INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Carlow County Council is committed to developing and advancing information systems to increase the efficiency and quality of service delivery to our customers. The Councils Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) Department manage all information system requirements. 2016 was an extremely busy year in the ICT Department with many infrastructural projects delivered, significant work carried out on IT Security as well as cloud and software innovations.
Infrastructural Projects
Significant upgrade work was completed in key infrastructural areas of the councils ICT architecture. Seven tenders were received for a replacement datacentre for Carlow County Council in March 2016. The winning tender, a Dell Nutanix Solution, was awarded in early April. Nutanix is hyper converged datacentre infrastructure. It is built using state of the art technology which converges compute, virtualisation and storage into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. Already many of the world's most advanced enterprise datacentres rely on Nutanix technology to power their mission-critical workloads. Nutanix also contains cloud connect capabilities that will enable native hybrid cloud architectures by seamlessly integrating public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, with the new Carlow County Council datacentre. This new infrastructure will ensure that Carlow County Council has adequate hardware resources for the next 3 to 5 years. The migration project from the current infrastructure began in early May and continued until November 2016.>br> Carlow County Council have an extremely complex Wide Area Network (WAN). This network consists of many different elements ranging from Switches, Routers, Wireless Links and Fibre Optic Connections. As a result of this complexity, the network requires constant maintenance, monitoring and upgrading. A large number of new sites were added to the Wide Area Network including:
A significant amount of time was spent, as always, maintaining the council's key suite of business applications. This suite currently includes iPlan, iHouse, Agresso, ePayments, various websites, social media sites and platforms, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Sugar CRM, iDocs and ArcGis. These applications are all extremely complex and without these applications departments could not function.
A number of critical business applications received significant updates or were changed to alternatives during 2016. Unit 4 Agresso - Milestone 4, an update to Carlow County Councils Financial Management System, was rolled out successfully by the Finance and ICT Department during 2016. This was a significant update in terms of both Finance and ICT requirements as well as bringing significant change across the organisation. Assistance was also provided in late 2016 to the Library Services Department. This was in preparation for the rollout, in early 2017, of the new national Sierra Library Management System, which again is a significant change.
A new mobile phone app was developed in conjunction with Carlow Tourism in June 2016. This app called "Carlow" was made available as a free download for both Android and IOS. The app provides many tours around Carlow including a Walking Tour of Carlow, the Saints Trails and Garden Tour of Carlow. Each Tour comprises a number of "stops" with text, audio and photos about the stop and in some cases video. The stops are linked to the devices GPS which will help to guide users to the next point on the tour. The app will be used by both tourists and locals alike. The app was launched on Thursday 7th of July in the Seven Oaks Hotel.
A new Planning Enforcements system was developed in Dynamics CRM. Carlow County Council is responsible for handling complaints in relation to unauthorised developments in Carlow and these are tracked as enforcements. The enforcement process was maintained over the last 10 years in a Microsoft SQL Server database. This system, while adequate in its day, was no longer providing the necessary functionality required. In order to improve efficiency in the Enforcement process the ICT Department, in conjunction with the Planning Department, undertook the development of a new Enforcements System built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM during October 2016. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft. While the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing and Service (help desk) sectors its proprietary (.NET based) framework allows customisation to meet almost any requirement. The new system maintains the records in the same way as the older system but also has additional functionality including mapping, automatic letter generation and automatic reminders (within specified time frames) to name but a few. The User Acceptance Testing was completed in October and the system went live in December 2016.
A new Customer Service Portal was completed in Dynamics CRM in 2016. This online portal will be incorporated in http://carlow.ie (Carlow County Council website) and will facilitate online public submissions in the future.
National Broadband Plan
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is a state intervention that will provide high speed broadband to those parts of the country where there is no certainty that the commercial sector will invest. A Broadband Officer has been appointed from within the ICT Department of Carlow County Council to liaise with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the successful bidder and the Local Authority, to aid in the network deployment in the county. The plan aims to deliver high speed broadband to all citizens and businesses of Ireland with access to speeds of at least 30Mbps. A mapping exercise was undertaken to show areas that were already covered, or would be covered soon, by commercial broadband operators and the parts of the county that will be covered by the National Broadband Plan and this exercise will feed into the procurement process where a bidder(s) will be selected in July 2017.
