Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

[Music] Glad to be here. Yeah. Could you just as a by way of introduction, you could tell us just a little bit about yourself and your interest in this committee? Yeah. Um, so um I'm sort of new to Grafton. My wife's been here forever and when we got married I moved in with her when we got married. So I've been four four or five years in Grafton. Um I have a degree in software engineering. So I like it. I build computers. My military job is a signal support um systems specialist. So I do it stuff for the army. Okay. Well, well, again, welcome to the committee. Um, I seeing as how we are all on a Zoom meeting, I'm supposed to take a roll call of the members, so I will proceed with that. Amar Clark here, Lucas Remlard here. Dave Robbins is here. Uh, Bob Hassinger is not here. And Bob Carroll. And as I said, Bob Carol informed me that he would not be able to attend the meeting tonight. And because also here with us is William Blake, our assistant town administrator. So, I mean, just so Lucas, so you can get to know us slightly better. Won't take a lot of time with introductions, but uh you know, you might guess, my name is David Robbins since that's what it says there on the screen. I'm the chairman of the committee currently and uh been on this committee for oh it's getting close to 20 years. I think it was 2007

to this committee but yeah I'm retired now but my background is in computer and telecommunications research and development. Um Amomar. Yeah. So uh yeah I've been living in Grafton since 2009. I've had, you know, various roles within the tech sector, uh, mostly at at Dell Technologies. Um, and, uh, you know, just here to kind of give whatever input I can. Um, had also had a lot of lot of different jobs in uh, various aspects of it prior to moving to Dell. So, I have a little bit of systems engineering, development, um, a lot of networking and, um, you know, IT supports um, under my belt. So thought I'd be a good fit for the team here. Yep. And uh also the role for you Lucas, the the role of this committee is basically advisory to the town administrator and the town administrator's office of which will is a part and uh you know we've done a variety of things over the years advising the TA in various different ways. Currently, uh, we're beginning to focus on updating the town's IT IT related policies. So, that's the main topic of discussion this this evening, I think. Um, Amomar, I recall you said you made you probably had a hard stop a little bit before 8. I do. Yeah. I'm going to have to leave around 7:45. Okay. So, we'll we'll we'll make a point of wrapping the meeting up before you leave because once you leave, we don't have a quorum anymore. Take both. Okay. And I just look through my emails. So, I still have to do the ethics training and the summary of the conflict. Yeah. All that good paperwork that goes along with it. Yes. I think I have to do that

before I'm sworn in if I'm correct. Right. Will William? Uh, so if you serve on other committees, uh, I think you would already have that done. May I mean, if if they cross committees, then that's fine, but I didn't know if I had to. Yeah, I don't believe you have to retake the training for every committee that you're on. No, the ethics training and conflict of interest acknowledgement and training, uh, once you've done them, they work for however many committees you're on, you're good for two years. Yeah, I'll take a look because this is from uh Amy Barry. Yes. So, I don't know if she knows I'm on another committee. So, I just I haven't had a chance to look at it because I've been in I'm in Georgia right now. So, yep. So, army training. Yeah. I don't know if it's true with you, but people people I've known in the service, they sometimes the service sends them all over the place, and you just never know. Uh, my time in the military, I've pretty much been to every state except Hawaii and Alaska. Oh, wow. And I have one tour in Iraq. Uhhuh. Yeah. You've been a lot of places I've never been. And I I remember you, Omar. I think our kids did boy uh Boy Scouts. uh pack 106. My my son moved to 107 um about a year ago. Yeah. Anyway, let's uh let's get this meeting rolling here. I think you because we're missing two other members of the committee. There's a fair amount of the discussion that I think they will want to participate in. But just to get things I'm going to take some things in a little different order. we have since we currently have three of us and Amomar has a hard stop. Let's get

