10-21-13 Worksession - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Community Development has phones for the Building Official and the Building Inspector/Code Enforcement Inspector. These positions are frequently out on inspections and use their phones to call whoever they need for resources or back to the office. They too have smart phones and they also have one tablet that they are implementing to use for inspection worksheets and also to take code enforcement pictures where they can make notes right on the picture which is date and time stamped. Parks and Recreation have two phones, one for the Parks and Recreation Manager and one for the Recreation Programmer as they have frequent calls from recreation employees; the manager has alarm calls, etc. They do not have any tablets. There is one phone with the Emergency Management equipment as part of our plan. All the Directors have cell phones which are used to keep in contact with City Hall and emails when they are out at meetings. The City Administrator currently uses his own phone and we have suspended the number, but do have a phone (as it was free under the contract) so we do not pay any service on this number at this time. All of our minutes are pooled, meaning some employees only use it for emails, some for keeping in contact with departments and City Hall, others use it daily for work and when on-call. By pooling minutes, they are available to the entire group and we pay the least amount possible. The City Council all have tablets (except Dave McClung whose tablet is one my desk and will be used by another department if he wishes not to use it). These are the HTC Flyer tablets with the scribes to write on them. We currently have 5 reserved for City Council, one for Community Development as described above, one for Administration (which may be going to Community Development), and two for Public Works also as described previously. Our average bill for all of this is about $1,450 a month. This includes 12 tablets or air cards in some cases for laptops, and 18 phones (as one is suspended or it would be 19). With recent technology changes, we have been utilizing the tables, laptops, and the phones to be more efficient and taking advantage of the new technology. Staff did explore a policy whereby we would reimburse employees and they could use their own phones, however, this means that their private phones numbers then become public and if we get any data practice requests, they must then provide us will all their cell phone bills which would include all their personal calls, etc. Another positive point for City owned phones from the IT side of things is that, when there is turnover we get the phone back with all the data and we can have it cleaned of any City information (as we do with laptops and computers). We cannot guarantee this cleaning of City information if personal cell phones were used and City applications were run from them. Recommendation There is no recommendation as this was just an update from staff to the City Council, unless the Council would like to discuss this further.