 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty. And today we're pleased to bring one of our 19 department heads here to talk a little bit about their roles and responsibilities. A new face in Sheboygan County Government. Chris Lewinsky, welcome. Thank you, Adam. Chris started as our IT director. I think it's been about four months now. Time goes by quickly. So here we've already got him on the program and I can tell you he's hit the ground running. We're going to cover a number of programs and improvements today that Chris has been a part of. But let's start with the basic goal question. The folks are probably just hanging onto their seats. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Chris. And when did you... A little bit about your background or your family man. When did you start specifically with the county? Sure. So I started with the county on June 1st of this year after working for eight years out at Lakeshore Technical College in Cleveland, starting out there as a web developer and then most recently as their IT director. And I started IT in 2005. So this was kind of a second career for me. And this is after first having completed a bachelor's degree in environmental science at UW Green Bay and then serving four years in the U.S. Coast Guard up in Alaska. And so I've been in Sheboygan now for about 10 years and married to my wife Rachel and I have a almost 18-year-old son Hunter. Yeah, Hunter. I love that name. Forest Hunter. We're both big bow hunters. I know that. And you're from Marshfield originally? I grew up originally in Marshfield, Wisconsin. And other than my time in the Coast Guard, I've lived almost entirely in the state of Wisconsin, different areas. So eight good years at LTC? Eight great years. Great years. And then we were able to capture you for the county IT director position. Share a little bit about your first impressions of Sheboygan County and good or bad. What did you see? What are your thoughts? The opportunities here are great. I have just a fantastic IT team. We're a small department, but extremely cohesive and really a pretty, I guess, young department in the sense that a lot of us are new. So we have two seasoned veterans, if you will, with a number of years in with the county. But for the most part, most of my team has been with the county less than a year. So it's exciting to have kind of a new and upcoming team with a fresh perspective. So it's been a lot of fun so far. Good mix of veterans and new blood. Yes. Yeah, very good. You know, some viewers might be wondering, well, IT, we were just talking about acronyms before the program. Information Technology Department, what is the role responsibilities of the department you're overseeing? Yeah, that's a great question. So I may be a little bit different. You know, typically when people think about information technology, they tend to focus on the technology part. And really, I guess I consider myself somewhat unique and I tend to think more on the information side. So if I was to define the mission of Sheboygan County's IT department, it's really to provide Sheboygan County employees with the information and the systems they need to do their job. And so their job, of course, is to provide services to Sheboygan County residents. So in that regard, IT is really a big supporter of the county's mission, even if it's done indirectly. And so supporting that mission, our primary responsibilities are to make sure that that information is flowing efficiently through our network. And of course, that the county's data is kept secure and safeguarded. And then on top of all of that, obviously we need to do that in the most cost-effective means possible. IT is, I think, a real specialty skill set. And I think most of us who talk about folks in the IT department, information technology department, sometimes we wonder, well, what is it that they all do? You know how important they are because when your computer goes down or your software isn't working, you pick up that phone in a hurry to get some assistance. But we're obviously not interacting with IT staff day in and day out. What are some of the programs or systems that would be examples of what your staff support? Yeah, and that list is obviously very long. So we support, you know, there's department-specific software, so Health and Human Services, they have their own software. Our finance department with payroll and our budgeting, they have their own software system. Of course HR has their own systems. But then there's also the same system that we all use on a day-to-day basis. So some of the more common ones that our viewers might be familiar with with Microsoft Office and the whole Microsoft suite of products. So we support all of those, we work with all of those. But, you know, how I like to look at our IT function and when you think about what IT really brings to the table and what we're doing, I've always considered IT professionals more than anything, we're professional problem solvers. It just happens to be that technology is our toolbox that we use, but at the end of the day, and this is what I stress with my staff, is I just want us all to be really strong and creative thinking problem solvers. That's really where we bring value to the organization. Excellent explanation. You said earlier you have some veterans, you have some new faces, how many total staff do you have? Sure, there's a total of seven full-time county employees in the IT department. As the director, we have a business analyst, we have two programmer analysts, we have a