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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2014-09-04 Cost of Government Commission Minutes COST OF GOVERNMENT COMMISSION c/o Office of the Corporation Counsel, 101 Aupuni Street, Suite 325, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 MINUTES September 4, 2014 – 1:00 p.m. Puna Conference Room, County Building 25 Aupuni Street, Suite 1501 Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 Commission Members present: Susan Maddox, Chair Ashley Kierkiewicz, Vice Chair Douglas Espejo Linda M. Kelly Delan Perry John Mitchell (via videoconference from Kona Council Room, Conference Room A) Also present: Katherine A. Garson, Assistant Corporation Counsel Jennifer M. Kualii, Secretary Shanell Sarsuelo (assisting/observing) 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chair Maddox at 1:02 p.m. 2. STATEMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC None. 3. DISCUSSION, QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH DIRECTOR DON JACOBS, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY REGARDING HIS RESPONSE DATED APRIL 14, 2014 TO QUESTIONS IN THE COST OF GOVERNMENT’S MARCH 12, 2014 LETTER. Ms. Maddox: Introduced Don Jacobs, Director of Information Technology. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Sure, thanks for joining us today. I’m sure you’re aware of the work that this commission is tasked to do so we imagine with the world’s becoming more integrated with technology, you play a very important role in County operations so we were just wondering if you could just give us a brief overview of what’s happening Minutes in italics are verbatim. Hawai‘i County is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer within your department, we’ve met with other department heads and you know IT always comes up so I thought it would be great if the group could just talk to you in person and then also it be interesting to get your insight on how the County might have been impacted IT-wise as a result of Hurricane Iselle. Mr. Jacobs: Oh sure absolutely. IT touches everybody so that’s probably why you hear from, our name brought up every time somebody comes and chats with you. One of the things that we’ve been looking at I thought was kind of interesting when I got your note back in March and I replied to it because I been seeing things from a Cost of Government stand point because of the convergence of technologies there are ways that we can save money and one of the things that we just, we just about finished deploying is the new email system for the County and what’s nice about is it’s replacing four independent email servers from various agencies into one. So instead of having to maintain software, hardware and support for four separate systems we’re going down to one. So I mean we’re starting, that’s one example of some of the things that we’re seeing that we can start to do. The technologies really do start to interconnect I mean this a good example we’re making a video conference connection to West Hawai‘i and that’s over the County network. That’s the County fiber network that spans from all the way from Pāhoa is the far end and it goes north Hāmākua and all the way down to Ka‘ū. So we have connectivity along that route and so we are seeing more and more things starting to communicate so it’s very nice that we can have these kind of meetings without having people drive all that way. See what else I had here. Were there any specific, I mean you wanted to know if there’s, what kind of impacts we may have had from Hurricane Iselle. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Sure. Mr. Jacobs: It was minor from our point of view. We did, because of the power fluctuations, lose about four or five network switches around the County network. They were older switches so they couldn’t handle the power fluctuations and we had to replace those. But beyond that we did don’t lose connectivity other than we had one failure in Waimea that kept us down for like a day to communicate to East Hawai‘i and we are looking in trying to put a redundant connection to prevent that in the future because we (are) realizing the importance of communications particularly in an event like that. So what we’re doing is we’re getting ready to stand up another separate internet connection in West Hawai‘i that will be able to make a secure connection across the internet from the East side of the island to the West side of the island and in case we lose that fiber connectivity. So that’s one of the things we’re trying to do to keep that going on because we have a East Hawai‘i Civil Defense location and a West Hawai‘i one and they communicate on a regular basis during an event like that and they use a lot of videoconferencing so it is important to try keep that running. So we’re looking to do that as well that way people wouldn’t have to travel between the two places. Other things that you know that we’re starting to see that we also, because we share that network a lot of the different agencies are all on the same network and we’re looking at consolidating the support and maintenance of that network so that we don’t get duplication of effort in terms of keeping that network operational and I think more robust in terms of if there’s one place you can go to troubleshoot it, you’ll be able to get a response quicker for it. So that’s one of the you know what we’re looking at from that another way of converging the technologies. 2 Ms. Kierkiewicz: Why is like the support maintenance spread out? Why isn’t it not consolidated? Mr. Jacobs: I think it’s a historical situation, we’re actually looking at that right now, I mean… Ms. Kierkiewicz: So you’re saying there’s like an IT technician within each department? Mr. Jacobs: Not within each department, there are what I would say are five separate agencies within the County that have their own IT personnel in them. There’s the County of Hawai‘i in general, which is the larger core, we’ve got about twenty people on staff. There’s a separate IT group of people for Police they have, I think they have three positions and one is full the other two are vacant right now. There’s two people for Prosecutor’s, one for Housing and one for Aging and I’ve trying to been doing some research on that because it’s always been that way since I’ve been here and it kind of, typically what happens in the IT world is, fifteen, twenty years ago it was a centralized IT kind of thing with a main frame and there was one place that managed all of that. When PCs started to come along the centralized IT departments and this is not just the County, this would be anywhere in general. They couldn’t react fast enough to put PCs out there and so departments saw a need for a piece of software application so they spun up their own IT to support that particular need and I think that may have been what happened here as well, but what we’re seeing now I think on the industry side is because we’re starting to share information like email it can be shared globally. We’re starting to see those things starting to collapse back down into a single support. I think there’s still a need for each of those agencies maybe to have somebody embedded within them because they do have specialized technologies and security requirements so it’s helpful to have an embedded person, but if they were all part of a larger IT whole I think it would be a little bit more efficient because you don’t have to duplicate things like email and file shares you can use, the economy’s of scale and share those sort of things. So that’s kind of, I think that’s kind of why we’re there and we are looking at that. We work very closely together, but it is difficult to have a long plan, a long term plan or