SERVICES
The Information Technology Department provides services to County Departments to aid in the effective delivery of IT services that support the business needs of the county. County Information Technology is a vital part of the organization, providing faster and better ways for our employees to do their jobs and for our residents to access our services. We continue to keep our technology current and to work with members and management of all departments to provide the computing capabilities that are needed.
Application Services
Application services include the assessment, development, implementation and support of technology-based business solutions to support County department goals and objectives. Services in this area include:
- Business Analysis: To aid in the determination of how innovative business solutions technologies can improve operations, add business value and present business re-engineering opportunities, staff translate technology-based solutions into detailed designs of the computer system to be developed or purchased. A project team created from business unit staff and technology professionals provide descriptions of the business functions to be supported, diagrams of the proposed system, and flexible application designs for easy modification.
- Application Construction: Staff use information obtained in the business analysis phase of a project and perform application construction services (programming) for custom-built applications used to achieve an automated business function.
- Web Support: Staff manages the county Internet, Intranet and Extranet sites. The look and functionality of our web site is continuously improving and in 2006 an initiative was undertaken to improve the accessibility of information to our residents through the use of customer-centric categories.
- Project Management: Staff provides project management services, creating roadmaps covering all aspects of a project including the necessary resources and timelines to monitor, track and implement projects.
Infrastructure and Technical Services
Staff build, monitor, and maintain the physical computer system environment for the County. These services include support of the countywide network, Data Center, Server Farm, Desktop PC, and Security. Services in this area include:
- Network Services: Staff provides design, implementation and 24x7 support of the County's network infrastructure. This infrastructure consists of over 600 nodes and provides connectivity throughout the County to over 7,000 computing devices. The County's Internet traffic is serviced through this network at a rate of 135 gigabytes per day.
- Server Services: Staff is responsible for more then 180 County servers that are centralized in the Data Center. These servers function as application servers, files servers and various utility servers. 24 x 7 support is provided. The servers host applications such as law enforcement, property, human resource and financial systems, County e-mail, and the County Web and e-commerce systems. Large volumes of data pass through these systems daily. The data is stored in an enterprise storage system with over 13 terabytes of storage capacity.
- Office Systems: Office Systems staff provides desktop support services for 900 users in 7 departments. The support includes the purchase, configuration, and maintenance of this fleet of PC's for the supported departments. Patch management, application deployment, and troubleshooting are just a few of the support requirements of this group.
- Database Administration: This group provides data structure design services for custom-built or purchased applications, including database backup and recovery, performance tuning and capacity planning.
Data Center Services
This area is responsible for the 24x7 operation of the County's 10,000 square foot data center. Services include monitoring of the county's computing environment and network infrastructure, help desk and production support, and print services. Reliable, uninterrupted power is critical for this data center. To facilitate this continuity of power, a large 750 KVA uninterruptible power supply (UPS) was installed to provide power in the event of a power failure or fluctuation. The UPS will run until a diesel generator can be brought online for longer term independent power. Services in this area include:
- Help Desk: A 24 x 7 Help Desk is staffed to identify, escalate, and resolve countywide computing issues. These issues may range from users specific issues to global countywide computing issues. The Help Desk records and escalates issues when appropriate. They act as the internal advocate for problems and ensure that the problems are resolved.
- Production Support: Staff provides a wide array of IT services including the scheduling of production computer processes, implementation of computer security mechanisms, output processing and distribution.
- Print Service: Staff provides support for the County's high volume print requirements such as check printing, property tax billing, and social services case management reports. Print volume averages 2,600,000 lines of print a month.