Town Technology Committee Meeting Minutes, July 9, 2008

Rhinebeck Technology Committee Meeting Minutes

 

July 9, 2008

 

 

We met at Town Hall between 8:00 – 10:00 pm. 

 

 

In attendance

 

Mike Collins

Dave Kliphon

Joe Kupiec

Paul Niedercorn

Henry Young

 

 

Agenda items, as addressed:

 

 

1. Technical Inventory

 

Summary:

• Consultant “realms” were clarified and documented.
• As initial inventory action, Silas will be asked to move forward.
• Bruce will get funding when price is more clearly defined.
• Team will reconvene and define next step at next month’s meeting.

 

Actions:

• After authorization from Bruce, Silas will be asked to perform his technical inventory.

 

 

Dave summarized of the inventory initiative so far.  The consultant realms were clarified and documented: Silas assists the Town and Village Courts, Town Highway Department and Village Police Department, and the Jeffreys generally oversee all other departments.  The consultants’ declaration of the departments they serve was documented and added to the Tech Committee binder.

 

The team reviewed the responses to the Tech Inventory proposal.  After authorization from Bruce, Silas will be asked to perform his inventory during his next visit to his departments.  The team hopes to review the results at the next meeting in order to decide on the next steps for the expansion of the inventory.

 

A review of budget considerations was next.  Bruce had declared via email that he would look for budget funding when the price was more clearly defined.  He also recommended that inventory be part of the deliverables for the IT consultants in future years.

 

 

 

2. Town/Village Email

 

Summary:

• No leads for mail services from several sources.
• A focus on the use of webmail as mail client might lead to opportunities.
• Webmail options and website hosting service will be analyzed more closely.
• Useful email policy examples were found and presented.
• The topic of offloading of mail to personal account was discussed.

 

Actions:

• Dave will contact the website host to see whether they can properly manage incoming and outgoing mail if users only use webmail clients.
• Dave and members will see if a service or program can be used to index and/or search archived web mail.
• Joe Ely will be asked to revisit the task of creating a basic email policy.

 

 

Mail Service Options

 

Finding a mail hosting service for stronger management of incoming and outgoing mail as well as archiving and indexing continued to be difficult.  There has been no response from Jim Jeffries, who offered to perform a basic search several months ago.  Dave contacted Dod Crane, who generously pursued a small, local IT company for evaluation.  Unfortunately they are not ready at this time for the desired service.

 

Mike Collins spoke to a local city municipality and explained to the team that their action is to essentially forward all email to email client mailboxes.  In essence there is no central archiving of email, and users are allowed to manage email as they see appropriate.

 

Paul focused more closely on webmail.  After getting an explanation of the difficulties of capturing outgoing email from email clients, the discussion turned to the possibility of requiring users to use a webmail client to perform all mail actions.  In this case it may be possible to capture outgoing mail as well as incoming, and the Web Committee’s automated backup of the site would therefore archive all mail.  Could a program be written or a service provided to index and search the collected email file(s)?  The web host will be contacted to see if outgoing mail can be stored or dumped into an archive mailbox, and whether they could provide an indexing or search service.

 

Paul also focused on the webmail clients used by the Town/Village employees, and asked whether GMail or other popular services could be used.  Dave explained that the web host offered three webmail clients to users.  The team is eager to move forward with recommending the use of webmail for all mail activities, and may review webmail clients at the next meeting.

 

 

Email Policy

 

Email policy is another topic that has lingered as the team has continued to research how other municipalities define their policies.

 

Henry Young presented his findings from his discussions with County personnel.  He identified Oregon’s substantial email policy as a good reference source; it can be found at http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us.  Henry felt that email policy needs to be extensive.

 

The team briefly reviewed the local school email policy statements, which were obtained by Paul.  Dave and Paul agreed that the high school email policy was a beneficial resource in our own definition.

 

As a birthday gift, Joe Ely will be asked to consider revisiting the creation of an email policy, and will be provided with the material collected for guidance.

 

The topic of offloading municipal mail to a personal mailbox was debated.  Henry read a passage from the Oregon policy, which declared that should any employees offload email to their personal accounts, then any mail sent from the account must be reincorporated into the municipal mailbox.  Initially team members argued that with a strong email policy users should not be offloading mail, but Dave pointed out that personal Blackberries and other PDAs might be a reason for forwarding of mail from municipal to personal email accounts.  The team will follow up on the topic as the committee email policy evolves.

 

 

 

3. Committee Budget Estimate

 

Summary:

• Budget categories were reviewed and discussed.
• The role and “ownership” of the Tech Committee was questioned.
• General categories were created, and line items collected within.