direction to take the technology as a whole if you got five different entities and they are all trying to do the same thing or something slightly different then there may be some compatibility problems, but if they’re working together it’s a lot more efficient and we can still meet everybody’s needs but do it in a much more organize fashion. And that’s the one thing that I’ve seen that I think would be very, very helpful as we go on. Ms. Kierkiewicz: And that’s something that you’re working on? Mr. Jacobs: We are working on that yeah, we’ve been having discussions about that we, because of this new exchange project we’ve been working together so there may not be an official change to the way that we are organized right now, but there’s an organizational or structural change you know there’s no problem when there’s a need from central IT to say okay we need to go this direction that the other people they agree with that and they start to come in so we just you know we’re working our way through the process it’s a change that is going to take quite some time it’s quite complicated to make that transition if we decided to collapse it all in a single one again. But no 3 decisions have been made on that so it’s really kind of premature where that’s going to go, but the awareness is there. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Is it safe to assume that it be more cost effective? Mr. Jacobs: I would assume that it would be I mean if I just look at the exchange server as one example. There were four different exchange servers, email server installations, one at the County, one at Police, one at Prosecutor’s and one at Housing. So that meant that there were four separate licenses for those exchange servers, four separate maintenance plans, four separate groups of people maintaining what is now collapsing down to a single one. So we’ll have a single place for the licensing, the single place for support and because the single exchange server is aware of all of the mailboxes of everyone in the County it also improves the communications. I can look at a calendar for someone at Prosecutor’s and see if they are available for a meeting before I wouldn’t know that. So there’s collaboration, there’s some you know additional features that could bring those what we call shared services into a common place. Some services aren’t shared I mean I don’t have a need to get into Prosecutor’s judicial system for example so that should remain as an independent thing it’s more secure that way but the shared services like email and document management and that sort of thing, those are the things we’re starting to look at to try and bring together and exchange is really the first one we’ve done. Mr. Mitchell: A question from Kona. Mr. Jacobs: Sure. Mr. Mitchell: Don is there a particular municipality, governmental agency or corporation platform or guideline that you using as a model or an example to follow? Mr. Jacobs: I don’t know, actually it’s a model that may be as an example we’re starting to see a lot this actually happening at the State level. It’s really worked out well they’ve got, they did a survey I, when Sonny was a CIO there, they did a survey basically they had several hundred different applications and dozens of different platforms and they’re starting to collapse all those into their what they call OIMT now which is the Office of Integrated Management, some kind of Information Management Technology. So they are a good example to see how things are done and we do communicate back and forth and I have the ability when we’re ready to maybe take advantage of some of the technologies they’ve used to also save us money. They’ve done some development on some tools and products that maybe useful for us when we’re ready, but we’re not quite there yet but it’s nice to know that stuffs out there for us. Mr. Mitchell: Thank you. Mr. Espejo: Time wise it looks like about three to five years or something like that? Mr. Jacobs: I think that’s probably realistic, some of it will be you know it’s, it takes time to make so of those structural changes they’ll be some you know some consultation requirements with the unions if we have to adjust things so you know 4 appropriately things like that. So it’s not one of those things that can really happen overnight, but I think that we’re proving that it, that it’s practical when we use the exchange server’s example, they’re very practical reasons of doing some of these things. Mr. Perry: As you progress on your consolidation, consolidation I’m not sure is quite the word. What kind of savings is our, what kind of magnitude of savings do you actually see is this a 1% thing or a 100% thing? Mr. Jacobs: You know I don’t know what the percentage would be, it’s really. Mr. Perry: Guess. Mr. Jacobs: There is a savings to be had. There certainly is a savings we have I guess an example is when we brought up the new exchange server we’re able to get the licensing cause you have to get licenses for each individual user. So now we could buy 1,500 or 1,800 licenses to cover all of the email boxes throughout the County as opposed to maybe the 1,100 that we had so there are price breaks as you start bringing those things in and the fact we’re only having to license one exchange server versus four that’s probably a couple thousand dollars per unit per server so there’s an economy of scale to bring those common things together. Mr. Mitchell: Another input from Kona here. Thank you very much for your time Don. Mr. Jacobs: Sure. Mr. Mitchell: One of the letters, I’m sure it’s no surprise you know we get a lot of feedback and contact from people in the community and various departments. One of the concerns several times was in regards to electronic time cards that there seems to be a lot of sort internal form seems to frankly have a duplication of effort and one of the comments or suggestions to us was electronic time cards. Is that feasible, sir? Mr. Jacobs: It is feasible, we’re actually getting ready to start testing some internal electronic forms at the IT level we’ve just contracted with a vendor to bring up a new internal website and using that technology we’re going to start deploying some electronic forms to see how they flow and then from there we can see where we expand at and time cards is definitely one of the ones that’s a big interest because it’s a very manual paper process, very intensive. Whereas there are electronic modules where someone can fill their timesheet out on their computer hit send it goes to the next level of management and just works its way electronically thru the process. We hope to get there some day but I don’t have a timeline. Mr. Mitchell: Thank you and just a follow up to that, would it be electronic signatures that is something the Department of Education is doing electronic signatures. How we doing with that, sir? Mr. Jacobs: We’re actually pretty well we have a product called CoSign and I think currently we have 75 people using electronic signatures. It’s not, it’s not like a 5 County mandate that you have to use it at this point. Although we are seeing a greater adoption, people coming on board saying I’d like to use those. I think if it were a requirement clearly it would be a simpler product to roll out, but it works well and we do have it out there. In fact, we’re doing a little troubleshooting on it today and people that use it are upset because they’re so used to it. So that’s a success story in the technology failure. Mr. Mitchell: Would you believe than at inertia or just that people are someone, sometimes not ready for the change, is that an issue that you had to deal with so far? Mr. Jacobs: I would have to say that there have been occasions where you know some people will insist that it has