Bellicose Bumpkin

Middleboro recently received the results of a 2010 IT Assessment conducted by the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies. The assessment revealed some weaknesses and made recommendations for correcting them. One of the main recommendations was to combine the various IT groups into a single IT department “headed by a newly hired Director of Information Services. This structure will provide the senior level, businesslike leadership which Middleborough needs as a $66 million enterprise” .

Background
Last year FinCom proposed hiring Hub Tech to do a $10K assessment of the town’s IT infrastructure with an eye toward reducing redundancy, increasing efficiency, and saving money. The assessment would have looked at the entire town – general government, police, fire, G&E, schools, and maybe even the library. The selectmen and town manager instead decided to have selectman Al Rullo talk to various departments to ask them if they wanted an assessment and if so what they wanted to get out of it. I criticized this plan in a Gazette column comparing it to asking patient what sort of treatment they wanted without telling them what the options were. Eventually the town elected to spend $6K on the McCormack study we just received.

Findings
While cheaper, the $6K assessment only looked at general town government and the school department while the $10K FinCom proposal would have looked at the entire town and included detailed topology of the infrastructure. The report afterword specifically criticized this limited scope (as did I):

From the executive summary:

1. Neither the Town nor the School Department has ever had a strategic plan for IT. Absent such a comprehensive, consolidated Town and School strategic plan, Middleborough has no framework for making rational, consistent choices regarding IT.
2. Middleborough has no current, comprehensive capital improvement program. and thus has no well informed basis for making sound plans about the procurement and deployment of IT, including expenditures which run well into hundreds of thousands of dollars over a five year horizon.
3. Middleborough should consolidate its Town and School IT organizations into a single Department of Information Services, headed by a newly hired Director of Information Services. This structure will provide the senior level, businesslike leadership which Middleborough needs as a $66 million enterprise.
   .
   I found the term “newly hired” to be interesting.
4. Neither the Town nor the Schools has ever had a written plan for business continuity disaster recovery. This leaves Middleborough at extraordinary risk.

5. Failure to use the Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) system to decentralize business functions such as financial management and payroll gives Middleborough the appearance of an organization operating in a 25 year old, mid 1980′s model. This results in gross inefficiencies in these functions throughout the Town and School Department.
6. Middleborough has no excessive deployment of hardware, as has sometimes been
   rumored.

7. Security of IT facilities has been established by the Town and Schools in a manner appropriate to the risk presented.
8. The Town and Schools do an adequate job of asset tracking
9. The viability of the ACS system is a critical strategic issue for Middleborough.

We’ve been told what our problems are, now we’ll see if the town acts. I’m reminded of the DOR report. I don’t feel the town made a strong effort to act on the reports recommendations.