 

Actions:

• Bruce will be asked to clarify the role and responsibility of the Tech Committee.
• Bruce will also be reminded that the committee is available for tech reviews, departmental support.

 

A list of budget item categories was sent around during the month for review and discussion.  The resulting list was presented to the group.

 

Paul highlighted an Internet service provider line item and noted that the Tech Committee has never had a budget and was never expected to pay for the ISP or any network equipment, etc…

 

A debate regarding the actual responsibility of the Tech Committee, and therefore its need for a budget, ensued.  Paul wanted to know specifically what the committee “owned”.  Mike recommended that Bruce be asked to clarify the Town’s role and responsibility for the Tech Committee.  Mike would also like Bruce to be reminded that the Tech Committee is available and should be called upon when their technical advise would be valuable to the Town.

 

Dave explained that the committee has in recent months affirmed itself as an advisory committee and not responsible for action and ownership.  Mike stated that the Tech Committee must be active in serving the Town and should be responsible for tasks, purchases, etc…  The self-defined role of the committee was therefore clarified as being advisory in capacity to departments, but action-oriented in the technical realm that falls outside of departments.  For example, the Town network is not owned by any specific department, and the Tech Committee should therefore maintain the network, potentially purchasing equipment, and therefore requiring a budget.

 

Budget items were more closely reviewed.  Mike presented the idea of generating broader categories for each of the line items to fall in.  The team create the following new general budget categories: Hardware, Software, Consulting, Network/Internet and Miscellaneous. 

 

 

 

4. Vital Records Service

 

Summary:

• The VitalCheck site was quickly explained and reviewed.

 

Actions:

• Paul will research why users would go to this site and not local or state level sites.

 

VitalCheck, at www.vitalcheck.com, is an online source for government-issued vital records, such as birth and death certificates, and marriage and divorce records.  The Town could potentially use this service to make community access to records easier.

 

Paul, who brought the site to the committee’s attention, wondered why users would not simply go to the local or state level website to get these records; why go to VitalCheck?  Paul will research this issue and try to find an explanation.

 

 

 

5. Committee Policy

 

Summary:

• Bruce’s Committee Policy was presented to the group and discussed.
• The possibility of allowing non-Rhinebeck residents to participate was debated.
• The “failure to attend three meetings” item was disputed.

 

Actions:

• The member’s opinions will be sent to Bruce for second consideration.

 

Bruce Washburn presented a Committees Policy to the committees during the month.  The members reviewed the policy.

 

Henry did not agree that non-Rhinebeck residents should be involved in committees, and that only local voting members should be considered.

 

Dave’s responses were reviewed.  Paul believed that Bruce should be alerted when consultants are to be asked to perform tasks for the Town.

 

One item was disputed: “committee members who fail to attend three consecutive committee meetings… are considered to have resigned from the committee.”   Dave’s response was “attendance is difficult for some members, but participation in our frequent email discussions usually persists.  I would recommend adjusting the statement to ‘may be considered to have resigned’ or ‘fail to participate for three consecutive months’.”  Members agreed with the response.

 

 

 

6. Other Topics

 

Summary:

• Minimum software requirements were presented and discussed.
• An open invitation for members will continue on the website.
• A Tech Committee binder was presented to the team.

 

Actions:

• Dave will add Joe Kupiec’s email, jkupiec@hvc.rr.com, to the email list.
• Dave will add CutePDF to the minimum software requirements.
• The website invitation will be kept on the website; members will invite acquaintances to meetings.

 

Minimum Software Requirements

 

The Minimum Software Requirements for website administrators was presented and discussed.  An explanation of the request from the Web Committeee was given, and a brief discussion of each topic was performed.

 

Mike offered CutePDF as a possibility for PDF generation.  He also believed that image formats should be defined; i.e. TIFs should not be allowed.

 

Invitation For Members

 

Dave explained that another invitation for members was posted on the Town/Village website.  This time it was attached to the top of the page so that it was visible for the period it was on.  The team advised that the invitation be made available for next month, and that members ask acquaintance to consider.

 

Tech Committee Binder

 

Dave collected appropriate documents and bound it in a binder.  It was presented to the group.  The team advised that it be kept at the chair’s home, and that a second copy be generated for Bruce Washburn.

 

Recreation Committee Registration Review

 

Joe asked for an update on the Recreation Committee registration review.  Dave and Mike explained that the service was unable to facilitate certain registration types (e.g. families) and therefore the service was not used.

 

 

 

Next meeting.

 

One month, Wednesday, August 13th 8:00 pm at Town Hall