to be a wet signature and the form has to be yellow and I’m like, why? Well that’s the way it’s always is. So there’s a kind of a mindset change that needs to happen for some folks once they see how it works and how efficient is for other people I think that’s when start seeing people adopting it, they go oh wow, okay and then they think about how it might work for them and then we work with them on that. Mr. Mitchell: Thank you very much; back to you Hilo. Ms. Maddox: So maybe on a smaller scale, but having just driven a grant application over to the County office, is there any thought to allowing electronic submission of the various grant? Mr. Jacobs: Grants I don’t, I don’t know what the status of the grants are. I know that we have electronic submission for Purchasing and that was, that’s rather new, I think that’s been about a year and a half. We are looking at trying to expand the website and we’ve put up an online services page about a year ago that we have a lot of services on the web that could be done online, but they were scattered everywhere. You had to go here for dog licenses and here for that so what we did is we created an online services page and we brought all those links together onto a single online services portal which we hope to expand some more. Whether grants will happen, I don’t know. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Don, can you submit permits to like Planning online? Mr. Jacobs: Not yet, but that is being researched as well. Ms. Kelly: So all this online stuff, where’s the hardware? Mr. Jacobs: That’s a good question. It’s a little bit of; it’s in multiple locations at this point. The bulk of our computer equipment right now is located in a room that we’ve setup as a server at Civil Defense here in Hilo and the reason it’s there is originally it was in the Aupuni Center; and three weeks after I started here, there was the Chilean earthquake/tsunami. We had to physically move all the equipment out of that room and take it offline because it is in the tsunami zone. So at that point in time it was decided that that’s probably not the best place to keep it cause you can’t keep it running when you need it. So now it’s all at Civil Defense where they have redundant power backup 6 generators and that’s kind of, it’s not, I don’t know that will be our permanent home, but it’s a really good place right now. Ms. Kelly: In Hilo? Mr. Jacobs: In Hilo. Ms. Kelly: And Kona, too? Mr. Jacobs: We have some in Kona, there’s a nice server in Kona at the West Hawai‘i Civic Center. It’s also on backup generator as well and we have one maybe two servers there right now, but we are looking to move additional servers there be a backup to the exchange server there as soon as we’re done with implementation so if we lose this one here that one spins up and operates. Our phones actually already do that if we lost the connection, the fiber connection between here and West Hawai‘i, we would lose the communications with Scott, is that your name? Mr. Mitchell: John. Mr. Jacobs: John. Scott was in there earlier, sorry. We would lose, we’d lose that connection but you would still be able to make and receive telephone calls because there’s a backup phone system over there that allows it to work. So we’re, we’re looking at ways to try to leverage that connection and that’s where that extra internet connection will help us with that as well and then you know will start doing some backup. A lot of it is the cost and space issue, there’s only so much space over there. There’s the cost of you know how many redundant servers can you afford. So we pick and choose those carefully. Ms. Kelly: So you’re saying because of the growth and what’s happening there should definitely be two IT centers, West and East? Mr. Jacobs: I don’t know if there should be two IT centers or a data center. Ms. Kelly: Data center? Mr. Jacobs: That maybe, we’re actually looking at who is it, System Metrics is setting up a data center in Kona. They took over I guess one of the old west, the old Hawaiian Tel data centers and they’re refitting it. I haven’t spoken to them yet, but a concept would, be would that be a better solution for the County to have a vendor whose primary business is maintaining a data center and locating the data in that location. So there are a number of things we can look at, we’re also looking at working with the State, they want to put up their own state level data cloud and to do that they need locations on each island where they can put a rack of equipment and we’ve had some discussions with them I said you know I’ll give you rack space in West Hawai‘i, can I have some server space so that I can have some of my stuff live in the cloud and we’re looking into that as an option as well. That gives us a backup in case something happened on this side. It’s a moving target. The technologies change so much. The cloud we’re still a little nervous about not so much on the State level because the State’s maintaining that, but I would be nervous about putting County technologies in 7 the cloud at this point. If we lose our internet connection to the mainland, we don’t get to our data anymore and then you kind of lose control of your data when it’s in the cloud and I’m not sure we’re ready for that. Ms. Kelly: Has the system ever been hacked before? Mr. Jacobs: At this point no, we’ve not have any problems with hacking. We do have firewalls that isolate our network from, you know, the wild, wild west of the internet so. Ms. Kelly: How about viruses and stuff like that? Mr. Jacobs: We still get those on occasion ‘cause people will unknowingly click an email or bring in a USB key and stick it in their machine. I would say 90% of the time our antivirus softwares will catch it, 10% of the time it doesn’t then we have to mitigate that problem for that person. Ms. Kelly: Do you have restriction on personal use? Mr. Jacobs: I don’t know we have any really firm restrictions on it at this point. We do, I think the policy does allow for some you know personal phone calls if you need them or personal use of the internet as long as it’s not impacting your job, it’s not really hard wired at this point. It’s not to the point where we’re saying no USB keys and we would disable all those ports we are not at that level. Ms. Kelly: Do you see, do you think that it would be important to enforce regulation on personal, somebody go check their Gmail or AOL or google, searching or booking ticket online or shopping or doing anything like that? I mean is there a significant waste of time, do you know? Mr. Jacobs: I don’t have a sense of that. I do know on occasions we will be asked by a department head or Corporation Counsel if they are doing an investigation on somebody to provide them information about that person’s usage and activity and we can do that, we only do that on requests, we don’t do that as an active monitoring at this point. Ms. Kelly: Do you have access to each person’s computer? Mr. Jacobs: If we need to, we could and again it’s more of a passive kind of a situation. I could connect to someone’s “C” drive at any time, but we don’t unless we’re requested to. Ms. Kelly: How many other types of equipment do you service? Like laptop or pads or? Mr. Jacobs: We yeah, that’s a really good question ‘cause the pad, the tablets are starting to come out. It’s, we do mostly the PCs and we do all the PCs and laptops and now we’re starting to see some iPad, where some iPad being used by the permitting section they can remotely connect and do things through that. We have had 8 people interested in the Windows-based tablets which I think is a good idea; they are very inexpensive and they give a user the ability to work on their tablet or their desktop and then the flexibility to pick up and go and still have full functionality. We’re exploring that a little bit now, we haven’t deployed many of those or any of those at this point. Ms. Kelly: But under laptop and pads or tablets, technology is probably worthless within three years? Mr. Jacobs: Technology changes every 18 months just flat out, and it changes. We typically get a three-year warranty on everything we buy so that we do get a decent. Ms. Kelly: But the capital investment by the technology being so outdated or used or abused or whatever. Mr. Jacobs: Yeah, there is a depreciation, too. Ms. Kelly: And very fast depreciation would you say? Mr. Jacobs: Yeah and that’s why the tablets are kind of intriguing cause they’re rather inexpensive. Ms. Maddox: They almost become a supply rather than a capital. Mr. Jacobs: Yeah they’re almost at that point like a commodity, like a toaster. As oppose to a thousand dollar PC, it’s a two hundred fifty to three hundred dollar tablet so there are certain places where that make a lot of sense. