IT SOLUTIONS - SERVICES
The IT Solutions Department is a full service technology solutions provider, comprised of the following functional areas:
Administration
IT Administration assists in providing responsible administrative support to the daily operations of the IT Solutions department and management personnel. They perform a wide variety of clerical duties such as word processing, filing, and distribution of a variety of documents and respond to requests for information from supervisory staff and the public.
Here are some of the day-to-day duties of the Administration Staff:
Provide information on departmental and city policies and procedures as required.
Maintain a calendar of activities, meetings, and various events for assigned department management.
Coordinate and make training and travel arrangements; process expense reports.
Attend, record, transcribe and compose minutes of various board meetings; communicate with various members to determine meeting agenda; prepare and post meeting agendas.
Maintain records for employee activities, payroll, permits or related records as required.
Perform a wide variety of general secretarial work including the maintenance of accurate and detailed files and records and the handling of confidential information.
Handle all HR related functions for the department including PARS, Time and Attendance, paychecks, job advertisements/postings, hiring assistance, orientation, out-processing.
Manage service for many types of office equipment
CAD
The Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) section supports and maintains seven dispatch servers (IBM RS6000) and the Compudyne (previously Tiburon) dispatch software that coordinates all dispatch communications for Fire, Police and Marshal Operations interfacing with 9-1-1, Radio communications, and other agencies outside of the City of Fort Worth. CAD is a principle beneficiary of the support of other IT Solutions sections. As you browse through the IT Solutions web pages you will see that each section depends on the other to build and maintain successful hardware and software systems.
The Police, Fire and the Marshal's Office have installed Mobile Data Computers (MDCs) in more than 550 vehicles and 98 in Fire apparatus and are a large part of the CAD system interoperability.
CAD (Compudyne Version 7.2) interfaces to a number of City of Fort Worth and non-CFW systems.
Below is a short fact sheet describing how the CAD system interacts with the Public Safety community:
Geographical Information System(GIS a division of IT Solutions) supplies the data for the CAD GeoFile which verifies addresses
Incident information is available to both the Police Compudyne Records Management system and the Fire Department's Fire House Records Management System
Commands are issued to the Fire Station Alerting System to sound tones and turn on the station lights when a Fire crew is dispatched
CAD receives names and address information from Tarrant County 911 when 911 calls are directed to the Fort Worth PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point)
CAD interfaces to the Wants/Warrants system in Austin and interfaces to the Courts Maximus Records Management System for City of Fort Worth ( warrants only)
Fort Worth CAD creates a call for service in the MedStar CAD (Ambulance Authority), as needed
MedStar can automatically request the Fort Worth Police and Fire personnel to assist the MedStar personnel when dispatched
CAD interfaces with the City of Fort Worth Paging System to notify City of Fort Worth management of major Public Safety incidents
Police and Fire maintain two fully functional dispatch centers (the primary is at Bolt Street and the backup is at City Hall)
Police Communications operates 20 Call Taking positions at each dispatch center and four dispatchers, two dispatch coordinators and 4 Police Information Center personnel, as well. A fully functional Police training console is also available at Bolt Street as well as 2 back-up dispatcher positions
Fire Alarm Office operates 6 positions at each dispatch center. Each position is able to perform all the call taking, dispatching, radio officer, and supervisor functions. A fully functional Fire training console is also available at Bolt Street
Approximately 100 PCs support CAD operations at Bolt Street
Approximately 4,000 pages of Unit to Unit, Unit to Dispatcher messages are produced each day. (These are logged for investigative purposes and are destroyed after 1 year)
Customer Service-Customer Support
Customer Service-Data Center Operations
DataCenterOperations provides 24x7x365 onsite monitoring and support of core IT infrastructure within the City, after hours Customer Support, ad-hoc interface and report generation and central printing operations.
Customer Service-Desktop Services
Customer Service-Telephone Services The Telephone Services group of Customer Service Division is responsible for the maintenance and support of the telephone system throughout the City.
Some of the things you may see this group doing are: adding a phone, moving a phone, replacing a phone system, answering a trouble ticket on phone problems, etc.
Some of the things you will not see them do but may see the result of their work are: voice mail setup, call center configuration, call routing configuration, 911 Call support, etc.
The Telephone Services group is also responsible for the cabling that makes up the computer and telephone network. The group works on cabling designs for new facilities such as the James Avenue Service Center and the Zipper Building, as well as cabling designs for existing facilities, City Hall and Meacham Airport.
