 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host with Chairman Bill Gehring. And as you know, every month we focus on one of our departments. We have 23, nearly 1,300 employees and all of them rely a great deal on technological advances or frankly information systems. And today we're very pleased to have our Information Systems Director, Joyce Schneider, as our guest. Welcome, Joyce. Thank you. Now, those of you who have been following this program, you may not have seen Joyce for the last year or two because we takes a little while to get through the cycle, but it's good to have you back. And why don't you start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and how long you've been working for Sheboygan County? Well, I was gonna say I moved here to Sheboygan in 1974 and I worked for a private industry at that time in information systems. Been working for the county now for 31 years and 22 years as its director. Married, my husband Joseph, we've been married 31 years. I have a son who's in college at UW Milwaukee. And we really like the Sheboygan area. So 31 years with Sheboygan County and 22 years as director. And some folks may have heard for their first time, director of the Information Systems Department. What is the Information Systems Department? What are your roles and responsibilities? Well, our mission statement is to support a guide and assist in the advancement of technology for Sheboygan County. Our main primary responsibilities are to configure, install hardware and software. We develop and test new applications. We maintain the county website. We do training for end users like in Microsoft. Office applications that are out there. We also maintain a help desk for the county where we have end users can call in and get help on applications or trouble with a PC and they can log it either via email or a phone. We also do some mail room processing for four different buildings out there for the sheriff's department, the courthouse, the administration and the two healthcare facilities. So we've merged that part of the operation for the county and that has been a real cost savings for us as well. So a real breadth of area and I know we're gonna touch on some of them more in a minute, but when you share that laundry list, just how many employees do you have working for you in your department and how many departments are relying on the services that you provide? We have 14 employees in the department. There's 23 user departments that we service. We're also, as of 2004, we're also the payroll department. So we did pick up one employee in that process as well. And we have 13 remote buildings that we have connected either by fiber or by wireless communication. We have about 650 users on PCs and we maintain over 2,200 pieces of equipment. Staff rotate via non-calls, so we're on call 24 hours and they carry cell phones and pagers with them. And you've got an outstanding staff and I know they're in demand. Yes, very good staff. Sherman Gearing and I have an office in the administration building as you well know and when you mentioned 650 people with their own PCs and about 1,300 employees again in Sheboygan County, nothing is more frustrating than coming in and having your computer lock up or having a problem. And frankly, that doesn't happen very often and when it does, certainly you hear from people. Yeah, we do. But overall, it seems as though things are working very, very well. Right, and we keep parts and stuff available. So if we do have some failures, we can replace parts. We don't really have to always replace a PC or monitor. We do have spares that we have out there as well too. So it's worked out very well. So I just mentioned one challenge and that is making sure everybody has a computer up and running when they show up to work each day. What are some of the key challenges that you and your staff are faced with? As I say, some of the current ones are some of the public input now for information and they want it electronically and doing business electronically. So you're trying to balance the sharing of information in the user databases that are in the county along with the networking and just the traditional way of doing county business versus doing future stuff now electronically. And I see that going forward more so than a lot of the other stuff that is out there, but the electronic communications is gonna be a big issue. Is anyone using a typewriter anymore? I don't think so. I should say we have one in our department. We want to make make out some labels, but hardly use it at all. So with as many people that are relying on the service that your department provides and you're essentially a support department to all the other departments, as you mentioned, how do you go each year prioritizing? Who gets what? I mean, computers after they're nearly, what, two, three years old? They're almost getting outdated nowadays. How do you go about prioritizing and determining what employees are gonna get what upgrades and when? As I say, if it's big projects that we have out there, new applications, major pieces of hardware, we usually put that in a five-year plan so we know based on the year when those are gonna come due. Individual departments, we look at failures that are out there, looking at replacing equipment and the use of the equipment. With our Citrix Farm, we can extend that life, some of those PCs, five, six years, and it depends on the type of applications. And when the applications in a specific department become unable to be able to run on that particular PC, we move it to a department that might be a lighter user of technology and just try to extend the life of that equipment. But it's pretty standard as far as the software applications that are out there, so functionality-wise, we can move the equipment readily easily. Now, I don't wanna leave folks with the impression that every year or two we're upgrading computers because that's certainly not the case. But on average, what is the life of a computer and especially when you have to, at some point, replace 650 of them as they get old? I was gonna say, right now I would say it depends on the type of application. If it's a heavy use, usually three years, normally we can