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Don, when you said you change things out every three years, are the machines leased or is the County purchasing them? Mr. Jacobs: We don’t have yet to change things out on a three-year basis. We use stuff until the smoke comes out of it. We are in the process of doing a pretty aggressive replacement of PCs at this point and that’s mostly because the XP operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft. So those are the oldest PCs we have and we’re replacing we hope, we’re, we think it’s going to be right around the area of 650, 700 PCs and if we’re lucky and get done in time it’ll be by the end of this year. We expect to have 220 of those deployed and they are leased. That answered, to answer your question. They are leased to own so we’re financing those out for three years and by the end of September we should have about 1/3 of those out on the floor. So we’re actively working on that. Ms. Maddox: How was the determination made where those would actually be deployed? Mr. Jacobs: That’s a really good question ‘cause we, I know people will come to me and say, “But I’m a supervisor, I get a”, and I’m like, “No, you have a Windows 7 machine. The guy who works for you that does really hard work has a really slow machine.” So we went for the oldest PCs first regardless of where they lived because they’re the ones that are going to die first and typically the way things have migrated 9 through an organization we also drew the line because it used to be like the manager would say, “Give me the new PC then take mine and put it there and take that one and put it there.” And we’re like, “We’re not moving around three PCs for that so we’re going to replace the oldest ones first, Windows 7s would come next as the oldest one comes off the line.” So we’re kind of, trying to really hold that line to make sure that they get to the people who need it. Ms. Maddox: Thank you. Ms. Kierkiewicz: How many people are in your department? Mr. Jacobs: Put a guess on it could be one or two positions about 20, 21. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Do you need more workers? Mr. Jacobs: Yes. We have four people in the Helpdesk and we support 1,500 users. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Four people at Help? Mr. Jacobs: For Helpdesk. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Oh my God. Mr. Jacobs: And that includes the West Hawai‘i side. That’s the total County wide, for the County. So yeah it’s very, we’re very busy. Our turnaround time right now on Helpdesk tickets maybe two weeks, depend. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Wow. Mr. Jacobs: So it’s difficult. We, we’re working on, on we did just get a new position that we’re filling which is helping, but it’s still tight, very tight with that. We did because we knew we could need some extra people for the deployment because we do have an open hire level position, we’ve been using some student hires from the university to help us deploy the PCs and that’s a huge help, they’re kind of temporary hire, they come in as we need them and their helping us get those PCs out on the floor. Ms. Maddox: And do some training at the same time as oppose to? Mr. Jacobs: We’re doing a little of that now. What we did for training is this time last year I guess it was December of last year we got a call from a online training company whose normal product was $5,000 and six people get trained, but they said we have a one time special offer for $5,000 you can train as many people as you want for a year. So I said, “Sign me up.” So we’ve had and then we opened that up to the general population not just IT because they would also train on the office products and things like that. And I think to date we’ve had about 83 people complete training and we have until the end of December on this. I did the math on it was like a $155,000 worth of training that we got for $5,000. 10 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 Ms. Kierkiewicz: Mitch Roth mentioned that the Prosecutor’s Office has a phone system that’s separate from the rest of the County. Mr. Jacobs: Yes, it is separate. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Is there, is that intentional? Mr. Jacobs: It’s, I think it’s a product of cost and separation that’s happened. For example, this is a CISCO voice over IP system and that’s the same system that we use in West Hawai‘i so for me to be able to dial over to John, it’s a four digit dialing it’s like they’re here. The system that Mitch and Prosecutor’s is using is a different vendor and when they were looking to upgrade that system, we talked about maybe consolidating on the CISCO platform. CISCO is very proprietary so in order for Prosecutor’s to do that they were going to have to swap out every network switch they had. Mr. Mitchell: Oh my God. Mr. Jacobs: To get to CISCO and so it was just so cost prohibitive that they Said, “Well you know it’s less expensive for us to get a system that works with the infrastructure that we have as oppose to try to switch.” I would love to go; I would love to go to their system because I know their technology ends very good, but it’s the same problem on this side. All of my switches are CISCO, I would have to switch all of those out and about a thousand telephones. So it’s not an easy transition to try and bring those two things together because of the cost involved. Ms. Maddox: But is that necessarily a negative thing to have that as a stand alone? Mr. Jacobs: I honestly don’t think it’s a negative thing. In some aspects there’s a little bit of positivity to that because if one system goes down you don’t lose everybody. So I mean I could lose the Hilo side for voice over IP, but it’s not going to impact the Prosecutors. So there’s an advantage to having some of that separation. Ms. Kelly: But my understanding is that Prosecutors, the judiciary system and the Police work so close and networking that some time they cause each other a lot expenses if they don’t know the schedule somebody and they got to bring in an officer to testify in court that’s a day off is being paid time and a half. So if he wasn’t at work that was shared among these three identities. You know Prosecution and district and Police, you would think that it would be a better networking between them because they’re working in the same function. Mr. Jacobs: Right and I think we’re going to see a little bit of that because one of the problems was Prosecutors have their own email system and Police have their own email system and now we’re all going to be together so if I wanted to, if I knew what the police officer’s schedule was I could see it in his calendar in exchange and I can in the consolidated world, which I could not before. So there’s going to be some availability to better schedule things like that with the consolidation and you’re absolutely right, a converged network allows much easier communications on that sort of things. 