one thing out of the way and that's the minutes of the previous meeting which due to my procrastination I didn't actually send out to anybody until a couple of hours ago. If you would prefer I don't know what you think. Uh, I mean, Lucas, you wouldn't have been at the previous meeting, but that doesn't mean you can't vote on it anyway. But Amomar, would you prefer to put the minutes off until next meeting, so I think so, just because, you know, half the people that were there last time are not here today. So, um, I did review them myself quickly uh, before the meeting, but um, but I know that, you know, probably be probably be more fair if we Yeah, wait till next time. Agreed. So, I will I I will punt those to the next meeting. Okay. And will do you the Oh, where is my brain? I'm got kind of got off track here from our agenda with all the uh introductions and discussion. But uh so officially the first item on our agenda is public input. This is where if anybody from the public is attending the meeting and they have a matter they want to bring to the committee's attention that's not already on the agenda, now would be the time. We do not have any Zoom attendees. So, and unless if one of us has a matter that counts as public input rather than an agenda item, now would be the time to bring it up. We usually don't have anything of that nature. So without any public input, we'll move on. Um I always have on the agenda an an update from the town administrator. Uh I don't will will do you have anything that I sometimes I remember to ask Evan if he has anything for us, but I did not do that this time. But do you

know of anything, Will, that uh Evan wanted to pass on to the committee? Nope. Uh he and I did not discuss it, so there's nothing specific that he wanted to discuss. Usually when I ask him if there's anything, he says he's got nothing. So yeah, plus at least, you know, up until up until a few days ago, his time was dominated by preparation for town meeting and yes, we are all grateful to have that behind us and I was you catching up on everything else that got punted. Okay. Uh so as far as the IT policy discussion goes, will you had sent out some uh documents to the committee mail emailed them about two or three weeks ago I think um including a copy of the most recent dated 2021 uh the IT policy document. What else? I had I should have my notes in front of me but I don't. Uh, it had the IT policy document, um, our upcoming RFP for IT support services, the draft job description for an IT director, and some examples from Westboroough of their long-term strategic plan that we were able to get our hands on. Yeah. So, yeah. So, topics that we were you wanted to dig into more as a committee were kind of in reverse reverse order. I mean well the uh we talked about the upcoming RFP and uh I know well well you had indicated that you know it's it's shared with us for our information uh and any feedback we might have although I've had it in my hands for two or three weeks I haven't actually read through it so I have no feedback unfortunately uh

my my time has been unfortunately distracted with other things and and didn't really have enough time to prepare for this. I don't know, Amomar, did you have anything that you uh wanted to comment on with the RFP? No, nothing that really stood out. Um, I just uh I wanted to to When is this going to be posted? Is this May that it gets posted May 23rd? Is that right? Just to Friday. Uh, if that's what it says, that might just be an example timeline. We did not to post it on Friday. Okay. We do need to get it out sooner rather than later as the procurement timeline takes about four or five weeks. Yeah. So, okay. So I I I will take that as a a suggestion that we promptly review that and if you have any feedback for Will before our next meeting uh our next meeting let's see we've let me look at my calendar here our our meeting schedule has until recently been the first Wednesday of the month. Um Will, you've indicated that that's often uh a conflict for you. Yes. Um but I could either attend the IT committee meetings every other month uh if changing the date was not uh what the committee wanted to do. Yeah. Yep. So if we go if if we look at to accommodate will I think this the second Wednesday of the month is a suggestion. I I don't recall off the top of my head whether I uh sent out an email to the committee asking them about whether the second Monday second Wednesday would be good. You know I think you did um second Wednesday is fine for me. Um, but I

think we probably want to just get confirmation before we officially change it, right? Yeah. So, let's let's at least tentatively plan on for our our June 11th meeting, that's a second Wednesday. Uh, would that be sufficient time, Will, for you to get feedback from the committee on the RFP? We could wait till June 11th, but I would say that that is the latest we could wait. Wouldn't be able to wait till the turn of the fiscal year. Yeah. Okay. Would we want to if we if we're able to review it in the meantime, would we want to just kind of mark it up and send it directly to you? Um, is that something that's, you know, okay, that's also that's also acceptable. Yes, that would Lucas, I have a note to send you the email that I sent out a couple of weeks ago just so you can have all the documentation that would discuss them. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. So, and and I'll I'll I'll send a follow-up note right after this meeting to let everybody know that if if if any if we any of us who have comments or uh questions on the RFP to send those directly to Will. As long as as long as we do it that way. We don't we don't share our comments with one another, then we're not violating the open meeting law. Yep. So, that's good. And yeah, and the sooner will can the sooner Will you can get any comments from us as individuals, the better. But yeah, and then maybe that gives you a little bit of time to to review those and then we can chat about them at the next meeting on June 11th. Yeah, I think that'd be good. All right. So that's that for now. Um, you would will you'd send out a for our

