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Today’s Morning Buzz is brought to you by Chris Keefer, owner of K2 Communications of SC, LLC based in Blythewood, SC. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn and Facebook.
- What I’m reading: “Daylight” by David Baldacci (Besides writing good reads, he’s an adult literacy advocate like me!)
- What I’m watching: 2024 Summer Olympics
- What I’m working on: Figuring out what I want to be when I retire.
During my first week as town administrator in a small town, I reached out to the vendor who set up the town’s IT network to introduce myself and learn more about the town’s IT environment. When I asked if the town had an IT plan or strategy, he paused and politely chuckled, confirming my suspicions that there was none.
Throughout my entire career in both the private and public sector, I’ve either worked in or with information and information technology — especially in local government. Information is an essential resource in what we do, from looking up property information in GIS mapping to creating a budget, to answering a utility customer’s question about how much they owe. My concern, especially in the small towns I’ve worked in, is that this critical data is not being protected adequately from internal and external threats.
These inadequacies may be due to budgetary and staff constraints or a lack of understanding about just how vulnerable data is in our connected world. On that last point, though, some of us have been the victim of a data breach perpetrated at a credit card company, online vendor, healthcare provider, or corporation. These are big targets for cyber criminals, but the IT infrastructure in these organizations are getting more difficult to penetrate. That leaves the bad guys looking for smaller, easier targets like local governments.
Sometimes it’s not even external forces that wreak havoc in our IT environment. About a month ago, the municipality I work in had no Internet access for three workdays because the Internet provider changed our IP address without our knowledge, and our firewall refused to connect because it didn’t recognize the new IP address. Because our IT infrastructure involves so many providers and pieces, it took several hours, providers, and phone calls to identify and resolve the issue — let alone recover from the incident. I can’t help but think that this would have worked out better if we had some IT expertise available.
Unfortunately, none of the town’s staff have IT expertise nor can we justify having an IT specialist on staff. But we can take a more proactive approach to managing our IT environment with the help of managed IT service providers. These experts help local governments better manage the financial costs of their IT environment, properly scale that environment to fit the organization’s users and devices, better focus staff on providing essential public services, and improve overall productivity in the process.
Knowing these benefits of managed IT services, I’ve been lobbying hard for the town to contract with a managed IT service provider. We’ve made managed IT services a budgeted expenditure this fiscal year, and I’m making technology planning a priority since we currently don’t have a comprehensive IT strategy in place to drive future investment in our IT environment. I’m working now on an RFP and a cybersecurity grant application to help offset some of the expense of implementing a more secure, dependable IT infrastructure.
Had we had a managed IT services contract in place a month ago, there would have been one phone call from town hall to the vendor to diagnose and resolve the IP address issue we had. We might not have had any downtime, and I would be confident that the issue would be resolved quickly and completely — and that our IT environment was safe and secure.
I’ve been fortunate to work in another small town that thoughtfully invested in its IT environment about 10 years ago, and they’ve not had a cybersecurity incident yet. In the rare occasion when they do have an Internet outage or a network switch dies, their managed IT services provider often knows it’s a possibility before it even happens. While this awareness doesn’t necessarily eliminate the entire problem, it’s easier to solve and deal with.
So, if you find yourself in the same boat as me, wondering if your town’s data or systems will be hacked overnight, or how you’re going to get the new multi-function copier to play nicely with your workstations, get help from the experts. Yes, routing and switching is not sexy, as ELGL co-founder Kirsten Wyatt wrote in a previous Morning Buzz, but those of us in local government lacking IT expertise must become “more competent, forward-thinking, and ready to embrace the technological advancements that lie ahead,” as Bill Brantley concluded in a Morning Buzz earlier this year. Our organizations — and the public we serve — depend on us to do so.
Managed IT service providers (especially those who specialize in the local government sector) can help us mind our IPs and (print) queues, help build our IT competencies and prepare our organizations to better use technology — and give us peace of mind that essential data resources are safe and secure.