February Minutes

ITAC MEETING MINUTES
For February 16, 2006

Attendees:
Reggie Brown, Paul Donadio (representative for JP Kenney), John Killebrew, Gloria McNeill,

Shannon Schelin

Due to work schedules & other commitments, Lori Bush, Niamh Darcy, Darryl Hammill, and JP Kenney could not attend.

Wake County:
Velvadine Wallace, Lib Wanner

Meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. Lib Wanner introduced herself and Velvadine Wallace and welcomed the new members to the group. Lib asked all members to introduce themselves and to give a brief summary of their background.

Overview of: Purpose of ITAC, Member Attendance Policy, And Annual Election Process:
Lib Wanner stated that the purpose of the Information Technology Advisory Committee is to serve as an advisory group to the Board of Commissioners with the charge of reviewing Wake County’s strategic project plans for major and new automated systems. Lib stated the committee consists of ten members, one appointed by each County Commissioner and three appointed by the County Manager. Each member serves a two-year staggered term and extensions to this limit have been granted in the past, with John Killebrew being an example of this.

Lib stated that by charter the committee is required to meet once a month. She indicated that it has been difficult in the last couple of months due to conflicting work schedules for ITAC members. Lib then asked the group if this monthly meeting schedule (date, time, location) works best for them and if they had any suggestions. Everyone said that the monthly meeting schedule was okay. Shannon Schelin suggested that maybe the group could also try Oracle Collaboration Suite which she could provide access to through the UNC-IOG. This suite has a workspace that would provide a single place to capture, organize and view documents, meetings, tasks, email, discussions and announcements related to any project or process. John Killebrew stated that Cisco also has a meeting tool that runs over VOiP (meeting place). Lib suggested that Shannon test the Oracle Collaboration Suite with herself and Velvadine before we introduce it to the group. The group agreed that this would be a viable option.

Lib then explained that each December ITAC elects a Vice Chair who will serve as Chair the following year. This past year Niamh Darcy was the Vice Chair so she will be the ITAC chair in calendar year 2006. Lib asked the group if they wanted to elect a new Vice Chair and all indicated that given the newness of most of the members they would rather wait until next month.

Review of 2005 Progress Report to Board Of Commissioners:
Lib passed out a handout of the “Draft of the 2005 Progress Report” for review and discussion. She reviewed each section and highlighted to the new members that the County developed a decision process for use in determining what kinds of public information to present on the County’s website. Lib said the County’s Privacy Officer developed the process, reviewed it with ITAC and whenever there is content that a department wants to post on the website that could be considered private, the department goes through the decision flow and she also brings the content to ITAC to get their opinion on whether or not it should be posted. Shannon asked if the new legislature affected Wake County regarding not having social security numbers and tax ID displayed on documents. Lib replied that the Register of Deeds has old documents that have SSN written on them that have been scanned into their system and they are part of the public record. Shannon then stated that the Register of Deeds, Laura Riddick had made the comment that social security numbers and tax ID information could be taken off with written permission from the individual. Lib then went on to discuss the remainder of the handout and highlighted one of the ITAC goals for calendar year 2006 will be reviewing the research and recommendations from our Telecom group that is looking into whether or not it makes sense for Wake County to use VoiP.

IS Department Business Plan 2006-2008:
Lib then passed out a handout of the “IS Department Business Plan 2006-2008”. She informed the group that the Vision, Mission and Goals statements had all been updated from last year’s as a result of input from the IS staff at last year’s department retreat (held in June) and input from ITAC. Lib also stated that the Mission statement was directed to providing good service to both our external and internal customers.

Related to the Vision statement’s call to do work that is nationally recognized, Lib mentioned to the group that Wake County has received national exposure this year for both the Motor Mesh Project with Motorola and for the Homeless Management Information System project.

Lib then reviewed the key elements of the updated plan with the group covering. She reviewed the Leadership goal and highlighted her working relationships with other County departments and elected officials and the current IS organizational chart. She also reviewed the technology project review and funding process in detail and highlighted the changes related to the e-Gov Office and its change into the Applied Technologies group. Lib stated the eGov group has been renamed to Applied Technologies. She also mentioned that Emerging Technologies, Project/Portfolio Management, and Organizational Readiness have been added to the Applied Technologies group. Lib highlighted the assumption of operational management for the 800 Mhz radios in the Infrastructure group and briefly discussed the Rewrite of the Property Tax System as a highlight from the Applications area. In the area of Customer Services she highlighted the acquisition of the new desktop management software this spring and the establishment of a new supervisor over the help desk, procurement and training areas for FY 07.

Lib mentioned to the group that there had also been discussions regarding the relocation of the Wake County Courthouse in 2008-2009 where the Garland Jones Building resides. She stated Wake County is running out of space for employees and she is currently working with other departments to determine if some employees could work remote or telework to accommodate space.

Lib stated that she went through the IS Business Plan rather fast and asked the group if they would like to continue this discussion at the next monthly meeting and she asked for feedback on what she could have missed. Everyone agreed to further discuss this item at the next meeting.

Meeting Critique:
Lib asked the group what went well and could have been done better? No one had any suggestions. John asked if there were any more vacancies to be filled. Lib replied that there is one more vacancy that will be filled by the County Manager.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:00 am. The next monthly meeting will be held on Thursday, March 16, 2006.