Distributed Apps
Distributed Applications builds and supports applications using Client/Server and Web technologies. The primary C/S technologies used are Visual Basic and SQL, while Web applications typically involve Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Active Server Pages (ASP), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, VBScript and Structured Query Language (SQL).
Web applications are rapidly replacing Client/Server applications as desktop tools due to the ease of maintenance and distribution, as well as the greater creative freedom afforded by the browser interface.
However, applications are still being supported in Visual Basic, as well as a variety of Microsoft Access applications, and a few that even predate Windows.
We also work extensively with the Microsoft SQL Server database platform; designing and building large databases for various customers throughout the city. For example, the data warehouse used by the Police department contains in the neighborhood of 170 million rows of data, with close to a million rows being added or updated every day.
Distributed Applications works closely with Platform Technologies to maintain the Web application infrastructure and debug performance and availability issues. We also rely on them to keep the database servers performing at peak efficiency.
We work closely with the Telecommunications group to support the Emergency Services Computer Aided Dispatching system (CAD), providing tools to manage response areas and retrieving call data for analysis and statistics.
Mainframe applications and Operations also contributes to the Distributed Applications group by providing data pipelines for a variety of information (like Police calls and Finance data) that end up in SQL Server data warehouses that link to Web applications.
Distributed Applications also works frequently in conjunction with GIS to develop interfaces for the Internet Map Server (IMS) and other GIS-enabled applications.
GIS
The IT Solutions GIS Department is used to provide geographic data and software to every department in the city. We have created the data and software infrastructure to maximize the data sharing while minimizing the costs to departments.
The GIS department also develops and supports enterprise projects that benefit multiple departments through the guidance of the GIS Steering Committee. See the links section below to see some of the applications we are working on.
Infrastructure Engineering
Infrastructure Engineering Division (IED)
Quality Government through Successful Communications
Fort Worth citizens and local government agencies depend upon the City of Fort Worth Communications systems to conduct routine business and obtain assistance during emergencies. With excellent customer service in mind, approximately 20 dedicated people in two sections work behind the scenes to ensure that these essential systems are ready when needed. As you browse through IT Solutions web pages you will see that each division depends on the other to build and maintain successful communication systems throughout the City. The two sections are:
Administration
Strategic Goal: Become the nation’s safest major city
The objective of the Administration section is to create and enable enterprise solutions to support the technology challenges of the City of Fort Worth, Public Safety and Local government. IED establishes and supports a framework based on, adaptability, flexibility, integration, security, and solid solutions that contribute to the success of the City. IED supports and creates change through planning of innovative technology solutions in city departments that benefit the Public Safety and local government communities. IED-Administration identifies the customer’s needs or opportunities, designs and initiates all communications plans that support the City’s goals.
Our focus is planning for the future.
Radio Services
Radio Services has supported the public safety community for more than 20 years. From installing and maintaining radio and microwave equipment, to repairing mobile communication units in Police and Fire vehicles - the Radio Services section is the premier one-stop shop for public safety emergency communications systems support and those that deliver critical city services.
Mainframe Apps
Mainframe Applications is presently the foundation of our data processing. Our primary functions are:
Development Accounting, Inspections and Permits, and Control File and Recovery, and Applications and Zoning.
Equipment Services Equipment Description, Inventory, Fuel, Employee Certification, Usage, Work Orders, Recovery, and Production Detail.
Finance Budgetary Control Interface to MARS, Fixed Asset Processing, Accounts Payable Checks, Financial Controller Interface to MARS, General Ledger, Interdepartmental Billing, Child Support Interface to MARS, and Information Expert.
Fire Inspection and Permits, Fire Supply, Hydrants and Address Verification.
Health Environmental.
Housing HRS-Housing and Human Resources, and EQIS.
Human Resources EEO Processing, Position Control, Salary Survey Reports, Personnel Salary Schedule, Temporary Services Billing, Recovery, and Human Resources.
IT Solutions Interdepartmental Billing, Operations, Production and Scheduling, and Long Distance Expense.
Municipal Court Administration, Jury Summons, Historical data, and Transactions.
MWBE Interface to MARS.
Occupation Health and Safety Occupation Health and Safety.
PACS Parks and Community Services.