usually get about five out of it. We'll upgrade memory sometimes if we can extend that life and then we rotate. We don't replace all the equipment at the same time. We try to get a five-year cycle in there so that we try to keep an even balance in the budget that we're not having peaks and valleys in our budget cycle, so it's usually so much each year. And the final question before turning it over to Bill, you mentioned at the beginning that you've been with the county for over 30 years and director for 22. When you reflect on your tenure at Sheboydon County and specifically in your department, and let's just look at the last five years because I know how quickly things have changed. What are some of the key changes that you're seeing happen? Besides the equipment changing real quick, I would say the web development. We're seeing that remote users wanting to access and see government services online so that they have an extended time because I'm sure they're working eight to five like all of us and then wanna do and get access to information after hours. We also see in the county remote users. People that are going to homes or restaurant inspections that wanna take their PCs and laptops with them and be able to do business on the site. So it's the networking issue, the remote being able to do things wireless. And I see that progressing again in the future. It's just gonna be a different approach on how we do business at the county. Very good. Let's talk a little bit more about the website. We've had it up about three years so I was pleased that I was one of the supervisors who kind of pushed for us developing a web. As county board chairman, I find it very handy that if I forget an agenda or something, I can look at it at home. I can look at the minutes of a meeting. But how else might our public use the website, the county website? User departments are putting more information out there now. More so, we've seen the growth in the three years and we've done that by statistics. And just within the last few weeks, we received information from the public health department. They're gonna be putting information on for the start of the school system. We've been doing surveys out there for the planning for smart growth. We've expanded the tree and shrub program that land conservation has out there. And we also put out the 2006 farm technology days website out there for them as well, which Shabuaga County is gonna host next year. So the growth in that area, and we've been doing tax collections. So it's kind of, if you come up with a wish list, we've been trying to put that out there for people and what they would like to see. We're interacting with the web master. So information that comes in, there's suggestions sometimes of things they would like to see from departments. We've been putting that out there. I know registered deeds is starting to put out applications so that applications can be printed and filled out and sent to our departments. So it is becoming more automated. Really something great. If a viewer can't find it, if they put Shabuaga County into a search engine, they should find it. Otherwise, the address is www.co.shabuaga.wi.us. Another topic, the geographical information system, otherwise known as GIS. Going to finance, I hear a lot about that. We seem to be spending money in that area. How has that become more useful to the departments and the public? GIS is digitized maps and for the last probably eight years, the county has been working on with funds that we have received from the state and from the collection of fees in the registered deeds office building, a digitized map, which means we have intelligence built into that map. So as surveys are done or people purchase property or they split property, it can be done electronically. It's stored out there electronically, so you're not worried about losing a paper copy or having it destroyed because it's backed up as far as security as well also. We've been adding different layers to it, orthophotals along with it. We've been using these maps now in order to create boundaries for floodplains and locates sanitary septic systems that they're out there with permits. And it's just not having to go back and reproduce the map manually. You can bring it up and make the changes electronically and it makes it a lot faster and more secure. Okay, talking about mapping, the Shebug and County Atlas is another area that your department has really been involved in. Can you tell us about what I would call the new one? New one. Although we've had two or three versions of it, but it's really fantastic. We're on our second, the 2004 Atlas is the second version that we've done at the county. What we did is took and utilized the digitized maps that we had at the county, assembled those, created the indexes because we had all the parcels, the parcel owners that were out there and created the index, had lakes that we had out there. And from the first one, we took suggestions of what the public wanted to see in an Atlas, what kind of changes they thought would be helpful and we incorporated those into the second one. And time printing again from random like was generous enough to do the printing for the county and we've had real good reception on the map. If anyone wants to purchase the map, they can purchase them in the administration building, the treasurer's office has maps, county clerk has maps, so does the registered deeds and the cost is $21. They also have met the UW extension building now too, so egg building out in falls. So if anyone wants to pick a map up there, Atlas, they can do that as well. And then you can also go to the online and under the treasurer's department, she has an application out there where you could fill it out. And I believe it's a $3 handling fee. She would send it to your home as well or business, whatever it's desired. Okay, great. It seems that everybody has a cell phone nowadays but Shebuggin County is moving towards having a 911 system for cell phone location. Can you tell us how your department is involved in that? Yeah, again, that's gonna integrate with our digitized maps, cell phones. If the new cell phone that you purchase has a GPS function on it, that will give you a Latin