2022 Report of the Cost of Government Commission

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Several suggestions from the brainstorming activity were similar in nature. All four suggestions are good ideas, except for the fact the DIT is already at capacity with the inability to increase headcount because of budget constraints. We did not pursue any of the following suggestions for that reason. • Initiate a paperless system for payments, registrations, reservations, and communication with the public consistently throughout all departments. • Accept credit cards countywide to complete transactions currently requiring "in person" cash or check payments. Examples are for licenses, taxes, and renewals. • Explore using technology to enhance resident access to info: transit tracking apps, affordable housing waitlists, campsiteibeach permits. • Launch a dashboard to show down -time for databases or file systems missing or not available to the public. The hope would be to show a downward trend in public data outages. A final suggestion from the brainstorming activity was to implement a wireless, web -based, real- time, preventative maintenance program for all County equipment. This suggestion sounds like a virtual desktop (VDI) solution, where the County would push out the various updates/upgrades remotely to the computers. We decided to move forward with this suggestion. We sent out an electronic survey to the employees of DIT. Unfortunately, only one person responded, yielding the results unusable for this report. (16 filled positions, 1 response.) FINDINGS - During a presentation by DIT Directly Scott Uehara on April 14, 2022, it was stated that the County is having challenges recruiting qualified candidates and stated that the department was at work capacity. We took a look at DIT staffing, salaries, and work capacity. The DIT budget for FY 2022-2023 is 0.77% ($4,611,078) of the total County operating budget of $597,324,945. This pays for the 19 FTE union employees, and 2 FTE exempt employees. Of the 19 union positions, 4 were vacant. This 0.77% differs from the industry recommendation that an IT department maintain an average of 4.5% of the operating budget; or $26,879,622 in this case. We looked at specific ways to attract new hires. One way was to explore internship programs with colleges. We found that the department was already working with the University of Hawaii, Hilo Campus to recruit, and has been approached by PACBLU. In the past, the department has worked with Hawaii Community College. Because the DIT is already engaged with internship programs, we decided not to pursue this area further. Another way to attract candidates was through large sign -on bonuses. We found that the department is hesitant to offer sign -on bonuses. The logic is that the bonuses offered to the administration positions had a nominal effect, if any, on the number of applicants; therefore, it 15 2022 Cost of Govemment Commission —County of Hawai'i - Final Report