12 Ms. Kelly: Well, one of the issue that when we were talking to them, Susan and I, was that it was not necessarily email that was the biggest, was the storage of document for the Police Department, the overload. There’s, it’s so slow and the storage document that if they fill out a report you know to bring in a system it should be logged in once from the beginning so everybody has access and because it’s not like then they have to duplicate paper and duplicate paper and that could be a delay of couple of weeks or months for whatever should happen now. Mr. Jacobs: And that’s one of the convergence things that I’m kind of trying to get people to see like you’re seeing. We don’t have that right now because they’re separate networks, but they are starting to talk more. But we’re not there yet but ideally yeah you should just be able to log in at one place and then Prosecutors can pick it up over here out of the same system. I don’t know what technologies are available for that from the software stand point cause I’m not up to speed on what their requirements are but I’m assuming that those technologies are available, they just need to kind of come to terms with working that out and figuring out, finding an application that would work for them. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Is your department helping Mass Transit develop like what you know they have on Oahu in terms of like tracking where buses are via Google transit or having more interactive bus maps? Mr. Jacobs: It’s so funny that you ask that. I sat in, it just went to a meeting with Tiffany Kai and her office about a month ago and this young student I think he’s like seventeen. Ms. Kierkiewicz: He created that app, right? Mr. Jacobs: Unbelievable. Ms. Kierkiewicz: For the Puna area. Mr. Jacobs: He did the demo of that app and it’s entirely possible. Some of the challenges I think we’ll have is I don’t think Oahu or Honolulu proper would have is the topography. I think our buses all have GPS, but I don’t know they can always see where they are. If you’re up on the gulches or something like that there’s going to be some guess work involved with that, but we are looking at that sort of thing and we’re working with Tiffany trying to get online bus schedules and maps out there so people can see those things. I’d love to see an app on the phone that if I’m waiting for the bus I could see where the bus is like you can do that on Honolulu. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Da Bus app. Mr. Jacobs: Da Bus app, exactly and that’s one of the apps I talked to Mark Wong about, he’s the IT Director in Honolulu, and his offered those apps up to us when we’re ready. So you know we’ve, he’s got a whole staff that writes apps. His staff that writes apps is as big as my entire department so I’m not going to reinvent that wheel; he’s going to let us have some of those stuff. 13 Ms. Kierkiewicz: So what, what other apps are you looking into, I know you mentioned that Hawaiian Tel has some things that the County is not ready at this point, I’m just curious, what are the possibilities? Mr. Jacobs: Some of the possibilities and there’s one that could implement I said we shouldn’t implement it until we’re ready because it kind of back fired on Honolulu, is a pothole app and so you take a picture of the pothole and does a geo satellite images so they know lat/long where it is and sends an email off to the people that repair the pothole. But if you don’t have the staff to go out there and quickly repair the pothole, and you see it on their comments: “ I reported this three weeks ago”, you know so you can be a victim of your own success in that. So there, I mean but that’s the kind of app we’re looking at I’d also like to see one for camping permits. If I’m a vacationer and I want to stay at Kaloli park or whatever it is up there, why can’t I just get the permit online then show the receipt to the person at the gate when I go in? I mean these are the kinds of things that we would could we could start to leverage over time. There’s a lot of back end infrastructure we need to put in place for that, but the technology’s certainly doable, it exists. So it’s a matter of you know having, asking people questions what would make your job easier when you’re working with the public and then ideas will start coming out and then we can say we’ll we can do that right now, but we can’t do that right now and kind of you know work our way forward. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Interesting. Any other questions? Is there a lot of overtime in your department? Mr. Jacobs: No, there’s not actually. We did have a significant amount of overtime as part of our migration to the new email server, which is nearly complete; but typically what happened, because we have a very limited overtime budget, we try to save that for emergencies. For scheduled things, if we know that I got to do a server upgrade on the Finance system, we’ll try to schedule that out a week or ten days in advance and ask the person to shift their hours. So instead of paying time and a half, “Okay, your day ends on Friday at 2 and you’re going to come in on Saturday and use half on Monday” or you know work out adjusted times to accommodate that so they’re just shifting their hours when practical. Ms. Kelly: Do you guys have a lot of transportation issues to go from west to east or east to west? Are you using County vehicle or you’re using your own vehicle, I mean what is transportation issue for servicing such a large territory? Mr. Jacobs: The answer to your question is yes. We use a little bit of everything. We do have, the IT department does have two vehicles that are located here in Hilo and we use those because we do make trips out to remote locations like Fire Departments and Police stations as necessary. Right now the folks in West Hawai‘i try to use the one of the electric vehicles when they’re available, but we’re looking into the possibility of maybe putting an IT vehicle over there so that many times you know the electrical is already booked and they get a call and there’s a problem down in Ka‘ū, they need a vehicle. Right now they’re using their personal ones, but we’d like to try to set that up so that it would work a little bit better for them, but that’s something we have to figure out if can afford it and put it into the budget if necessary. But we are very fortunate, we have two, they’re very relatively new vehicles, we just got them two years ago to replace 14 our 20 some year old van and 19 year old car and so we got some SUVs because we can take equipment which is a lot more practical. We can haul people or equipment so it’s much more flexible than the vehicles we had before. Ms. Kelly: How many people from your department are called to be on the road and do all of that? Mr. Jacobs: It’s usually just the Helpdesk folks so it would be four people, but our networking people would occasionally have to go out. I would say no more than eight or nine of them actually every have to travel. Most work we do remotely saves us a lot of time and a lot of money, we can remote to any PC on the network anywhere on the island and take remote control and teach somebody how to do something or repair something as needed. And that’s usually our first line of defense before we get into the car because we don’t want to waste the time or the money to get there if I can do it from my desk. Ms. Kelly: Right, right. Ms. Kierkiewicz: I don’t have any other questions. John, do you have any more questions? Mr. Mitchell: Well, good. Thank you. You touched base on the vehicle and overtime, that’s the only last two notes I had so thank you very much. Mr. Jacobs: You’re welcome. Ms. Maddox: I think that’s it. Thank you very much for spending time with us, very helpful. