Butte County Grand Jury
2013-2014
Findings & Recommendations
15 findings
F1:
The County’s network went live in the late 1990’s. It has achieved a greater than 99 percent uptime. The continuous operation of the network is critical to all departments within the County.
F2:
The Butte County ISD’s Information Technology Strategic Plan was prepared in 2005 and has not recently been updated.
F3:
Currently ISD is preparing to launch Lync™, a unified messaging system, to leverage the County’s fiber data infrastructure and to deploy VoIP technologies onto the BCI network.
F4:
ISD’s strategy is to maintain an industry standard of a maximum 5-year technology refresh rate of enterprise class server equipment and a 3–5 year refresh rate of network infrastructure routing and switching equipment.
F5:
Since the FY 2008-2009 budget reductions, most of the infrastructure hardware life has been extended to 10+ years (core router and switching equipment), which is beyond its normal life span.
F6:
The core router was replaced in FY 2013 with funds made available from Homeland Security Grants.
F7:
With the implementation of the Microsoft® Lync™ unified messaging system, the County networked devices will increase to over 12,000+ units.
F8:
Without additional staff resources, ISD will continue to be overburdened with support issues.
F9:
The loss of key ISD employees would be catastrophic to the County. Loss of their valuable knowledge, experience, and commitment would be a major setback to the functionality of the department.
F10:
The IS Department provides mission-critical services and support to most County departments. Loss of ISD support to any of these departments would greatly impair their ability to conduct County business.
F11:
The current adopted budget FY 2013-2014 for ISD is 0.85 percent of the total County budget, down from 1.42 percent in FY 2008-2009.
F12:
For the last 10 years the IS Department has been given increased duties and responsibilities, and its budget has remained flat (increase of 0.08 percent), 24 2013–2014 Butte County Grand Jury while the overall County budget has increased by $200,000,000 (61 percent) (see Appendix B).
F13:
The County’s radio communication relies on outdated equipment installed on St. John Mountain (located in Glenn County) which is costly to support.
F14:
Of the County’s older personal computers 500+ are still operating on the Windows XP system and will require upgrades in order to function in the upgraded Active Directory.
F15:
Two full-time employees are dedicated to network security, monitoring against unauthorized users, and filtering for SPAM and viruses, while receiving over 800,000 Internet messages monthly.
Additional Recommendations
8
Not linked to specific findings.
R1:
Butte County should develop the ISD Information Technology Strategic Plan to reflect new technology developments and new support services needed. It should be reviewed annually in order to respond to any unanticipated need or development opportunity.
R2:
Butte County should provide adequate resources to ISD to ensure the network infrastructure is at the industry standard refresh rate of 3-5 years for technology and hardware.
R3:
Butte County should diligently search and pursue available grants from any and all sources to fund necessary infrastructure upgrades.
R4:
Butte County should allocate funds to rehire or replace ISD positions eliminated after budget cuts were implemented in FY 2008-2009 and allocate additional positions to support expanding workloads.
R5:
Butte County should acknowledge the importance of the IS Department and its role, which is mission critical, to the citizens of Butte County and most County departments.
R6:
Butte County should commit to fund ISD, for the next five years, at a minimum rate of 1.75 percent of the total County budget, with a goal of 3 percent within 10 years. 25 2013–2014 Butte County Grand Jury
R7:
Butte County should acknowledge the problems with the St. John Mountain radio system and take steps to replace the antiquated equipment before total system failure.
R8:
Butte County must acknowledge that it has in excess of 500 personal computers that have outdated operating systems in use. It is recommended that the County consider a lease arrangement, or the outright purchase, to assist departments in the replacement of outdated machines, which will be required for compatibility with the new Active Directory.