network and system administrator and a network engineer and then a lead printer who runs our print shop. And then in addition to that, we have three contract employees who staff our 24-7 help desk. Supporting 19 departments, about 810 employees and I think over 207 programs and services. So a lot of opportunities to problem solve. Absolutely. So what are some of those key challenges or what would be some examples of when your staff and you need to get engaged? Yeah, so keeping those systems running on a day-to-day basis in itself is a big challenge. I would say the biggest challenge today that we have besides budget which is a whole other conversation, but I think it's the security piece today as you're well aware, just the last two or three years, cybersecurity has become such a hot topic when you look at the big breaches that have occurred in the last couple of years we had Home Depot and Target, most recently Sony and then even some of our federal government agencies have been hit with breaches lately and so security is such a big piece and focus of everything we do now. And then like I said, budget. Even though the consumer IT that we all use in our homes tends to get cheaper over time, enterprise IT on the other hand tends to get more expensive over time. It seems to be increasing every year and then the complexity there. So staying ahead of that technology and keeping our technical skills up to date is a big challenge. And you may have had both questions here. Clearly those are challenges. When you think of changes in the industry and in IT departments and their roles and responsibilities, what kind of changes have you seen over the last few years? You just mentioned a couple of them and then it's just the security piece. Well, I think we're not unique in that regard from some other county departments is we've gotten leaner certainly in the last few years as the county strives for efficiency. But at the same time it's not that we're being asked to do less, typically we're asked to do more. And keeping those technical skills relevant is challenging but again, I would say the biggest change in the last few years has been the security. And then as well as just the growth in the amount of data being generated and used is that's phenomenal growth there. Look at what's happening with our Sheriff's Department right now with combined dispatch and emergency radio system and this is over a $13 million total price tag and though they have vendors involved, IT, your role overseeing this and helping troubleshoot as well as maintaining it going forward, tremendous responsibility. We can't afford to have a dispatch center go down. That's right, that's right. That's a 24-7, 365-day a year operation and you're right, even though we've had heavy involvement with outside vendors and consultants, IT is heavily involved in that because at the end of the day all of that new equipment and new technology still needs to integrate and talk to our existing network and that's where we bring value is making sure that all of that stuff is going to be compatible and work together. Excellent. Thank you Chris, Roger. Thanks for being here Chris and it's great to have you with us. I especially appreciate your presentations at the Finance Committee and for our full board. Very concise and to the point and that's great to see and you hit the ground running. The county is working with the city of Sheboygan and the Sheboygan School District with the Ring of Fiber Project. Would you tell us a little bit how that would benefit the county and the citizens of Sheboygan County? Sure, that is going to be a big benefit to Sheboygan County government and then Sheboygan County residents. The biggest thing is it's going to be the increase in speed and what that means for the county is just greater and faster access to the information and systems we need to serve the residents of Sheboygan County. So it's really, it's the reliability of that network and then it's also going to allow us to do things that we previously have not been able to do. A couple of those things include having an offsite disaster recovery site. So if we would ever need to continue operations if our primary data center was in some way damaged we would be able to do that. And then even putting some of our nonsensitive data or information in the cloud where storage is getting it's getting cheaper all the time and it just makes good sense to do that. So having that ring of fiber in place will allow us to do things like that as well as collaborate on future projects with the city or potentially even the school district. And this is a big project we've been working on this for several years with great cooperation from the partners. Would you give us a brief timeline and where we are right now? Sure, yeah so that project has been a few years in the making so it was roughly about three or three and a half years ago that my predecessor and my role kind of came up with this idea for building out this fiber optic network in the Sheboygan area and then initiated those conversations with the city and the school district and garnered their interest and their support in joining on with this project. And then roughly a year ago is when we engaged with this engineering firm and they started the original design of the network and looking at what that project would take. And then this year it's really been kind of formalizing that agreement with our two partners and drafting the inner governmental agreement that codifies that arrangement and then the procurement. So we put two