Payroll, Time & Attendance
Police Accidents, Broadcast, Communications, Alarms, Warrants, Gangs, Pawn Shop/Property, TCIC/NCIC access, Jail/Prisoner, Youth, Miscellaneous, Notification Control, Offenses, Traffic, Personnel, Wrecker, Stolen/Impounded/Repo Vehicles.
Purchasing Bid Input and Printing, General Processing, Purchase Order Processing, Purchasing, and Vendor Bidding.
Retirement Annual Retirement Reporting, and Retirement.
Revenue Collections Appraisal, Cash, Improvement Districts, City and Homestead, Citywide Billing, Business Licenses, Real Property, Paving, and Zoning.
T/PW Building Maintenance, Street Division, and Refuse Collection.
TEL Lights and Signal.
Water Inventory and Appraisals, Field Operations, Profit and Loss, Sewer, Work Orders, Archives, Water Deposit, and Accounts Payable – Water Checks.
Platform Technologies
Platform Technologies consists of Information Technology Support Planners and Analysts who plan, design, and implement server-side network and security system environments. These engineers surface or structure the network environment by providing support, computer architectures, firewalls, applications and services implementation.
What does the Platform Technologies Team do? We:
Procure, manage, and support approx 140 servers.
Plan and execute all changes to the server environment.
Assess, design and implement upgrade and merging solutions.
Secure and monitor network and system environments before and after implementation.
Provide a highly available messaging system (eMail) via the MS Outlook Client or MS Outlook Web Access on the Internet.
Work interactively other Information Technologies groups Such as Distributed Applications (APPS), Customer Services Desktop Support (CSD), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), etc. to deliver solutions to our customers in the entire City of Fort Worth.
Provide 3rd level support and collaboration.
Systems Management and Monitoring Tools
Systems Management and Monitoring of IT Solutions Managed Environments
IT Solutions Platform Technologies Group has implemented a systems management and monitoring solution to help fulfill IT Solutions’ goal of assuring maximum performance, availability and security of key infrastructures, applications, business systems and services. IT Solutions, through the use of these tools is able to more effectively meet the following goals:
Assure Maximum Performance -IT Solutions, through the use of resource utilization data collection is able to view historical performance data to watch for systems and environments that are either being under or over utilized. IT Solutions can make better determinations of what remediation steps are needed to be taken to resolve issues or improve return on investments.
Assure Maximum Availability – IT Solutions is able to monitor critical systems at all layers of the Open System Interconnect (OSI) model and alert proper staff when problems arise or thresholds are reached that may indicate pending problems. By doing this, IT Solutions is able to more quickly react to these situations and keep down time of systems to a minimum.
Meet Service Level Commitments – By maximizing performance and availability, IT Solution is able to meet defined service level agreements with customers and produce reports on system and application availability. Click here to view AppManager reports. Click here to view Security Manager Reports.
Increase Efficiency – IT Solutions ability to monitor and manage through these centralized tools allows less staff to do more, meaning that staff is better utilized.
Effectively Manage and Monitor Ever Growing Security Infrastructure - IT Solutions is able to consolidate security data from across the enterprise (by automatically pulling data from firewalls, anti-virus, Intrusion Detection Systems, event security logs, etc) and utilize correlation, intrusion protection, and advanced reporting (including trending and forensics capabilities), to enable the identification and response to key security incidents - all through a central security console. This translates into the following benefits:
Reduces exposure time of city systems by using real-time monitoring for security breaches and policy violations and alerts operators and security personnel as well as run pre-defined automated responses.
Increases protection levels and ensures layered defenses are in place to maximize our security posture.
Boosts operational performance and improves Return On Investment (ROI) by centralizing our security products into a central security console, enabling real-time notification and automated response to suspicious activity. These tools also ensure compliance from all of our security sensors and tools and alert us about important issues, such as non-compliant firewall configurations or outdated virus signatures and vulnerability test libraries.
Patch Management
Introduction:
IT Solutions is entrusted with the task of keeping city owned systems up to date and ensuring data is not compromised by outside sources. This includes deploying security patches and updates to systems, as time critical updates become available. These updates are performed in a 5:00a.m. - 7:00a.m. maintenance window on a continual basis.
IT Solutions uses an automated patch management solution. This tool has the ability to discover patches that are missing in CFW-owned systems and reliably schedule and deploy them. The City’s aggressive stance on security has resulted in plans to deploy this solution to every desktop computer in the 2006 budget year.