long so it will pinpoint exactly where that cell phone is. And we're working with the sheriff's department, they have applied for a grant to help offset the cost of the cellular phone system because equipment has to be updated at the county in order to handle those types of calls. We're gonna be integrating the digitized maps so that the dispatchers, the sheriff officers and the squad cars can actually find the location and what road and where the access is on those maps. So it'll pinpoint it similar to the landlines that we have now out there. Okay, is that probably a year or two years off or any ideas that might lead the sheriff's department would it? Well, I think it'll depend on what we hear back on the application, how much we're gonna see come in from the grant as far as dollars. And then there will be a project out in the five-year plan that the county board will have to approve if we're gonna go ahead with it. So yeah, it could be a year from now, more likely. I think it's pretty certain that we will go forward with it, the issue would just be how soon it might become functional. Okay, then finally, document imaging seems to be all the rage. We have papers all over our offices. It would be wonderful if my office could become paperless but it's not going to happen. How is the county, how is your department moving towards paperless offices? If anybody was ready for document imaging and it's the government, there's all kinds of papers. So we did get a project last year. We had some money in the 2004 budget to start an initial project. And to come back and report as far as savings and what we could do with the imaging piece. So we did bring up just this week, in fact, our new release of our financial package and what we've done is integrate in all of our invoices for the county. And we're gonna go back to January, pick up January through July, but we'll have all of 2005 in there. And this should help bring down the cost because departments will not have to make copies of invoices that they used to keep in their department and file. The county will have it in a huge storage area. And when you go back to look at an invoice, you're gonna be able to see the picture of the invoice on the screen. You won't have to put in a physical file cabinet anymore. They won't have to file it. So it should help reduce the costs for the county in that respect. I've got a couple other departments. We're looking at payroll reports, doing something similar. Taxes as well, where we have to retain files for a number of years. Have been doing imaging for the registered deeds since 1992. So there has been some documenting out there and we've just been expanding on it since then. But it's a great project that's going forward. Okay, thank you. I can envision some of our viewers perhaps thinking document imaging and picturing some person standing there with a camera taking a picture of each piece of paper. How does document imaging work? What really happens there? As bills come into the county, the finance department has a scanner and it's a document feeder scanner. So they can take a pack of documents, put a separator in between there and process 50, 100 documents or more just during that one timeframe. And then what they do is they're gonna bring it up in the financial package, match it with the purchase order so that they know that it's authorized for payment. And once it's authorized, then it's available for viewing in the financial package. And rather than a room full of folders and boxes and shelves, you literally have all that in a computer desk or... Yeah, storage, it's big storage unit, mass storage unit. And that was part of the issue is we were looking at how do we release some of the document and get space because it's filled with documents out there right now. And this was one avenue is to start to put it onto disk and store it that way. Well, I'm sure people in this community, certainly people who follow their local government appreciate that no matter what level of government it is, budget challenges are growing each year and every year we hear of perhaps levy constraints that might be coming down from the state or local units of government trying to hold the line. And every year that makes it more and more challenging for a department head such as yourself to put together a balanced budget and ensure that with the county board for their final deliberation and decision. Even with that happening though, we still have seen a number of improvements and you just touched on some of them, whether it's the website or GIS or the document imaging. What else has been happening or what other projects are coming up in the future that are gonna continue to improve our technology? We have a large project that we're initially starting for health and human services. It's gonna encompass all five divisions of health and human services and it's gonna be case management and also the billing portion of it. So that's gonna start this year into next year and that should automate that process and actually provide better services for the public out there as well and giving them the information that they need in order to make some of those decisions. We're gonna continue on the imaging as I've got about three other departments already that are on board that wanna continue and they see with the rejection of staff and the need not to be able to have to file and to be able to retrieve information faster they're seeing it to a benefit as well in order to do some of the imaging. Our 911 system will definitely, based on approval will go forward in some means and we know for sure that we'll be expanding on the GIS or digital map because there is a lot of information out there from the ambulance and fire departments that they want districting the maps that they've never had done in the past. So there is a need to get that out as well as that providing a better service to the public out there. I wanted to go back to the website discussion a little bit because as Chairman Gehring mentioned, Bill was the County Board Supervisor that I can recall really was the impetus. In fact, I can still recall his email to me saying we need a county website. And obviously it was my job to work with you and you