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Thank you, Don. Mr. Jacobs: That connection will stay up as long as you need to so if you have another meeting scheduled, I don’t know if you have another one coming today, no oh darn. You can us that connection, but any way it was a pleasure of mine I could answer some questions for you guys. Ms. Kierkiewicz: Thank you, very helpful. Mr. Mitchell: Thank you. Mr. Jacobs: Thank you. Ms. Kierkiewicz: So lucky he was able to grace us with his presence. Ms. Maddox: It was nice to hear, have everybody to have a chance to ask questions because then we all heard different things. Anything anyone heard that we may need to have some follow up on? Are we good to go into the next agenda item? Mr. Mitchell: No, I feel good. I thought he did a great job. 15 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES (07-17-14) Motion and Vote: Ms. Kierkiewicz moved to approve the minutes of July 17, 2014. The motion was seconded by Mr. Espejo and all commissioners present voted aye. 5. CORRESPONDENCE Motion and Vote (Comm. No. 2014-085): Mr. Perry moved to file the correspondence. The motion was seconded by Ms. Kelly and all commissioners present voted aye. Motion and Vote (Comm. No. 2014-086): Mr. Perry moved to file the correspondence. The motion was seconded by Ms. Kelly and all commissioners present voted aye. 6. DISCUSSION REGARDING SUBCOMMITTEE MEETINGS WITH VARIOUS DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES FOR THE PURPOSE OF GATHERING INFORMATION FOR THE FINAL REPORT A. Office of Aging Ms. Maddox shared the mission statement for the Office of Aging and stated the Mayor’s Committee on People with Disabilities is an advisory group of this office. Ms. Kelly and Ms. Maddox reported the following on vehicle use policy and procedures:  Clear written policy on vehicle use and procedures and every employee has a copy.  There’s one vehicle in Hilo and one in Kona and may be used by making a request.  Employees are able to take home the vehicle if they have an early meeting on the west side of the island.  Will replace the van in Hilo, which will be taken to Kona for their use. Ms. Kelly reported the following on overtime policies and procedures:  Overtime policy is clear, fair and well enforced.  They do not have any overtime within the department. Ms. Kelley shared that the Office of Aging has a staff partner connection database that allows vendors to be a part of a partnership. There are about 20 vendors ranging from nurses, transportation, personal care training, services and case assessment. These people have knowledge of the each field and are contracted which is cost effective. Ms. Maddox reported the following on department re-organization: 16  Currently going through department reorganization. It’s taken more than 2 ½ years to get through the process of discussions and agreements with unions, and restructuring and jobs descriptions. Mr. Parker would like to complete it before he retires. Ms. Kelly and Ms. Maddox reported the following on energy, the building and land:  Building is energy efficient and practical; built to suit their needs.  Building was not being used to its greatness because of the empty rooms used for training purposes.  Building and land was acquired by a public, private partnership. Mayor Kim identified the building and an individual purchased the property and building and developed the second floor.  Land on which the building is on came together thru a partnership between private investment and the County. State and federal money was used to do the interior of the building.  The building and land is on 10 year lease with an option of another 10 years. Ms. Kelly reported the following on financing:  Financing for the department comes from 33% from the County, 33% from the State and 33% from federal. Ms. Kelly reported the following on using IT to improve productivity and service to the public:  They need an IT person to keep up with their growing needs in recordkeeping and filing.  Presently, there are only 6,000 people on the island in the system, but it’s growing every year.  An estimated 84,000 people in the age bracket of 85 years and older will need some type of assistance by 2030 in this County.  Platform and chart of management structuring is the key success to regulate and assist the community.  Their data system is very intensive. They are looking for a data management system that will be able to accommodate the growth of potential clients and how to get into the community with smaller satellite centers. Mr. Mitchell added that on July 7, 2013 there was a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), which said health care access is the number one issue on neighbor islands. Ms. Maddox stated that Allen Parker always looks at how to provide service across this 4,000 square mile island. He keeps updated on the state and national levels in terms of seniors, activities, programs, funding and processes. 17 Mr. Mitchell spoke of a letter received from the public stating the fees being charged for classes and activities for seniors are too cheap. Mr. Mitchell asked Ms. Maddox if any of the services have been review. Ms. Maddox responded the fees are part of the Department of Parks and Recreation and not the Office of Aging. Mr. Mitchell asked if the Office of Aging continues to print the Kapuna News; someone from the public stated it’s an unnecessary expense. Ms. Maddox thinks it’s no longer being printed as there’s an online version. Ms. Kierkiewicz asked Ms. Kelly and Ms. Maddox if they got a sense of what the homeless situation is like for elders and if any work is being done to mitigate it. Ms. Kelly stated they did not ask the question and the subject did not come up. Not sure if there’s any program that reaches or identifies homelessness. Ms. Maddox stated Mr. Parker talked about being an open, a one stop shop and encourages people to come in. They have outreach workers that go out into the community regularly. The purpose of the department is to provide services that meet the needs of an elderly person or families seeking assistance for an elderly family member. Ms. Kelly stated the Office of Aging also services people with disabilities of any age not just seniors. B. Human Resources Ms. Maddox stated this department is responsible for employee benefit plans, retirement health benefits, deferred compensation and flexible spending. They do the service awards program, leave sharing, personnel records, involved in classification in pay, issues and determinations, responsible for equal opportunity and ADA, health and safety programs, labor relations, contract negotiations, personnel and organization development, recruitment and examination with a budget of .005% of the County’s overall operating budget. The department size is about 20 employees with six retiring by the end of the year and six retired within the last year. Ms. Maddox reported the following on department re-organization: · In the process of doing a departmental reorganization. Ms. Maddox reported the following on using IT to improve productivity & accuracy: · The department is not part of the major technology swap out; they will continue to use XP as an operating system. 