requests for bids out this spring one for the labor part of the project and the other for the materials part and we awarded those contracts in August and I'm happy to say we're beginning construction this month. And it's a big project could you talk about the cost involved and how the share has helped us reduce the cost and what percentages are we involved with in the school and the city? Right, so you're right it's a big project and with that it comes a sizable price tag but we need to look at this very much as a significant investment for the county. The project total costs are 2.5 million or thereabouts the lion's share of that about 1.9 million of that is for the labor alone just the digging of the trench and laying the conduit and pulling the fiber through that most of that is labor. The materials contribute about another quarter of a million and then about 330,000 engineering fees and the project management. So all told that 2.5 million again it's a large project it's not a project that probably any one of the three of us would have been able to tackle on our own but the three of us coming together it makes it a very viable and smart project. Sheboygan County's portion of that 2.5 million is just over three quarters of a million so it's about 760,000 again not an inconsequential number but certainly a lot less than had we tackled that on our own. And what opportunities has this created and the title of the project Ring of Fiber maybe you could mention about the redundancies and how that's a benefit too. Yeah so the ring itself is just as its name implies it's this circular network of fiber and it's interconnecting the various county, city and school district facilities. And the premise behind a ring configuration like that is if anywhere along that ring there is a cut or damage to the fiber the ring has a self-healing nature whereby that traffic then is rerouted back through the ring not any different than if there is a road closure and you have to reroute traffic and ultimately that traffic gets to where it's going it just takes a different route to get there. As far as the opportunities we already talked about the increase in speed we talked about the increased reliability and what that does for us is it just allows us to do things that with our current bandwidth speeds we just couldn't even conceive of. The biggest one of course is having that offsite disaster recovery but then also increased speeds allow us to take advantage of the things in the cloud that we wouldn't be able to do now things offsite and then just being able to connect with our partners we're already doing the combined dispatch with the city and having this high speed connectivity between the three will allow us to do things like that. Well thank you Chris and thanks for the work that you and your staff do for everyone in Sheboygan County. Thanks Roger. As Chris is well aware we have a number of departments or facilities throughout the county particularly the Rocky Knoll Healthcare Center Highway Department we're looking at centralizing that in the future out in the Plymouth area and some of these counties have not enjoyed some of these counties some of these departments have not enjoyed as reliable service or a number of years ago could literally see the keying as they were going on the computer which was incredibly frustrating we've made significant progress since then but you mentioned a number of times that this new network will be much faster how much faster how much more reliable can you give our viewers a feel for just how much faster this is going to be? Yeah so it's it's significant so right now we're at 20 megabits per second and we're going to 10 gigabits per second which probably doesn't mean to anything to anybody outside of IT but when you do the math we're talking speeds of up to 500 times faster than where we are now so it's significant. And then the bandwidth what's available on this fiber I know from time to time when we download things now or receive information that can be somewhat of an issue depending on where the facility is in the county this will provide for a far more reliability to communicate information which again it's going to be there. Yeah so this really speaks to that efficiency and productivity gained just by the ability to share that information quicker. Can you see this lasting 30 40 years what's the life of this? Yeah the average lifespan of a fiber optic network is roughly 30 years so that's the other thing the other part of the project that you know we don't talk about it a whole lot you know everybody is focused of course on those large upfront construction costs but really over time over the course of 30 years when we look at what we would have to pay for that amount of bandwidth from a private provider there will be cost savings over the long term life of that network. You know what I appreciate in this discussion and I know you do as well Roger is that we're living in a time where we kind of call it the new norm in government where I don't care what government it is. Everyone's been tightening their belts and striving to gain efficiencies and we've seen reductions over 10, 15 years ago we had about 1,350 employees working for Sheboygan County and today we have 810. We have state imposed levy limits on how much we can raise property taxes which is an important revenue source for the county and that really has put pressure on myself and Sherman Distruty and the full county board to prioritize there's only so much to go around and that's okay, we need to prioritize and