Information Services Department - Stagnation or Migration?

The 2002-2003 Grand Jury made several findings regarding the expense, practicality, and obsolescence of the county’s mainframe system. The County agreed in substance with this assessment. These findings from 2002-2003 included: • ISD uses mainframe computer hardware first introduced in the 1990s, which was an upgrade from an earlier version. • Mainframe architectures are expensive to sustain and difficult to evolve to current industry best practices such as web access. • The County continues to use a mainframe internal billing structure to allocate ISD expenses across county operations. This requires administrative personnel involved in determining and allocating costs of mainframe usage for the purpose of interdepartmental billing. • ISD understands the ultimate need to eliminate the mainframe computer operations by migrating to less expensive current technology, but does not have a formal plan or time line for accomplishing this.

On more than one occasion prior Grand Juries have found that outdated software applications are impacting the performance of county departments, such as the Sheriff’s Office and Planning. The County has agreed that the systems need updating.

In 2009 the County relies on substantially the same hardware, although software upgrades and revisions have been implemented in the intervening years.

Currently only two ISD employees are thoroughly trained and familiar with operating and supporting the mainframe. Both employees are eligible for retirement.

On April 1, 2007, IBM stopped offering support for mainframes such as the County’s 7060-H50. Information Services Department – Stagnation or Migration?

In the fiscal 2008 year-end report submitted to the Board of Supervisors, the county’s independent auditors, Caporicci & Larson, noted that: “The County’s Disaster Recovery Plan was developed 25 years ago and was not updated to address the new technologies. The Disaster Recovery Plan details the actions required should a disaster occur that affects the computer operations of the County.”

In 2002, ISD began a project to transition the Planning Department’s code enforcement system from the mainframe-based Automated Land Use System (ALUS) to a non-mainframe Hansen® system. As of today Planning is still relying on ALUS for permits and land use planning, while running certain code enforcement processes on a dual-entry basis (entering information into both ALUS and Hansen®).

In 2009 the following county departments still rely on applications running on the mainframe: County Administrative Office, Treasurer/Tax Collector, Assessors Office, Auditor Controller, Purchasing, Payroll/Personnel, Planning Department, Probation Department, Recorder’s Office, Sheriff’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office.

Within the last year, the County has approved projects that will move the following operations off the mainframe: • Tax system ($2,530,000 contract awarded August 5, 2008) • Sheriff’s records management system and jail management system ($475,505 jail management and $478,370 record’s management contracts awarded January 13, 2009) • Probation case management system ($474,988 contract awarded January 13, 2009) • Recorder’s system ($246,843 contract awarded March 3, 2009)

As applications are shifted off, the cost of maintaining the mainframe has been allocated among departments still using it. The number of users has decreased, so charges to each remaining department have increased, although in the 2009-2010 department budget enough cost reduction has been achieved so that there is no need to increase charges to users.

ISD is working toward being mainframe-independent within four years.

A new ISD Director was appointed in 2007. Prior to his appointment, the department operated with a mindset of internally developing and supporting custom applications based on the mainframe architecture.

All the county employees this Grand Jury met with thought that ISD communication and responsiveness had improved over the last couple of years. Conclusions