Some questions to learn more from each other ...

[Eddy Van der Stock]

1. What is the 'hot topic' where you plan to work on, during the next months?
2. Same question but in a long period plan (multiple months, years?).
3. How is the financial flow ? Do you receive the budget you ask for ?
4. What is the true meaning of e-Gov in your country ?
5. What about network-security ?
6. How is your IT department organized ? Number of people against workload …
7. Is IT something where management is talking about or do politicians and managers think it’s pure technical?

Please provide, name, local government and country.

[Eddy Van der Stock]

Send via e-mail on 12 nov 2006.

Organization Name: City of Moline, IL
Organization Website: www.moline.il.us
Population Served: 43,500
Organization FTEs: 420
IT FTEs: 5
Organization Budget: $33,796,230
IT Budget: $1,119,355 (2006)

1. What is the 'hot topic' where you plan to work on, during the next months?
* Wireless pilot with 6 surrounding cities and 1 medical facility-the pilot includes cities from 2 states Illinois & Iowa.
* Bringing a new Police Department & Library building online to the network

2. Same question but in a long period plan (multiple months, years?).
* Facilitating the coordination of 5 departments: Utilities, Water, Sewer, Building Permits, Land Management to find a better way to manage the collection of Tap-On fees for City water/sewer services. It appears we are losing revenue due to customers falling through the cracks of the current system.
* GPS for AVL for entire fleet - 215 vehicles
* The creation of a new Land Management database in SQL that will integrate all information about an address/parcel number to one screen
* Adding online payments/inquiry for Business Licenses to our web server
* Cleaning up the Citrix environment
* Network Admissions and Control - monitor devices connecting to our network for viruses & service pack versions
* Infrastructure Monitoring
* VoIP Study
* Updating Microsoft Office to current version
* Replacing aging workstations

3. How is the financial flow ? Do you receive the budget you ask for ?
* My 2006 budget was cut drastically, but so far the 2007 budget is pretty much intact
4. What is the true meaning of e-Gov in your country ?
* Not sure I can speak for the country, but here in Moline, IL it means providing online services to our customers. Our current online services include: online utility payments/inquiry, Parks online activity & facility registration, Customer complaint/service requests, public records search. Above I mentioned that next year we will provide online business licenses payment/inquiry.
5. What about network-security ?
* Not sure what you are asking here but we use a Cisco ASA to protect us from the outside world
6. How is your IT department organized ? Number of people against workload …
* IT Manager
* Network Manager
* GIS Manager
* Network Specialist - this position is being added next fiscal year
* System Technician
* Contract with consultant for high-end networking tasks
7. Is IT something where management is talking about or do politicians and managers think it’s pure technical?
* I think we a good mix of politicians & department managers who realize and understand the importance of IT. We have some politicians who know very little about IT; same goes for department managers. Overall though most accept that we are here for the long haul and are not going away.

Diane Preslar
IT Manager
City of Moline
309-736-5950
www.moline.il.us