when we talk about the ring of fiber personally it makes me reflect on the support that Roger and the board has given us a staff to continue even though we've been holding the line on taxes and we've been gaining efficiencies and we've reduced our overall footprint and reduced our staffing and we need to be innovative and made some good investments ring of fiber, you just talked about at length, there's other departments that certainly can give examples as well but what else do you see coming up here in 2016 and beyond that will be a good investment to improve our organization going forward? Sure, so in the immediate future obviously a lot of the work that we're going to be doing is in support of the ring of fiber so upgrading our network equipment to handle those greater speeds obviously we want to always be working on strengthening our security posture implementing systems we currently have two software implementations going on, one for our health and human services and another we're just starting with our land record software for tax collection purposes we want to continue to implement systems that are going to increase efficiency but you know the biggest thing that I see for the future is the increasing mobility of our workforce when I think about whether it's our planning and conservation folks working out in the field to social workers making site visits even our highway workers out in Sheboygan County roads the need for that information as well as communication with other departments we want to just see more and more of our workforce being mobile working on tablets or iPads or their smart phones and so maintaining those devices deploying them in a cost effective manner and then securing them really is where I think the county is going to need to look at investing its technology dollars in the future is in the mobility of our workforce and bringing the technology to them where they need it Excellent and on a less technical point but very important to our workforce and to our ability to recruit and retain good employees people that enter our courthouse I think often get the impression what a beautiful courthouse we have I mean it is a gorgeous marble facility and a very grand institution you go into some of the offices many of them have been improved over the years but there's one that largely hasn't and that is our IT department I would say that over the course of the last couple of years we've done a lot to reorganize it and there's been a little bit of paint here and there but generally speaking when you walk into your office or your department it has sort of a 60's or 70's look to it what are the plans here in the near future to upgrade that facility and again really help us attract and retain young professionals who want to be in a work environment that doesn't look like it's their great grandparents basement Great point and when you say 60's or 70's you're probably being kind We do have a project scheduled for early in 2016 where the core of that project of course is to reduce the footprint of our data center our server room itself and that's really to realize some efficiencies with our cooling and energy and that sort of thing but as kind of a byproduct of that shrinking of our data center is it's going to open up our office area and so we're going to take advantage of that and really kind of revitalize our office area and we have a I would argue one of the best views in all of the county facilities we have a beautiful fifth floor view overlooking both the downtown Sheboygan as well as Lake Michigan and so we're kind of considering some different open office kind of ideas and at this point you don't really take full advantage of that particularly the lake side that was used as a storage center for years and I believe it's exciting to come in as a new director and have the opportunity to really reshape remodel your department it is fantastic and it goes back to having that relatively new young team and everybody's excited about this and for them to have some input and say and what their office area looks like everybody's really excited in talking about that so we're anxious to get going on that project just to see it done as am I and I appreciate the support again that our county board has provided we've been holding the line this was another difficult budget process going into 2016 but again strategic investments are being made whether it's in IT whether it's in our highway department and new facilities planned for in the central part of the county and in Plymouth whether it was the recent addition that we're trying to improve our services there or in this very building we had our engineering building dedication here at UW Shaboy again just in the last couple of weeks so good things happening in the county and one of the most recent was the hire of our IT director Chris Lewinsky, Chris thanks for joining us today thanks Adam and thank you for joining us next month we're going to bring yet another department head to talk about her roles and responsibilities Rochelle Valesky our Rocky Null focusing home administrator we've turned that place into a five star facility we always knew we had a good thing going but on the survey responses that the state puts together some of those stars weren't quite where they we wanted them to be and Rochelle and her team have got it a five star facility and right now word of mouth couldn't be better about the services provided at Rocky Null so we look forward to having her next month we look forward to you joining us have a great fall and be safe