 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And as you know, every month we try to bring to you another department and we've got a number of them. 22 departments, nearly 1,000 employees, 206 programs and services. And we have one department head in particular who has to provide infrastructure and service to all of the 21 other department heads to keep them running. And that's our Information Systems Director, Joyce Schneider. Joyce, thanks for joining us today. Thank you. Joyce has the tremendous task of making sure that the software and hardware needs, computers are taking care of all of that important infrastructure for all departments to run. And if anything breaks down, she hears about it. Thank you. Joyce, please begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and when you first started with the county. Thank you. I was going to say, I have a degree in data processing and a minor in accounting. And I worked for medalist industries in Oshkosh after I graduated for almost two years. I married my husband, Joseph, and we moved to the Sheboygan area in 1974. I started for Sheboygan County as a programmer. I went back to school during that time while working full time and I also earned a degree in management. And in 1982, an opportunity came up and I was promoted to the director for the department and have held that role ever since. So you have had the pleasure of being the IS director since 1982. 82, right. 82. And you could probably count on one hand how many complaints you've received. Exactly. I know that you get a lot of flack from department heads when things fall apart, whether it's your responsibility or a lightning strike, but you're always the troubleshooter and the ones getting folks back up online. What is the primary mission and responsibilities of the IS department? Well the mission of the department is to support, assist, and guide in the growth of the advancement in Sheboygan County. And over the course of the last few years, the county has consolidated in a cost-saving effort so that the department has also expanded so that we're also the payroll department. We have the courier system. We have the printing department and we have the mail room for the county as well. But your fundamental role is? Still the information systems department. And we support 22 counties. We support the various federal and state agencies that they work with as well as vendors that are out there as well. And we do have 11 buildings out there that we support. 22 county departments. 22 county departments. Nearly a thousand employees. How many computers just? We have over about 2,000 pieces of equipment. There are PCs. There's printers. There's scanners and flotters and communication switches. So there are various pieces of equipment out there too. So there's a number of layers. When you have issues, what you have to check out and make sure that's still working for you. There's always upgrades and ongoing maintenance. How many employees are in your department that are interacting with all the other department heads in providing this assistance? We have 14 employees that are full-time. We have one temp employee. We have actually out of those 14, seven that are the technical staff for the IS. And then we have three accounting clerical people. And then we have two in our payroll department. We have one in the courier and our temp. And we have one in the printing department as well. Do you ever feel like just taking a break and just getting in the mail truck and driving around as a courier for the day just to kind of get your head out of the game or are you probably not? Not really. I was going to say I love data processing. I love the automation and the changes. And I think that's why I've always been in it. What are some of the key challenges that you and your staff experience day in and day out? I would say probably the key challenges right now is the growth in automation as fast as it's growing and the mobility of it. You have more laptops out there. You have GPS units. You have blackberries out there. And the issue is always to make sure that you secure those pieces of equipment and also encrypt the data if something never happens to them or they get lost at that point in time. Along with that, you've got the bandwidth issues that you have the bandwidth and the communications up and going. And it's the storage issue because as you gather more information, your data growth is also expanding what is needed for your hard drives and also how you back that information up and secure it for the county as well too. And all that information does have to be backed up and stored for I think up to seven years, is it not? In some cases, more. Because I was going to say depending on the departments, you have some retention taxes in some cases have to be stored up to 15 years. Financials are seven. Depending on health and human services, some of that has to be out there for the duration of the case or the client that they're working with. Same thing with law enforcement, depending on the particular case that they have out there, it needs to be retained permanently. And register of deeds is one that you keep out there forever because land goes on from generation to generation. So the data that you want to keep out there needs to be protected. I think it's remarkable the reliance that people now have on their computers. And our viewers watching this, certainly if they rely on a computer, work with the computer every day. If the system goes down, not only is it really frustrating, but every now and then you'll hear from a co-worker, well, geez, there's nothing I can do until this is brought up. And I always find that somewhat remarkable because I know there's phone calls to return or paper to file or other things that can be done. Materials to read on the reading pile that we never seem to get around to. But without question, your department has such an important role with keeping folks working hard and keeping those systems up and running. As you look back at the last few years, what do you see as some of the most critical challenges that you've faced? I guess some of the ones that we've seen as some of the stuff has been changing. And that's exactly as keeping the equipment up, being able to be notified as soon as possible. We've set up a help desk so that we can at