2014-09-04 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

Home

Mr. Mitchell: Well done. Mr. Jacobs: So you know and they’ve coming up with the new program and we’re testing that out for them. I’m hoping they’ll offer us another good time deal for next year, but I haven’t heard back. Our thought is we wanted to try and get as many people trained on the new office product because Office 2013 is radically different than what they may be using if it’s 2003. So a lot of people have taken the office product to get ready for when their PCs come in which should help quite a bit. Mr. Mitchell: Hi from Kona. Don, you mentioned two words that for us and our duties is very important and you said consolidate and sounds like you’ve consolidated emailing, internet, antivirus software, licensing. Have you also figured it’s cooperative purchasing agreements? I’ve heard you use that term once before and I just wanted to dive into that pool a little bit more, sir. Mr. Jacobs: Sure, sure absolutely. Most of the time, especially for software and licensing, we buy off the Whiska contract which is the western states something, something agreement. It’s a government buying plan that the State uses as well and they’re preapproved vendors. So we get a really good discount rate on software and those sorts of things. We haven’t done any real consolidation other than the software at this point within the County itself, but it’s definitely something worth perusing because the more you buy you get the price point brought down. Mr. Mitchell: Thank you. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Don, I know there’s a real push for energy security and sustainability for the State. So I’m wondering because you are an IT position, what are your thoughts on that, I mean they want to integrate more solar and wind but without like a firm base load power it seems to me that we cannot rely on IT to work on those intermitted resources. Mr. Jacobs: Yeah it’s a balancing act for sure. I know that West Hawai‘i is solar powered and they net meter back to the grid so all of the electricity that’s generated and used at West Hawai‘i is from the solar panels and because it’s on the grid we get a steady feed and any excess we I guess we sell back or we get budgeted back to HELCO. So yeah I think, I think it’s worth pursuing; but you’re right, it’s difficult because you don’t know what your power needs are going to be and you need to have a steady stable power source for a server to work for example. Ms. Kelly: Where does the Police Department stand with IT? Mr. Jacobs: They have their own, like I said they have their own IT staff. They are very cautious and for obvious reasons for security because of the data and information they handle. So I, I think they’re comfortable with working with us, but they’re still going to want to have a certain level of control of at the security level for them and that’s entirely possible in convergence or consolidations world. Again, we’re just in those discussions with them and we’re just starting to see some of that conversions happening so I don’t have a real good answer for you on that. 11