information a draft job description for an IT director and I understand that's that's something you and Evan would like to do for us for us to have an IT director but and maybe have the budget for it. We are rowing in that direction. I would say um it likely will not be at the turn of the fiscal year. It's probably something we would do either at the halfway point or at the start of the next fiscal year. But when you review the RFP, you'll see there's language in there um that we're treating the onsite support almost like an alternate in the bid documents where there's an understanding that at a certain point that will come out of the scope of work. Okay. So, sounds like it would be a appropriate for us to provide you feedback on that the same way we've just talked about for the RFP. Yeah, I think we would be open to feedback. Make make myself a note so I might actually remember to do things after the meeting. Okay. And so uh sort of two major topics we have been talking about. One is policy documents and the other is strategic planning. So again without with with with some of us not being in the meeting this evening there's probably a whole not not a whole lot that we can pro productively discuss here. But uh one of the so so on the existing town's IT policy as we said that that was last revised in 2021 and I think at our at our last meeting and maybe the last couple meetings we've

kind of said let's let's take a closer look at that document and provide some suggestions for yeah bringing it up to date adding things to it removing things Um, yep. And one question that did get asked at the last meeting was whether or not new staff are required to see these policies. Um, and I think it was in the email, but I've confirmed that they do during the onboarding process when they go over all of the town's benefits and all of the other paperwork. That is a tab in there and it includes things like the IT policy, the sexual harassment policy, and all that stuff. So if there are other enduser policies we want to develop, we can also put those up there. Yep. I think sort of, you know, in in our thinking, we've been we've touched on at least a number of topics that may need to be addressed in IT policies that we don't currently cover. Um, and there's there's a potentially a a quite a quite a substantial number of topics that could be covered by IT policies. So one of the things that you know I think I think think the direction we excuse me the direction we were heading was to take a look at the existing policy document look at updating what that has identifying future policy topics that need to be covered in either an expanded version of this policy document or separate policy documents. But the sort of the short-term focus was just on updating the existing policy. And I think I think we said at our last meeting that we would take a look at that and come back to this meeting with some suggestions, but I I' I've not been able to do it. I' I've not found the time to do that even though perhaps I

should have. But uh let's take that as a little bit a little bit more emphasis is again for our next meeting particularly because couple of our members are missing. It's it's I I will try to remember to you know sort of push try to push that forward and make sure we all have taken the time to review that and come prepared to discuss in more detail. And I'm certainly the I'm not prepared to discuss that in any detail tonight. I don't know if either Lucas is a lot of stuff you haven't seen yet. So yeah, you you can be forgiven for not having having a lot to say just yet. I don't know if you've had any any thoughts that you'd like to talk about this evening, Amar. No, not really. Yeah, I think that we probably, you know, I I I haven't had a chance to look at it in detail, but one of the things that we discussed last time was see if we should be getting some content in there around um Gen AI use cases and um and policies around uh using AI um for, you know, town business. Yeah. use. In other words, maybe maybe not use chat GPT to write your reports or or at least very carefully if you do use it, make sure that you're not doing something like I don't know how many times I've read lately about lawyers who are using chat GPT to write legal briefs and chat GPT is a reputation for inventing case citations out of thin air. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean it's you know appropriate use of tools like chat GPT or other AI tools is something that uh yeah it certainly deserves a mention in some fashion. Yeah, I think we're probably going to