ICT Security and Monitoring
IT Security is always a huge concern for the ICT Department with a significant amount of time and resources spent on ensuring that our network is protected from threats. This became even more relevant given the proliferation of ICT malware, viruses and ransomware. To this end, the ICT Department spends considerable time and effort implementing, upgrading, monitoring and managing the range of security measures on the network, email platform and devices, including mobile and tablet devices. In 2015 the vast majority of all staff were given ICT security awareness training for work and for the home. A large proportion of the resources in IT are dedicated to providing an extensive range of support services to council staff, Members and the public.
During the month of December major works were carried out on Rossmore to repair damage caused by vandalism to the Council's mast. This vandalism had the potential to cause major disruption to Carlow County Council's WAN. This mast provides connectivity to 13 Offices around the county. The vandalism was spotted immediately due to network checks which were in place and luckily the repair works were carried out in a timely fashion preventing any serious outages.
Cemetery Project
Phase II of this Plotbox project came to an end in December 2016. Over 45 graveyards were surveyed during the project and records, photos and GPS coordinates were attached to each cemetery plot. The success of this project, which received great attention, was as a result of collaboration between the ICT Department, the Finance Department, the Environment Department and Plotbox staff. Other graveyards will be surveyed in the coming years.
National Property Register
The Government's Public Service Reform Plan 2011 sets out the requirement to create a National Property Register. All state bodies, including Local Authorities, are obliged to compile, maintain and update their own property portfolio as this forms the basis of the National Property Register. The Housing and ICT Department of Carlow County Council compiled a list of registered and unregistered properties during 2016 and as a result submitted a number of properties to the PRAI for first time registration. This portfolio formed the basis of a bulk upload of properties to the Office of Public Works as they manage and maintain the National Property Register.
Local Area Plans
The Local Area Plans for Tullow and Bagenalstown were reviewed during 2016. The ICT Department assisted in the production of a large number of digital maps for both Local Area Plans. The Land Use Zoning maps for Tullow and Bagenalstown area are also used to update the national MyPlan Project. This ensures the public have access to planning data that is accurate and timely.
Infrastructural Projects
Significant upgrade work was completed in key infrastructural areas of the councils ICT architecture. Seven tenders were received for a replacement datacentre for Carlow County Council in March 2016. The winning tender, a Dell Nutanix Solution, was awarded in early April. Nutanix is hyper converged datacentre infrastructure. It is built using state of the art technology which converges compute, virtualisation and storage into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. Already many of the world's most advanced enterprise datacentres rely on Nutanix technology to power their mission-critical workloads. Nutanix also contains cloud connect capabilities that will enable native hybrid cloud architectures by seamlessly integrating public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, with the new Carlow County Council datacentre. This new infrastructure will ensure that Carlow County Council has adequate hardware resources for the next 3 to 5 years. The migration project from the current infrastructure began in early May and continued until November 2016.>br> Carlow County Council have an extremely complex Wide Area Network (WAN). This network consists of many different elements ranging from Switches, Routers, Wireless Links and Fibre Optic Connections. As a result of this complexity, the network requires constant maintenance, monitoring and upgrading. A large number of new sites were added to the Wide Area Network including:
- Rathvilly Water Treatment Plant
- Tullow Water Treatment Plant
- Sion Cross Water Treatment Plant
- Bagenalstown Water Treatment Plant
- Raheenleigh Water Treatment Plant
- Borris Water Treatment Plant
- Leighlinbridge Water Treatment Plant
- Ballinkillin Reservoir
- Rathoe Water Treatment Plant
- Mortarstown Water Treatment Plant
- Tullow Reservoir
- Borris Library
A significant amount of time was spent, as always, maintaining the council's key suite of business applications. This suite currently includes iPlan, iHouse, Agresso, ePayments, various websites, social media sites and platforms, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Sugar CRM, iDocs and ArcGis. These applications are all extremely complex and without these applications departments could not function.
A number of critical business applications received significant updates or were changed to alternatives during 2016. Unit 4 Agresso - Milestone 4, an update to Carlow County Councils Financial Management System, was rolled out successfully by the Finance and ICT Department during 2016. This was a significant update in terms of both Finance and ICT requirements as well as bringing significant change across the organisation. Assistance was also provided in late 2016 to the Library Services Department. This was in preparation for the rollout, in early 2017, of the new national Sierra Library Management System, which again is a significant change.