least address the issues as quick as possible. We have software that we can remote out to some of the remote buildings so that we don't have to have staff leave that department as well also. And we've installed video conferencing in our courtrooms. So this is equipment and telecommunication that they're expecting have up every day and they rely on it. So yeah, we put UPS systems in. So if we do have power outages in certain areas, we can at least maintain some of that even if it's in a limited state at that point in time. And we do see more and more webinars taking place where the state is doing additional training so that there's less travel between agencies and yet they can still communicate. So it is getting to be more of a critical condition out there for them to stay up. All our focus has been predominantly on the 22 departments in Sheboygan County. But really, it's not just the county departments that you're supporting or assisting the law enforcement agencies throughout the county. All the towers that we have in place for communications throughout the county, tremendous responsibility in your department. I think your relationship with the city of Sheboygan, all the municipalities, you're just always there and helping. Please touch on that a little bit. Yeah, it's not an eight hour day job. I says, usually working 12 hours sometimes a day. And we have staff on call 24 hours and we rotate that through the staff. And they carry a cell phone or a pager along with them. And a number of times when they could get the calls, it may just be something that they can take care of on the phone. Or if they need to come in, they'll replace a monitor and we might have a spare one sitting there for them. But yeah, staff are on call 24 hours. So I says, it's a whole career. Very good. Thank you, Joyce. Joyce, in 2002, the county developed a website with the work of your department. That's really turned into a nice tool and a good resource for the people in the area. It's www.co.sheboygan.wi.us. But could you tell us a little bit about what kind of a resource this is for our constituents? Sure. We've expanded. It has grown and it's grown very well as far as the usage. And we can see that because we have put notices on the front page. So if there's events that are coming up, we try to keep people informed of, let's say something from the veteran's office or when we had the H1N1 flu, the nurses used that quite a bit to put the clinics out. Get the information out so that we were giving the correct information out there as well. We have road construction out there. And then within the various departments, they have information as far as most frequently asked questions so that constituents can look up. We've done surveys through the planning department for them. So it definitely has seen a growth out there and we collect taxes. Through right now, we've got from starting in the year 2000, if you looked at your tax bills, they are out there as well too. So people can go out and compare that. They can see maps out there now. So there's a lot more information being used by a number of various people out there as well. Just touched on maps. We've been working hard to develop a good geographical information system. Could you explain a little bit about the GIS is and how it is a attribute for our citizens as well as our departments to utilize this information? Sure. GIS is used by a number of departments in the county. And what we did a few years ago is we were able to bring a GIS person on our staff into information systems and we centralized it onto a database. So we were able to collect all that information that we had developed over the years, created the layers out there, not just for the tax parcels, but photos, contours, waterways and stuff, road names and that out there. And by the ability of doing that and putting it on a database, we have law enforcement using it. We have public health using it, registered deeds, a number of departments now that are using those maps and that out there in various ways. And that is continuing to grow. We see that a lot out there. We're talking about now putting some software out there for our planning department. And we see them using the GIS as well also in an extended way. That's great. You've also been involved in preparing our Coney Atlas, which we print on a bi-yearly basis. Could you explain a little bit about how your department gets involved in that and where people can pick up an Atlas? Sure. Because we did develop it now and put it onto a database, it's much easier to extract the information electronically. So we have been doing the actually Atlas development internally within the county and then submitting it to someone to print. And we're actually looking at if in the future we could reduce our cost by maybe printing that internally as well also. And it can be picked up in various departments. We've expanded that besides the Treasurer. I know the Register of Deeds has it, Planners has it, County Clerks has it out there. And I think we even have a few at the highway department. So we've tried to place them where constituents are coming in and it makes it easier for them to be able to pick one up. You also have been working hard with our Sheriff's Department. They've been upgrading our emergency 911 system. Could you explain a little bit about what work you've been doing with that department? 