have a a spirited discussion around AI tools for sure. Right. Um, I think that there's definitely, um, you know, there's there's a right and a wrong way to use it. And I think that looking we're it's going to be important to look at what other municipalities are doing as well. Yep. So, we'll we'll we'll plan on digging into that more at our next meeting. And the last topic in in that discussion was strategic planning. Again, is a sort of It's still a little bit amorphous. We've been, you know, seeking out examples. Bob Carol had had uh shared with us. And again, I think this is something that you haven't seen yet, Lucas, is the uh the school department has a five-year something. What do they call it? Roadmap. Fiveyear technology plan. I think it is. Oh, yeah. my notes say. So we you we can we can look at that. We can look at the examples we'll send out from Westboro and maybe we can uh come up with an outline or something to you something to sort of tell us or tell Will and Evan how to what what and however exactly we end up working together on this. But uh yeah, it's something that we we we've kind of off and on discussed in this committee for a long time is we we could we could do more to flesh out a something like a fiveyear strategic plan for whatever and I how much we want to cover in that and

some of these examples may help us to sort of scope that out because there's potentially there's a lot of topics you could think of covering in a in strategic plan related to it. If you try to if you try to do too much then you end up not sure where you want to go. So that's about all I can think of to say about that this evening. Any uh do you have any thoughts or even Lucas if you have any any any thoughts from your experience that might potentially apply here? So, I know the Army, we have our own chat GPT that we're allowed to use. So, I I don't know statewide if other ones have it, but like we have Project Dark Saber and then there's a couple other like camo GPT and it's all built on supposed to be like secured regen um AI type stuff like chat GPT which I tend to use pretty regularly for, you know, if I'm writing up a, you know, pretty decent email like I use it to help like kind of organize everything that I'm writing so it's in like more of a clear concise like nice but I've met people who don't review their stuff and just throw it in there send it out and you're like that doesn't make sense at all. Yeah. I say that's that that's the thing that you know the the the the thing that I worry about is that if you rely too much on that and you know well the computer said it it must be right and that I the the very the basic idea well the computer said it so it must be right you people have had that attitude towards towards computers about as long as I can remember. Yeah.

And it's just, you know, the details change and but yeah, I think I think it's a good point that you that you mentioned that, you know, you can you can use it as a tool like other tools, you have to know what it can do and what it doesn't do and what you have to do when you're using it. Yeah. And a lot of times those like even chat GPT the pre version like the data that's in it is like two to three years old. And in order to get date stuff, you have to pay for it. So some people don't even realize that. They just they put in the free one and they're like, "Oh, this is the stuff." And it's like, "Yeah, you're completely missing three years worth of data that the other one has." So So it's Yeah. But yeah, making a policy on it is probably a very good thing for the town. Yep. Anything else on any of these topics? [Music] Otherwise, we will have succeeded keeping the meeting really fairly brief. Yeah. Well, I just had a question for William. I know that um we had talked about maybe reaching out to the school system about potentially collaborating on IT resources and I know that that kind of discussion it potentially going to tie into all of the things that we talked about, right? um the RFP and the technology plan and and all those types of things, right? Yeah. So, I I did not end up approaching the schools about that, but I did have a couple of conversations on the municipal side. Um and it seems like the last time we went in a shared services direction. uh the issue that arose was the services on the municipal side because the school department has 500 employees and then you're adding on a hundred more and that stretches people pretty thin. Uh so with that in mind and with the idea that we

are moving in the direction of an in-house IT director, I decided it might not be best to have that conversation with the school department at this time. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Just I figured with the direction we're rowing in, hopefully this time next year we're in a spot where we have somebody on site who can be working on these things. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think as I recall and it sounds like really nothing nothing much has changed but my recollection is that at the time the last time we really tried to tried to get into that it turned out that you know the the schools demanded yeah had had a much higher workload for it just for the reasons you just said will that they you know they've got just a ton more users and IT infrastructure and and plus it's somewhat different you know it's a it's kind of a they use IT in different ways than we do on the municipal side so yeah it's a completely different platform too right Google versus Microsoft yeah so the at a very high level you could you you you could think well I it is it you know it's all the you know same sort of computers and laptops and tablets and everything but it's when you drill down, you realize it's a whole lot more than that. And the the hope was sort of the naive hope was that well, you know, there's enough commonality that some a group of people ought to be able to cover both. And then turns out it's not as much in a practical sense, it's not as much commonalities as you thought at a sort of abstract level. Yeah. So as as time goes on, we may we may find opportunities.

