It is the responsibility of the Information Technology Division of the Finance Department to provide uniformity and control in the analysis, design, development, project management, documentation, programming, and operations of the Town’s data processing systems and services.
The Division oversees a wide and varied network of buildings, hardware, and software. The network connects Town Hall, Public Services, Wastewater Treatment Plant, Highway Garage, Guild, and Adult Day Services buildings. These buildings are connected through the Town’s own cabling system maintained by the Communications Department. The network signals are transmitted between each building and the Town Hall through Black Box DSL Extenders. The buildings connected in this fashion have full access to all Town network services (servers, printers, firewall protection, internet use, email, etc.) wherever deemed necessary. These six buildings have approximately 85 personal computers and laptops and 43 network printers and copiers all connected through seven 24-port smart switches.
There are six main servers meeting the bulk of the Town data needs. These servers run four different operating services. The Alpha server runs OpenVMS and hosts all the town custom application data, which includes Town and School accounting, fixed assets, investment tracking, building inspector permits, tax assessor’s billing and receivables, water and sewer billing and receivables, Town Clerk’s receipts, probate, moorings, dog licenses, archive vitals, archive voter, and archive land evidence records.
There are several other smaller subsystems that meet individual department needs. The RecWare/Safari server runs Windows NT and hosts the Guild’s class enrollment scheduling. The IBM iSeries server runs OS 400 and hosts the BrownTech land evidence management system. The Vision server runs Windows Server 2003 and hosts the Tax Assessor’s Vision Appraisal CAMA package. This server also has the business tangible record management system using RRC software. The CLT server runs Windows NT and hosts the CLT CAMA package from prior year revaluations, which is used frequently. The AccessData server runs Windows Server 2003 and hosts the firewall ViewPoint software, some town-shared MS Access databases, and some shareable directories. The GIS server is maintained by the Planning Department's GIS Division.
The bulk of the day-to-day applications are written using the ADMINS software tool and are all in-house designed. Several departments use some custom MS Access databases to track their data (i.e. Street Inventory, Septic System Tracking, Library accounting). The Vision CAMA package as well as the ADP Payroll system have their own report writing software that we use to export data from the these systems and import into other systems. For example, payroll data is exported to the ERSRI system for retirement records, and tax assessor data is exported to the Town website and the Vision Appraisal website for public inquiry. These exports are also used to meet public access requests for data as they arise. The ADMINS data, several MS Access databases, and the Vision CAMA data all have exports that are used to create the GIS database that supports the mapping system with the backend statistical data. Several exports are created for MS Excel and are used by many departments for specific needs, as well as allowing us to fill many ad-hoc requests by departments for one-time use data.
The IT Division maintains 65 email accounts, 3 scanners, the SonicWall 2400 (firewall), the SonicWall CDP (continuous data backup device), 7 single-use DEC VT’s, 3 DEC Server 700’s, and approximately 10 Linksys small office routers. The School Department connects to the Town through a VPN tunnel that only allows them access to the ADMINS accounting system. This type of access has been initiated with the Police Department and is in the early stages of connectivity.