A new mobile phone app was developed in conjunction with Carlow Tourism in June 2016. This app called "Carlow" was made available as a free download for both Android and IOS. The app provides many tours around Carlow including a Walking Tour of Carlow, the Saints Trails and Garden Tour of Carlow. Each Tour comprises a number of "stops" with text, audio and photos about the stop and in some cases video. The stops are linked to the devices GPS which will help to guide users to the next point on the tour. The app will be used by both tourists and locals alike. The app was launched on Thursday 7th of July in the Seven Oaks Hotel.
A new Planning Enforcements system was developed in Dynamics CRM. Carlow County Council is responsible for handling complaints in relation to unauthorised developments in Carlow and these are tracked as enforcements. The enforcement process was maintained over the last 10 years in a Microsoft SQL Server database. This system, while adequate in its day, was no longer providing the necessary functionality required. In order to improve efficiency in the Enforcement process the ICT Department, in conjunction with the Planning Department, undertook the development of a new Enforcements System built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM during October 2016. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft. While the product focuses mainly on Sales, Marketing and Service (help desk) sectors its proprietary (.NET based) framework allows customisation to meet almost any requirement. The new system maintains the records in the same way as the older system but also has additional functionality including mapping, automatic letter generation and automatic reminders (within specified time frames) to name but a few. The User Acceptance Testing was completed in October and the system went live in December 2016.
A new Customer Service Portal was completed in Dynamics CRM in 2016. This online portal will be incorporated in http://carlow.ie (Carlow County Council website) and will facilitate online public submissions in the future.
National Broadband Plan
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is a state intervention that will provide high speed broadband to those parts of the country where there is no certainty that the commercial sector will invest. A Broadband Officer has been appointed from within the ICT Department of Carlow County Council to liaise with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the successful bidder and the Local Authority, to aid in the network deployment in the county. The plan aims to deliver high speed broadband to all citizens and businesses of Ireland with access to speeds of at least 30Mbps. A mapping exercise was undertaken to show areas that were already covered, or would be covered soon, by commercial broadband operators and the parts of the county that will be covered by the National Broadband Plan and this exercise will feed into the procurement process where a bidder(s) will be selected in July 2017.
ICT Security and Monitoring
IT Security is always a huge concern for the ICT Department with a significant amount of time and resources spent on ensuring that our network is protected from threats. This became even more relevant given the proliferation of ICT malware, viruses and ransomware. To this end, the ICT Department spends considerable time and effort implementing, upgrading, monitoring and managing the range of security measures on the network, email platform and devices, including mobile and tablet devices. In 2015 the vast majority of all staff were given ICT security awareness training for work and for the home. A large proportion of the resources in IT are dedicated to providing an extensive range of support services to council staff, Members and the public.
During the month of December major works were carried out on Rossmore to repair damage caused by vandalism to the Council's mast. This vandalism had the potential to cause major disruption to Carlow County Council's WAN. This mast provides connectivity to 13 Offices around the county. The vandalism was spotted immediately due to network checks which were in place and luckily the repair works were carried out in a timely fashion preventing any serious outages.
Cemetery Project
Phase II of this Plotbox project came to an end in December 2016. Over 45 graveyards were surveyed during the project and records, photos and GPS coordinates were attached to each cemetery plot. The success of this project, which received great attention, was as a result of collaboration between the ICT Department, the Finance Department, the Environment Department and Plotbox staff. Other graveyards will be surveyed in the coming years.
National Property Register
The Government's Public Service Reform Plan 2011 sets out the requirement to create a National Property Register. All state bodies, including Local Authorities, are obliged to compile, maintain and update their own property portfolio as this forms the basis of the National Property Register. The Housing and ICT Department of Carlow County Council compiled a list of registered and unregistered properties during 2016 and as a result submitted a number of properties to the PRAI for first time registration. This portfolio formed the basis of a bulk upload of properties to the Office of Public Works as they manage and maintain the National Property Register.
Local Area Plans
The Local Area Plans for Tullow and Bagenalstown were reviewed during 2016. The ICT Department assisted in the production of a large number of digital maps for both Local Area Plans. The Land Use Zoning maps for Tullow and Bagenalstown area are also used to update the national MyPlan Project. This ensures the public have access to planning data that is accurate and timely.
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Carlow County Council, Athy Road, Carlow. R93 E7R7 Tel. +353 59 9170300. |