Uh but uh yeah, I wouldn't at this point I wouldn't I wouldn't argue against the position you're currently taking. Will followed. Okay. All right. So is there anything else? I think we've We've we've got some marching orders and I will I will try to do better at pushing things forward. I with the number of different things that I'm involved in and sometimes it you know one once I get done with one meeting with one group uh I am off to something different then I kind of forget that oh we have another meeting to plan for. I think with the probably probably because the master plan activity which has occupied a lot of my time we we are reaching an end of that process. So that that frees up some of my bandwidth. So okay uh unless we have anything else to deal with. Uh the other thing I always have on the agenda is a potential executive session, but I'm not aware that we have any topics that need to be discussed in the context of executive session. Um, and unless you have something, will that I do not. We always put a put it in the agenda just in case, but it's been two or three years, I think, since we've actually had a a topic that we felt needed an executive session. So, with that, I had one other thing, David, just before we go. I know that that I think next month is the end of my term. Um, how does that go after that? Do do

we have to get like reconfirmed or Yeah. Yeah. You should have received a letter from the town administrator's office asking you if you wanted to be reappointed. Okay. All right. I will look for that. If you didn't receive that, let me just make a quick take a quick look here. Would it have been in um physical mail or email? Physical mail. Physical mail. Physical mail. Yeah, I I do seem to recall seeing something like that. So, I'll have to look through and and find it and then I just have to bring that in or mail it back to the town. Yeah, I would recommend bringing it into the TA office if you have time because then it just gets added right to the stack and you're good to go. Perfect. I can I was in I had someone else asking me today whether I had received my letter because he was up for reappointment to another committee. He had not received his because it was mailed out to his former home address. Okay. Uh but he he reported back to me. He called Cindy and uh confirmed that he he was supposed to have received a letter and I think he said that the deadline was the end of this week. Okay. So, all right. So, I'll bring it down that that way. Make sure that and if for any if for any reason you are unable to find it, contact Cindy in the TA's office. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I see three of us are up for reappoint this year. UMR, me and Bob Hassinger. Right. So, but yeah, the select board makes those it does all those re reappointments toward the end of June and they always like to ask, "Do you want to be reappointed?" And if because if you don't respond, they're going to assume you don't want to be reappointed. Right.

Yeah. Like I say, if you if you can't locate the letter, contact Cindy and she can produce a letter for you. Or even go in there and go in the office. Maybe she can print one out for you. You can fill it out right then and there. Perfect. Yeah, I I think I have it. I I just need to just need to dig it up. Yep. Yep. I have I I made sure when I got mine in the mail, I made sure I kept it in a prominent place and then got it turned in. Think I turned it in last week, the beginning of the week. Otherwise, I have a tendency to forget things. Okay. Anything else from anybody? A uh motion to adjurnn would be in order. Seconded. I motion to adjurnn. Sorry. And I second. Excellent. Moved and seconded. Motion to adjurnn is not debatable. So I'll just call for a roll call vote. Amar I. Lucas I. And Dave votes I. Motion carried unanimous and we are journed. Thank you. And uh tenatively June 11th will be our next meeting. I'll just double check with everybody and make sure that works for them. Otherwise, we'll try for the fourth. Uh if we do the fourth, will will you be available or not? Uh I will not be available on the fourth. Okay. So, and if we have to do it that way, you know, obviously we can uh we can follow up with you right after the meeting will, but I'd prefer to be able to have you there. Okay. Very good. Well, I will plan on the 11th if I hear otherwise. All right. Great. Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Good night. Thanks all.