Digital Pilots New Project Management Software
Digital Service has selected a new tool to centralize the management of inter-departmental projects, triage incoming requests, and measure progress against strategic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). Asana is a robust project management tool that allows for task tracking across projects and departments that we will begin rolling out to project teams this Summer. We are currently ramping up to use Asana to track tasks related to large-scale Citywide projects including the ERP-replacement project and Permit Management project and will be migrating our Digital Service request triage system so staff will be able to centralize, track, and prioritize daily and weekly tasks in one place. We are also using Asana to integrate our 2022-2025 Strategic Plan so our team can measure progress against our strategic objectives. Our goal is to ensure that our team is focusing our time and resources in the right places.
Digital Pilots New Mobile Application Management (MAM)
Digital Service is piloting new ways of protecting against data leaks through mobile devices. A data leak or data breach is the release of private or confidential information to an untrusted environment and is a common threat to government agencies and private companies. Microsoft Intune, part of the City’s Office 365 licensed suite, allows us to use Mobile Application Management (MAM) to isolate City-owned information on a mobile device in use by a City employee. MAM protects City data within each Office application (e.g. Teams, Outlook) and allows remote data wiping without affecting other data on the device (this is useful when an employee who has been using a personal device for work leaves the City). The rollout of MAM, working in tandem with Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) will greatly enhance data security for the staff and increase protection from external threats.
From 123 Internet and Telephone Accounts into 4 Citywide Accounts
AT&T and Comcast have provided City facilities with internet access, phone, and cable service for over 30 years. Over the years, new service connections for phone and internet lines through AT&T resulted in over 100 separate accounts with paper invoices for processing and payment. Additionally, Comcast services had been setup at facilities Citywide without being centralized into an enterprise account. The lack of centralization of these accounts meant staff was unable to process payments in a timely fashion, have visibility into what services we were paying for, or manage services through a single point of contact.
In May we began overhauling these services to reduce the time burden of processing payables, decrease the potential for lost payments, and increase visibility into our internet service provider (ISP) accounts. Over just a few weeks, we consolidated 100 AT&T accounts down to just one single electronic bill. Over the coming months we’ll work with our managed service provider to conduct a deeper dive into the City’s AT&T services accounts, analyzing usage to determine what services to keep, get rid of, or upgrade.
We’re in the final stages of purging and restructuring our tv and internet service accounts with Comcast. Currently, we have 23 accounts with Comcast. After analyzing these we saw a potential to not only consolidate and restructure but eliminate services at facilities that were no longer being occupied. Four accounts have been disconnected, saving the city nearly $8,000 annually. Our efforts in consolidating these accounts are the first step in a larger audit of telephone and broadband services citywide that will likely result in dramatic savings for the City of San Rafael.