Cities are approving budgets across the state. Folsom and San Francisco have already released theirs while another large technology spender, San Diego, is waiting on City Council’s approval.
Folsom
The city of Folsom will invest more than $625,000 in technology during the 2017-18 fiscal year. The budget was passed by the City Council on May 9 and will become effective July 1.
The top two expenditures are $119,280 for a GIS analyst, to gather geographical data and create maps, and $100,000 for document scanning and storage. The GIS analyst position is being reinstated to save on contracting costs, after it was cut in the budgets following the recession. Document storage will currently focus on creating electronic versions of the city’s development records.
Another $100,000 will be applied to replace computers, printers, hardware and software associated with city business. The city also plans to spend $25,000 on a police server to digitize evidence in cases. The budget mentions these costs a part of the maintenance and modernization of city infrastructure.
“Technology obsolescence can cause unexpected spikes in required spending for replacement, and a replacement schedule is an indispensable component of infrastructure planning,” the city’s budget reads.
Folsom will spend $60,000 creating a disaster recovery system and another $50,000 to upgrade the city’s fiber network.
San Francisco
San Francisco’s city budget, which includes fiscal years 2016-17 and 2017-18, calls for $52.2 million in IT spending.
“Over the next two fiscal years, the city will make historic cash investments in its capital, information technology (IT) and equipment budgets. Paying in cash today reduces long-term financing costs and reduces overall costs,” the budget reads.
Part of these expenditures are to maintain the economy and create jobs to draw residents in.
The IT expenditure’s budget under the General Services Agency will be decreased by $6 million, down to $108 million, in 2017-18. Outside of the GSA, the city’s public library will spend $11 million on technology, and the Public Safety Department and Health Service System will each spend about $11 million in technology, respectively.
The city plans to modernize the property assessment and tax systems which manage $195 billion in city revenue. Around $300,000 will also be spent on open source software to modernize the city’s voting system. Up to 90 financial subsystems will also be replaced and integrated by vendors selected from the 90 in the current vendor pool.
San Diego
San Diego will also reduce its 2018 Information Technology Fund by $1.5 million which could delay some software modernization throughout the city. A reduction of $2.9 million will also be made to the OneSD Support Fund, which serves the Enterprise Resource Planning that manages the city’s human resource and document management systems.
The Wireless Communications Technology Fund will also see a reduction of $113,000.
However General Fund expenditures are up $3 million from last year in the proposed budget, totaling $31.8 million for IT spending.
Transition costs to new vendors for network services will cost the city $3.5 million from the budget. The city will delay replacing about 27 computers until another year and reduce IT consulting by $30,000, which will include delaying upgrades to the city’s budget software.
Up to $53,000 will be spent to replace Fire and Rescue portable radios.