911 was also part of GPS and that was a geographical system as well. And that is now completed and in place. And that was the use of the cellular phone so that when a call came in and the cell phone of the caller had a GPS internal within that cell phone, it would give the address to the dispatcher at that time so they could dispatch out where that location was and who the first responder, the Sheriff's Department or Police Department, whoever was the caller at the time. And that is in place. And if you didn't have that when the call came in, what it did is by using GPS and your LATs and longs, it would give you a triangularization where it would create an area. And so if you were rural, it would also be able to kind of pinpoint within an area where you were and still be able to send out the emergency vehicles out there for them. And that has been very helpful. I mean, we've used it in the Marsh a few times. I know that it has helped as far as being able to find people that were utilizing the 911 cell system. And it's amazing how everybody's using cell phones now. It's really needed. And I'm glad to see we're changing and keeping up with that technology. The county also keeps a tremendous amount of records. As you explained earlier, some have to be kept for seven years and some forever. And I know you're going through an imaging process with many of the county departments. Could you give us a little bit of history on where that is and what advantage that is for the county to image these documents? Yeah. What we did a few years back is we bought an enterprise imaging system. And we started with our accounts payable department. And we brought them up really first. And so all the invoices coming into the county are scanned in. And this eliminated a lot of physical storage that was needed. Plus, you know, the staff time to go back and do the filing and set up the folders and everything. And that was very successful. So because it's an enterprise, it means all of our departments have that ability to use it. So we've expanded it to bringing in tax information, excuse me, tax information as well. And now we're going to be doing permits for our planning department also. That's great. Well, with that information, I'll turn it back over to Adam to wrap up. Joyce is probably coughing because she knows the next question is dealing with our budget. And of course, anytime we talk about the county budget, we all start coughing a little bit. It's been a challenging decade, frankly, for all levels of government. The economy, certainly the last few years has made it even more so. But as you look ahead, I think we're just in for more challenge. And you're a big part of our budget development process. Every department head needs to prepare a budget. And what makes yours more challenging than many is, of course, you're allocating your costs to other departments. And they always look at that and wonder, hmm, is this right? Or how do I reduce those costs? What are you, what's your sense of the budget process as we go forward in the next year, two years? How do you see that playing with your department? And how do you feel you can continue to be successful in these times of great budget constraints? Yeah, I was going to say what I've been trying to do as the budget has been changing. I'm always trying to look to save money in different areas. And we've consolidated a number of areas. We've saved money in some of those areas quite a bit over the years. I've been looking at mass storage areas where we can extend the time of those units maybe to a longer period of time for saving. Maintenance contracts I've extended. We've been using lot less energy as we replace some of the older equipment. So we have seen the savings through our building services department as well. We've consolidated some of the department's equipment. I know that we have equipment for the DA's office. And we also just finished bringing up today the last of the CCAP equipment. So there's more space in different areas as well, too. We've taken advantage of any software that is out there so that staff can push software out to equipment. They don't always necessarily have to go to the user as they did in the past. That has helped us out as well, too. The only bad thing is a lot of times if we do see savings and we save within a various department, we don't get the revenue back into our own department. So the best I can do right now is try to keep mine as an even keel to help those departments out because they don't always see it because our costs may not go down. But if I can avoid from them going up, that should help them out as well, too. And you've done a very good job in that regard. So you have come up with a number of opportunities for savings. We have garnered efficiencies. We're always striving to do that more. Yet at the same time, we either need to ride the wave of technology or we can get buried underneath it. And you know how important it is to keep up with new infrastructure and new software hardware. Even with the limited budgets, you're making good things happen. What are some of the upcoming projects or investments we're going to be making in Sheboygan County in the technology area? Our Registrar of Deeds has a new upgrade coming up here this next year. And that's probably, the last upgrade probably was about three, four years ago. So this is, you know, getting our hair first in a long time. We have a planning project that's going to put out to the web, a new application for some of the septic pumpers out there so that they can actually access and enter the information online versus coming to the courthouse and filling out the documents. They can do that right online. And that should be up. It's going to be put in place January 1st of 2011. And we're going to be starting the implementation probably this next month. And we're going to also have for our squad cars for the Sheriff's Department. And I need to do a server upgrade this year as well, too. And right after the first of the year, we did upgrade our financial system, which was probably about two years ago with an upgrade on the server and the financial software. So that will take us out another two, three years again, too. So we've expanded the life on that. I know Chairman Van der Steen was looking to see wireless put into the administration building. And you recently got that done. And you've also made some nice improvements out at Rocky Knoll. Please touch on that. We've expanded as far as the communications out there as well, too. We boosted the signals out there so that the speed is a lot better out there. We've also put a wireless and various buildings out there. And we've actually upgraded the hubs communication equipment out there. So they are going to be ready for voiceover IP or whatever new telephone system they need because the system they have in place is very, very old. And that would be the next upgrade that they're probably going to need to do out there as well. So it's capable now. It's a matter of when they'll get the time and the money in order to move forward on it. And in order to broadcast to Rocky Knoll or the highway department or other facilities or the cell service that you mentioned earlier, being able to respond to someone in the marsh who may be