Mayor targets Lynn City Hall’s info-tech system for major overhaul

LYNN – The flow of information is about to pick up speed at City Hall.A plan to revamp information technology services and with it the city’s computer network is already under way.”These days, you can’t run a business or a city without IT,” said Ken Weeks, a technology consultant hired by the city to oversee the upgrade. “The previous mayor didn’t understand that and so he didn’t invest in new equipment.”According to Weeks, the city’s computer network really isn’t a network at all, since most departments operate independently. “There is no chief technical officer for the city. The police, fire, public works and school departments all have their own networks and most of them operate on phone lines, which are outdated,” he said Tuesday. “Each fire station has its own phone lines running into the building. It’s the same with the schools. They all connect to the Internet independently.”Weeks said high-speed fiber-optic cables, which will eventually replace the phone lines and link all departments, are currently being installed. Similar plans are under way for a central municipal Web site for the city of Lynn.”The schools have a Web site and so do fire and police, the EDIC and City Hall, all of which must be managed by somebody. Bringing them together and having one source manage all of them would save money as well as make more sense in terms of bringing everyone to the same network,” said Weeks, adding that Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy has made the IT upgrade a priority. “The mayor is open to it. She understands the need.”Since the fiscal budget for 2011 has been finalized on the municipal side, Weeks said finding funds for IT improvements may have to wait until next year. “We are doing what we can with limited funds,” he said. “We have purchased refurbished computers and the mayor is using one of them. It cost $150 and does everything it is expected to do. We’re trying to retire some of the rogue computers, the machines that are so old they can’t take the new virus protection software.”Many of the computers in use are riddled with viruses and loaded with spam. Some have protection software, some don’t. On most days, the 140 desktop computers at City Hall run slowly because all are connected to the same T1 phone line.A T1 phone line can transfer data at a rate of 1.5 megabytes per second. By comparison, a fiber-optic cable can handle 50 megabytes per second.”Once we move to cable, we can get rid of Comcast and Verizon. There will be no need for their phone lines,” Weeks said.Other strategies under consideration include moving to so-called cloud computing, in which a company or a business stores its information on remote servers rather than purchase and maintain its own.Weeks said he set up a similar system for Lynn Economic Opportunity, Inc., that for $30 monthly backs up the organization’s files automatically each night.”Lots of businesses out there offer that kind of service for relatively low money,” he said. “And that’s one of the things we are trying to do – save money.”Virtualization is another possibility, involving the use of leased desktop computers serviced by an IT company that also stores and backs up data.”What virtualization does is turn desktop computers into dumb terminals, something we had years ago, so we have come full circle. There’s no need for a tower because the information isn’t stored on the desktop.”Still another plan would replace the row of computer servers with a single, larger model, which gives off less heat and demands less electricity.”There’s lots of room for improvement in the IT area,” said Weeks. “The mayor wants to bring the city into the 21st century. It’s a different world. We recently implemented an e-mail and Internet usage policy. The employees sign it, agreeing to use the Internet in a responsible manner. They aren’t going to be downloading music or surfing the Net on eBay and Craigslist while they’re at work.”The policy also addresses obscenity, forgery, impersonation, intimidation an