CC PACKET 06141988 - Laserfiche WebLink

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HENORANDUM DATE: June 1011 1988 1 TO: Mayor and Councilmembers . FROM. David M. Childs, City Manager�f ITEM: UTILITY BILLING SYSTEM At the goal-setting retreat this February, the staff and City Council adopted numerous objectives, including studies for computerization of some activities within the fire, police and liquor departments as well as finance and utility billing. Because of the wide range of computerization options and the broad range of needs by the various city departments, it is important that current decisions take into account the long range needs of the City for data processing operations. To assist in this planning process, Mr. Jim Stern of Chapel Consulting was retained (on an hourly basis) to look at the City's various operations and the possible methods for a meeting our automation needs both in a short range and long range sense. Several factors led to the current plan: • 1 . Data sharing between departments is and will probably remain minimal in the near future ( 1-5 years) . Departments have need for some basic productivity tools, but not for a lot of data interchange. (Police, for example, have a need for very little interchange and due to confidentiality and security considerations probably would benefit most from a stand alone system. ) 2 . Physical separation of facilities (liquor from administration or fire from administration) makes it more difficult to share hardware resources like .printers or mass storage devices. 3 . Multi-user minicomputer systems tend to have a higher cost for comparable software. We propose to take advantage of the relatively low cost of microcomputer (P.C. ) software which is: a) available for the functions we need to perform; and b) transferrable to other systems if future system changes are made. Summary of departmental need/proposals at present time: a. Fire *hardware, small p.c. ; software, spreadsheet (Lo- tus 1 , 2, 3) and w.p. capabilities. *most likely to be in 1989 budget. b. Liquor *hardware, IBM PS2 is proposed through School District contract; software, Lotus 1, 2 , 3 . • *uses, inventory, accounting.