lost. Where do we have our towers? Can you briefly touch on, you know, some of the locations so people have a better understanding of where these towers all are and what we're responsible for maintaining? Okay. There's five towers out in the county. I believe there's one in town of Holland. There's one out by the old county hospital building. There's one and more in the southern part of the county. And then we've got Taylor Hill right in the city of Shebaugin. There's one out at Rocky Knoll. And then we also have one off of 67 as well also. And you also have some equipment on top of Sunny Ridge, which of course we've now privatized, recently just sold the north building. But I understand an agreement's been worked out so we can keep some of our equipment there. Right. What's on the building? The number of buildings that we have are 11 of them. So there are remote buildings. And because of the cost of the telephones way back in the 80s, we just couldn't, we were able to come up with a better way of doing it to save the county. We went with wireless communication on our various buildings. And because the courthouse has the height, we can actually by line of sight, we can see the majority of buildings within the county. With the Taylor Hill towers and some of the other towning towers that we have, we can hit those towers also by line of sight. So rather than occurring a cost that we're going to have each month, we have radio and antennas out there similar to how we use the microwave system for law enforcement out there as well also. So 35 years now with Sheboygan County, you've obviously seen a tremendous amount of change, particularly with how technology is advancing nowadays. What have you enjoyed most about your 35 years so far? I love the technology changes. I mean, if I didn't, I wouldn't be in it. But it's helping the people to get them to learn the new technology, to see things that we used to do differently in an older fashion and not be more productive in doing it and be able to communicate and give information to the public that we've never been able to distribute before or they had to come in, dig through books, be able to find that and now we can give it to them readily easily. So it's been tremendous. I like the automation field and it's been good. And dare I ask, but what if you like the least? When the system goes down and the calls start coming in, we said, we'd love to have one of these systems that would just take the call and we'll get back to you as soon as we can and just work on the problem. But you know, you take the call, we write it down, we have a help desk and then we try to get back to the users as soon as we can to tell them that they're back up and running and what the problem was. And sometimes if it's just, it might have been somebody that either had a power outage in that building and now the network came back up, but they came back, let's say, after lunch and they didn't even realize it at that point in time. So those are the easy ones to fix, but if you have some of the squirrels that get in our transceivers sometimes and some of that transformers out there, yeah, those are a little bit tougher to fix. Now, Joyce, we just dedicated the Marsh Tower. Was your group involved in the camera that's up on top that? We started with that originally as far as coming up with the idea of the camera up there and being able to rotate the 360, bring it back into the building. And then when we changed it back to the different funding source, then that changed over at that point in time. But I was out there for the dedication and I climbed the 144 steps. It was very good. It was good. I'm glad to see that that was accomplished. We're always looking to improve here and Mike, one of the things he's championed since he's been chair and is just working more cooperatively with the city where we can share services, consolidate. There's always talk of that, but you need leaders who really have the muscle to see it through and really want it to happen. And we've made some progress in that regard. Occasionally, you hear folks suggest, well, why can't the county information systems department and the city information systems department perhaps consolidate or share more? A lot of people, I think, don't realize that there is a lot of shared service between the two already. But what are your thoughts in that regard? As I say, we have been sharing a lot of information. We do have a fiber connection between the city and the county buildings. So we can access information. They have our tax information. They have our planning information. So we are sharing information back and forth. And in fact, we had a meeting yesterday over at the city on the opportunities now that the county has the city real property listing data. How do we get them the right data back on a timely basis and what do they really need? And so we had a various number of departments there so that we brought them all together so that we could find out what each of them needed there and so that they had the opportunity also to ask questions of us. We're going to be continuing to do some printing for them so that they're aware that there's a printing department so they don't have to upgrade some equipment. We talked about being able to not bury telephone numbers in there. And so there's icons out there as well also for them. Well, Joyce, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have questions of our information systems department, please don't hesitate to contact Joyce. As you can see, she's very friendly, very professional, and very knowledgeable and certainly she'd love to hear your questions or suggestions, particularly for our website. We've really worked hard to make that a valuable resource for the community. Joyce has been a big part of that and if you have suggestions for improvement, please again, don't hesitate to contact Joyce, Mike, or myself. So until next month, thank you for joining us. Speaking of next month, we're going to have another department head, one that you don't see very often and perhaps hope you never see. And that's our corner. County Corner will be here. He's getting some new office space at the courthouse, new yet old. And we'll talk about that more next month. So until then, on behalf of the County Board, Chairman Mike Van der Stien, thanks for joining us.