One hundred percent compliance is an illusive goal due to the increasing frequency with which patches are released from various software manufacturers. By taking an aggressive approach to patch management, IT Solutions reduces the likelihood of a security breach.
Security
The goal of the City of Fort-Worth Security Program is to:
Strongly support a centralized security policy,
Ensure the compliance with various regulations such as HIPAA and Homeland Security,
Provide a more secure information technology infrastructure,
Put safeguards in place to protect sensitive information for City Departments.
What is Information Security?
Information security is all about data. Data can be any piece of information from your name and address to your social security number and your personal banking information. Data is essential to the work environment and how data is secured and maintained defines what priority the City places on information security. One way to gauge information security is the common acronym C.I.A. In this case, C.I.A. means:
Confidentiality – keeping data access limited to only those authorized.
Integrity – keeping data correct, not altered incorrectly.
Availability – keeping data accessible when the right people want it.
Business Analysis and Planning
The objective of the Business Analysis and Planning Division (BAPD) is to create and enable enterprise solutions to support the business challenges of IT Solutions and its customers. BAPD establishes and supports a framework based on process improvement, adaptability, flexibility, integration, security, and solid solutions that contribute to the success of the City’s strategic goals. BAPD facilitates change through planning of innovative technology solutions in city departments that benefit the community. BAPD identifies the customer’s business needs or opportunities that support the City’s business strategy.
BAPD strives to maintain excellence in process development and improvement. The main goal is to create and maintain repeatable processes that make completing daily business activities more efficient.
BAPD Resources adheres to the requirements set in the PMI and CMM methodologies for each stage of a project.
PMO
Program Management Office
MISSION:
To provide resources to facilitate, manage projects and procedural improvement through IT Solutions partnership, focusing on repeatability, measurability, and continuous improvement.
VISION:
The PMO will be a fully functioning, continuously improving PMO with established means for providing a full compliment of project and structural guidance, based on best practices and lessons learned.
Project Management
The Project Management Process defines the work to be done for a project and tracks a project from planning to closeout (against the project plan) and reports status to management. Effective project management allows management to take decisive action when deviations occur at any point in the life of the project.
The Project Manager is the principle party responsible for the health and welfare of the overall project. The Project Manager is the focal point and handles the overall communication for the project.
The City of Fort Worth, IT Solutions department follows the Project Management Institute (PMI) methodology, and Scrum Development Process, as well as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) guidelines. The IT Solutions project management process adheres to the requirements set in the PMI and CMM methodologies for each stage of the life cycle.
Business Planning
MISSION:
ITS Business Planners are leaders that facilitate change through planning of innovative technology solutions in city departments that benefit the community.
VISION:
ITS Business Planners will be an integral part of strategic planning adding value, quality and continuity to business processes enabling departments to accomplish their part of the city's vision.
Change Management
With a dozen developers working on a mainframe and over 100 network servers, the potential for chaos is great. Updates to one system can affect other systems on the same server. A method of communication and authorization is vital to keeping to city's computer systems running smoothly.
Change Management is the method by which all changes are documented, communicated, and organized so everything happens on schedule and by design. The process makes sure the appropriate people know when a change is scheduled and provides a forum for questions so everyone is aware of what's taking place on the city's network, mainframe, and telecommunications infrastructures.
Finance and Contract Administration
The Finance Division provides administrative and fiscal management support to the daily operations of the IT Solutions Department. They participate in the budget and fiscal activities and provide responsible administrative assistance to management personnel. participate in annual budget development process by gathering data, compiling information, preparing narrative and statistical justification for budget items and/or programs, calculating estimates and researching documents. Assist in monitoring expenditures and ensure adherence to department budget.
Coordinate and participate in procurement efforts for technology items for customer departments and IT Solutions.
Perform various fiscal activities including monitoring and submitting requisitions for supplies and materials, establishing purchase orders, monitoring expenditures, monitor fixed asset systems and depreciation, invoicing, correcting misapplied charges, and dispersing funds for payments.
Research and verify funds available for a variety of financial activities within the department; monitor contracts to ensure timely completion and accurate payment schedules.
Administer and monitor provider service contracts or city/federally funded grant programs for the department. Ensure services provided and funds expended are in compliance with contract or grant fund specifications.
Inventory administration for technology assets across the City.
Administer wireless devices including inventory and invoicing: BlackBerries, pagers, cell phones and wireless cards.
- Responsible for all new and replacement computer installations including refresh program.