee vacancies and our committee is on that list so yeah I see it posted from time to time I just saw it today on somewhere in social media yep oh yeah that's that's the story on our committee membership so far okay yeah because the last thing I remembered

I thought there was someone that was um had some interest but okay that explains why they're not here does indeed all right so I I heard a motion to adjourn do I hear a second I'll second all righty outstanding mov to Second this meeting this meeting be adjourned Mr Carol yep Carol's I Mr Clark I Mr hassinger I and Mr robbert v i motion carried unanimously we are adjourned