“Most importantly we have the Cisco phone system that needs upgrading, some network cleanup and new equipment for improved performance of the network,” said IT Director Dan Early.
The phone system is at its end of life and requires a server and software upgrade and a network cleanup to prepare for new equipment, he said.
The court motioned to approve the spending as presented in authorizing IT staff to solicit outside bids that couldn’t be handled in-house.
Among the list of this year’s initiatives, according to the budget documents, are:
- Planning and staffing for projects
- Moving forward to a government cloud
- Replacing the phone system
- Upgrading its Exchange server
- Completing the justice and courts Navigator upgrade
- Completing additional projects for public safety, justice and courts
- Upgrading the VMware iSCSI network to 10Gb fiber
- Upgrading the network backbone from the county annex to the justice center
IT sits under the county judge, according to the organization chart, and it is funded via general and capital funds. Its budget is more than $500,000 according to documents.
The county uses Bonfire for procurement. They recently closed a procurement for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in the Microsoft Azure Government Cloud.
In the same meeting, the court approved the Texas Association of Counties Cybersecurity Training Program for county employees to be completed by August.