to take charge and lead it. And I think it frankly is one of the better county websites in the state. We've received good recognition and feedback from people on it. And those who are following this program or interested in learning more about county government, you touched on some of it but can't begin to express just how much information is on that website. You can go on there and learn about every department, their mission, roles, responsibilities, get a sense of who to contact. If you're looking to link to the state level and get information about what's happening with state legislation and other affiliated organizations from the county. And Joyce, I just wanna say thank you for your great work in that area and your staff. They've done a tremendous job and I really hope people will take the time if they have a computer at home or go to the local library. As Bill Gearing mentioned, the website www.co.cheboygan.wi.us. And if you have any suggestions for improving it or any suggestions that you might wanna see more information added to it, please either contact Chairman Gearing or myself or certainly Joyce or her staff because it's a tremendous resource for those who take the time to look at it. Back to where we started. 30 years ago, you began with Sheboygan County. Earlier I asked you, well, if you look back five years and you mentioned some of the technology advances and what people are expecting now from a standpoint of taking computers to the work site and that type of hookup. But if you look back 30 years, what are some of the key differences that you're seeing in Sheboygan County then versus now? A big key difference is difference in technology. I mean, when I started based on mainframes versus laptops now and the mobility that's out there, diversity of what we're trying to automate and even the challenges as far as automating the information and sharing the information. Used to be individual departments and mainframe. We couldn't share information. The mobility has given us that chance to do that and the networking is a big challenge. We're talking about between buildings now and wireless communication, which wasn't out there 30 years ago, so definitely it's been a challenge. It's a diversity and it's good. I think it's a good way to go and you have to like change in order to keep doing it. When you started as director 22 years ago how many staff did you have at that time? I was just saying, I think I maybe had 12 at that time. So our staff has stayed pretty stable. We've found better ways using technology. You don't always have to move to a remote site. Like I said, the help desk and that we can take calls. We can shadow PCs from our site right now and help fix problems that people might get into. So the staff has really stayed maintained itself. Their duties have definitely changed. I mean, they're not doing what they were doing 30 years ago either. They've had to retrain and learn different things. They still are programming techniques that are where out there. The structure is still the same, but the program languages are definitely different than what they've done. And I'm kind of glad to say that most of them that were with me when I became director are still working for the county and they're very good staff. We have just a couple of minutes remaining Joyce. Is there anything else that you'd like to touch on or share before we conclude today? No, I guess I just want to thank Bill and yourself for support and stuff in the back. Backgrounds and the county board for their support in the past as well too because without it, technology wouldn't have moved forward. People have to encompass it and endorse it in order to make it happen. And that's sure by getting county has. And what you see with Joyce is what you get. Not only a very professional demeanor but a very knowledgeable person who is highly dedicated to Sheboygan County. And she's not kidding when she said that her staff have really stuck with her. She has such a good team in place. And one of the things that I hope people take away from this program is whether you're dealing with the sheriff's department or a deputy that you needed to call for assistance, whether you're out at the airport or the Land and Water Conservation Department purchasing trees or shrubs, whether you stop in the county clerk's office for a marriage license, whether you go to the treasurer's office to pay your taxes. No matter what area that you touch in Sheboygan County, Joyce and her team, her staff have been a part of helping that department be successful. And if it wasn't for the Information Systems Department, our organization, as you know it, just wouldn't function. So we very much appreciate the job that Joyce and her staff do. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Next month, Chairman Gehring and I are gonna see if we can get through a 30-minute program without a guest. And it may be difficult, but next month what we're gonna do is talk a little bit about the county-wide program evaluation and prioritization process that Chairman Gehring is chairing as part of this process. All the 10 standing committee chairs are part of a committee that the county board put together about four or five months ago. And they're taking on an incredible challenge of literally looking at over 204, 210 programs county-wide, evaluating all of them, ranking, prioritizing all of them. And every department head, including Joyce, had to go into their own department functions, establish priorities, pull together summary information. And again, Bill and the other county board supervisors that are part of this committee have reviewed and ranked all the programs. They're gonna be completing their work next week. We are anticipating a final report by the end of July, early August. And next month we'd like to share with you not only the results of that work, but just what some of the priorities are as this committee has established them. It's gonna be one of many tools that will help the county board with the very difficult budget challenges that they have ahead. So until next month, thank you very much for joining us. And behalf of county board chairman Bill Gehring and the county board, it was good to have you with us.