18 · The department has two non-integrated systems, one for personnel information (classification, hire date, etc.) which is in an Access database and a payroll system. · The department would like to have an integrated system that would cost about $500,000. · Actively looking for technology solutions in terms of management of personnel and payroll. · The department would like to improve the technology of the online employment application process. Ms. Maddox reported the following on vehicle use policy and procedures: · Clear vehicle usage policy that requires advance approval. They have employees classified as first responders that have priority access, but still needs approval to use the vehicle. Ms. Maddox reported the following on overtime policies and procedures: · Clear overtime policy that requires advance approval. Most employees’ overtime is a contract negotiation topic. · Within the approved budget, Ms. Toriano has the discretion to approve overtime, but rarely does. Ms. Maddox reported the following on energy: · In service education done with the staff. The lights and air conditioning are set on timers. Ms. Maddox stated before Human Resources can hire anyone, Ms. Toriano has to attend weekly meetings with the Finance Department and the Mayor’s Office to get approval to hire. The Department of Human Resources serves County employees and their families. The interaction they have with the public is related to recruiting and application process. C. Hawai‘i Police Department Ms. Maddox and Ms. Kelly meet with Police Chief Harry Kubojiri and Deputy Chief Ferreira. Ms. Maddox reported the following on vehicle use policy and procedures: · Very detailed written policy and is impacted by union contracts in terms of officers’ personal vehicles. · No formal written policy about the blue and whites except they cannot be taken home. · The department is accredited by a national body and its policies and procedures structure is set at a very high standard in order to reach accreditation. 19  The vehicle subsidy policy is written very clear. It governs personal vehicles with criteria by rank for patrolman or higher on all vehicles, marked or unmarked, and detailed mileage logs are kept to report mileage at the beginning of the shift and at the end of the shift.  Personal vehicle logs are reviewed weekly on Saturday and checked against the odometers. The blue and whites are checked monthly. Ms. Maddox noted that for overtime, it is a contract item. Chief Kubojiri made it very clear that all it takes is a single natural disaster to consume the entire annual overtime budget and with Tropical Strom Iselle, it’s already blown for the year. Ms. Maddox noted the following in terms of Energy:  Photovoltaic systems are being installed on as many of the facilities as can be structurally retrofitted; it’s part of an overall plan.  Vehicle fuel consumption is monitored. They’ve tried unsuccessfully to actually increase the miles per gallon ratio on the reimbursement just because vehicles are much more fuel efficient than in the past. It is a contract issue and they’ve not been successful up to this point.  Prisoner transport from one side of the island requires marked cars to be used and that is an additional cost; they are looking for ways to better coordinate transports. Ms. Maddox said the Police Department has their own Finance and Human Resources sections that work very closely with State or County Finance and Human Resources offices. Ms. Maddox reported the following on Information Technology:  The Police Department has their own IT staff.  Looking for funding to secure Toughbooks laptops for all patrol officers; they are much stronger and studier. They are looking to purchase 300 laptops in increments over three years. The laptops are not scheduled to be web based but will allow the officers to complete reports in the field rather than going to the stations.  The department did look at PDAs but the judiciary does not use PDAs so there was a connectivity issue. They are working closely with the judiciary to cut down on duplication and allow communication.  Within law enforcement, the department does have five independent data systems that do not currently connect; they are trying to work towards an integrated system. They want to be very careful in terms of where they invest the money.  Currently receiving proposals for a new records management system that will tie in to the dispatch system. 20  The department does have GIS capabilities which generate maps. They have shared their maps with the Planning Department, the Civil Defense Agency and other County agencies that need access to maps. Recently, officers went down into Waipi‘o Valley with one of the information and education officers and physically walked the valley with a plot map and identified which residences were full time and how to get in touch with them because that was an area with no real communication. Ms. Kelly added the following regarding vehicles:  There was no company the department could lease vehicles from. Their current vehicle system where officers use their own personal vehicles is the best thing because they maintain it better, the longevity of the vehicles are about eight years and they are proud of the ownership.  The reimbursement for fuel and oil is taxable at the end of the year.  A very tight personal record of the mileage log is kept. Ms. Kelly added the following regarding overtime:  The department does their best with their budget but with any kind of island wide disaster like hurricanes or tsunamis just blow their budget instantly. Ms. Kelly added the following regarding technology:  The police department system has their own platform where everyone goes to do their education; every single person is monitored for their education. If their education is not updated, they are sanctioned. This particular platform was given to the department several years ago and it is in need of significant upgrade.  Upgrading the department’s records management system would allow officers to do their reports out in the field instead of going back to the station to do their report. Ms. Maddox said Chief Kubojiri showed them an internal website the department uses, Ike Pono Makai, and every officer and every staff member is required to log on to that system daily. It contains their rules, policies, general orders, education information and other general information. This website is also used to successfully document for the accreditation process which happens every three years. Ms. Kelly stated an important thing is the GPS on the cell phones. When 911 calls come from a cell phone, officers should be able to identify the location and find that person with the GPS on the cell phones. (She thinks a lot of 911 calls were not legitimate and those incur a lot of costs.) Ms. Maddox stated Chief Kubojiri talked about serving on the County’s homelessness task force; it’s of personal interest to the Chief. 21 Ms. Maddox reported the following on service to the public:  There are regular community meetings the Chief and his administrative staff have around the island periodically to make themselves available to community members, to be able to answer questions and be able to share updates on what is going on in their community.  Chief Kubojiri and his Assistant Chief are involved in a number of boards and commissions, advisory commissions and task forces not just here at the County level, but at the state and national levels. Mr. Mitchell noted there are two public concerns: 1) is there any Fire/Police cross training; and 2) what is the ratio of management or sergeants compared to non- management. He said people in the public thought the department was more top heavy and less rank and file. Ms. Maddox replied they did not specifically talk about cross training; there is a close relationship between the Fire Department and Police Department. Mr. Mitchell noted 43% of the County budget is on public safety; it’s the number one expense for the County. D. Mass Transit Agency Ms. Kierkiewicz met with Tiffany Kai, the Director of Mass Transit. