Texas Technology - Fall 2008 - (Page 12) A Decentralized, Small-Town Past My first glimpse of Hutto’s network was in 2005 when I was hired as a consultant. When the first full-time position became available in October 2006, I was selected to fill it. At that time, the city operated on a few servers and about 60 workstations, the majority of electronic data was decentralized and much critical information was stored on local hard drives. It was a scary situation for Hutto because of its rapid growth. have any moving parts. The benefits were nearly endless — low cost, longer life expectancy, fewer failures, significantly less power consumption and centralized administration, to name a few. Another part of the thin-client project was the implementation of Microsoft Terminal Services, which moves all applications off the workstation to the servers in the data room and provides anywhere/anytime access to the city’s computer system and Once upon a time, population signs weren’t necessary in Hutto. Several factors were used to help choose our solutions and the route we would take to get there, but the “big three” were accessibility, scalability and centralization. As of 2005, Hutto had already moved forward with technology initiatives that would greatly improve efficiency. The city was implementing an automated meter-reading system for water customers, handheld electronic ticket writers for police officers, and a supervisory control and data acquisition system for city-owned water towers. All of those projects were great additions, but there was still much work to be done to provide staff with the resources and information necessary to keep pace with the growth. Several factors were used to help choose our solutions and the route we would take to get there, but the “big three” were accessibility, scalability and centralization. Another important factor in the equation was cost, or in our case, future cost avoidance. With the amount of growth the city was experiencing and the demands on IT, the operations had to change to effectively manage everything. This led to our first initiative, the Citywide Thin-Client Project. Hutto Trims Down When this project was implemented in 2006, thin clients were relatively nonexistent in municipal governments, especially at the level we’d hoped to use them. Thin clients are trimmed-down computers that run a limited operating system and don’t Photo by Micah Grau Photo courtesy of Tim Howell applications, while reducing the technology staff’s workload. This gave mobile workers, such as the police officers, full capabilities in the field, eliminating the need to return to the office to fill out reports and check e-mail. The project added four new servers, but hardware support on workstations has all but gone away. System maintenance has been significantly reduced. Also, since thin clients use less power, they can be classified as green technology, which leaves the door open for future remote work force initiatives. The thin-client project was a drastic transformation from the way things had been done before. The project received a Technology Excellence Award from the Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers in April 2007. During the project, all data was centralized and Hutto entered into an enterprise agreement with Microsoft. This agreement was a six-year contract that was prenegotiated by the state Department of Information Resources. This laid the groundwork for future projects. Before I came onboard, Hutto had mostly worked with outside consultants and lacked a clearly defined technology vision. After 12_TexasTechnology
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