2022 Report of the Cost of Government Commission

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY / AUTOMATION / ELECTRONIC RECORDS / DIGITAL PAYMENTS RECOMMENDATIONS: Increase the overall Department of Information Technology (DIT) budget from 0.77% to 4% of County budget. 2. Open up more full time employee (FTE) positions to increase the help desk capacity. To attract and retain talent, we recommend the County engage to bring the pay ranges up to competitive market rates. 4. Implement an equipment lifecycle management program to reduce costs through bulk buying, equipment recycling, and planning. 5. Adopt the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). This solution would allow security updates/ software upgrades/patches to be pushed out to the hardware/computers remotely. Saving time and freeing up personnel to work on other priorities. EVALUATION: The DIT subgroup, or Permitted Interaction Group (PIG) as commonly referred, took a look at the DIT with an eye on waste reduction and revenue potential. To do this, we used brainstorming sessions, DIT Director Scott Uehara's April 2022 presentation, DIT question/answer correspondence, Survey Monkey, and Commissioner Wakat's personal experience of 20+ years in the Information Technology industry. We looked at what it would take to create a standardized database across departments/ divisions so all property and individual information can be shared across the County without the need to maintain separate databases and teams. We found that in order to achieve the desired end result, the DIT would need to hire more staff and potentially purchase both software and hardware. Currently, the department is at capacity, with inability to increase the number of FTE positions. The department has 21 positions (4 vacant), with 16 positions being technical. It was suggested that there was waste in the way the payroll was dispersed. We were told that an employee drove around to all the County offices to hand out paychecks/envelopes. The question became could this be automated? Automation could be through direct deposit and emailed paystubs. Hardcopy checks could be picked up or mailed. The thought was this could reduce FTEs by one. We did not pursue this suggestion because it does not fall under the DIT. Another suggestion was around ethics training. Can we eliminate the in -person facility intensive environment by electronically delivering the training in small interactive consumable models that span no more than 25 minutes each, which could allow folks to complete training during working hours over a period of time? We did not pursue this suggestion because it does not fall under DIT. However, DIT would host the module training files the employees access, if implemented. 14 2022 Cost of Govemment Commission —County of Hawai'i - Final Report