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported the following on current bus capacity and transportation routes:  Mass Transit oversees public transportation for the island via the Hele On bus system and also offers a shared taxi ride program which provides door-to-door transportation within the urbanized Hilo area for $2.00.  There are 57 buses on this island, each seats between 12 and 45 individuals. There is one double decker bus that can seat up to 89 individuals.  There is a base yard in Kona to do maintenance on the buses and one recently created for Hilo; buses can now be maintained on both sides of the island.  The Hilo bus does not go to the Hilo airport. The routes mostly serve residents in Puna; there are routes that go to Pohoiki and Seaview and they are determining whether or not other routes are possible but the issue is terrain.  There are routes between Hilo and South Kohala that serve mostly the hotel workers in that area and dozens of others that serve this island.  HCEOC is contracted to provide para-transit services for people with disabilities. 22  The agency has a small staff of nine people and is funded through the general fund, the highway fund and some federal money. Purchases of buses usually come from grant money. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported the following on the hydrogen bus project:  Mass Transit has a project with US Manoa for hydrogen buses.  The agency is trying to determine where they will be sourcing the hydrogen.  Biodiesel is also a possibility; will need to get a vendor to provide that fuel. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported the following on current bus fees and payment system:  Bus fees on the current system are reasonable; route from Hilo to Kona is $2.00. Back in 2005, it was free. Currently looking to restructure the fare scheme where riders would pay a little more if going from Hilo to Kona versus Hilo to Honoka‘a.  There is a lot of money coming out of the County’s budget to subsidize the operations; hoping to have a more comprehensive payment system. Oahu has a scan system where you put in money or a ticket or scan a card. Right now, the County bus drivers are accepting cash, coupons and tickets by hand and are counted manually at the end of each shift. A scan system that captures payments as well as ridership would be helpful to the agency.  There is an extra cost to bring on a bike, and surfboards aren’t allowed because of lack of compartment space. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported the following on Information Technology:  Trying to develop an app that shows where the bus is in real time. A student from Pāhoa created and won a contest back in May for developing an innovative app that could serve your community.  The University of Michigan teamed with the Kohala Center to create a report called Expanding Transportation Opportunities on Hawai‘i Island. It examined the public transportation system and came up with high impact solutions to reduce fossil fuel usage and improve access. That report can downloaded from the Kohala Center’s website.  Close to 50 bus shelters have been built island wide that provide cover from the elements. Hoping to include bus maps that tell riders which bus number comes to each stop. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported the following on updates to the Mass Transit Agency website: 23  The agency is working with IT to develop an online bus schedule and system maps the public can download. Ms. Kierkiewicz reported Mass Transit has never cancelled service in Mass Transit history and never downsized their operations. Mass Transit has a contract with Roberts Hawai‘i to hire the drivers and that reduces the cost of liability on the County’s end. Mr. Espejo asked why the Hele On bus did not go to the airport. Ms. Kierkiewicz replied the routes are based on community needs; the community does not need to go to the airport, it is mostly the tourists and a lot of them rent vehicles. Mr. Mitchell wanted to clarify that bus fares were free up until 2005. Ms. Kierkiewicz confirmed and stated from 2005 to 2011 it was $1.00 and in 2011 it was raised to $2.00. Ms. Maddox stated the intra-Waimea bus is now $1.00; it was free until a year ago. Mr. Mitchell said speaking specifically to represent the West side, more buses run on the Hilo side for good reasons, yet there is an issue with regards to the West side paying a healthy share of the tax burden. He said the people on the West side feel like they have been subsidizing services on the East side. Ms. Kierkiewicz said there was a point in time when the East side was subsidizing what was happening on the West side. She personally does not think there should be an East versus West mentality, this is Hawai‘i island and everyone here on this island should be taken cared of. Ms. Maddox knows that people were upset when the bus fares went up and that there was a notion the County should be providing the bus service. Ms. Kelly asked if there was a reduced fare for seniors or students. Ms. Kierkiewicz believes there is. Ms. Kelly asked where she would go if she wanted to see a map of the bus services. Ms. Kierkiewicz replied: www.heleonbus.org. Ms. Kelly asked if the website would have all the maps that service the island, the hours and schedule and the bus number. Ms. Kierkiewicz replied yes, it is a huge document that can be downloaded. She said Mass Transit is trying to simplify the website and make it more user friendly if using a mobile device. Mr. Espejo stated when the bus system started, Mass Transit wanted to increase their ridership to get cars off the road. Tom Brown, the administrator then, got federal funds, which is how they got funded and ridership increased. Once the monies dried up, they had to start charging. Mr. Mitchell said he thinks it is worth it for the Commission to look at the report the University of Michigan and Kohala Center collaborated on because it takes a close 24 look at the public transportation system as it stands and they could get a sense of what the services are like for the West side and what the recommendations were in terms of increasing bus routes, number of buses and how to fund the system. Ms. Kelly asked what is the growth anticipated for the need of buses with the upcoming university on the West side. Ms. Kierkiewicz replied they did not discuss that. She said Ms. Kai is working on creating more direct routes that would cut down on ride time and people can get to where they need to go a lot faster. Ms. Kelly is thinking why reinvent the wheel; can’t this County copy Oahu, which is ahead of the other islands in the efficiency of the bus system. Ms. Kierkiewicz said she didn’t know but just thinking about how dense the population is on Oahu and how compact that island is compared to Hawai‘i Island where we have a lot of people to serve but more geography to cover. She thinks Mass Transit is doing a great job and definitely has their eye towards the future and looking at growing the public transportation system. Ms. Maddox noted Mr. Jacobs did refer to connecting with Mark Wong who is Honolulu’s Rapid Transit. Ms. Kelly asked what is the most important thing or need that Mass Transit should focus on. Ms. Kierkiewicz replied the payment system and getting the information out to the public. Updating their website was definitely a priority as well. 7. DISCUSSION/ACTION REGARDING FORMAT AND CONTENTS OF FINAL REPORT Ms. Maddox shared a Preliminary Working Draft Framework for Cost of Government Commission Report for the Commission to review and discuss. This draft was distributed to all Commissioners. Mr. Mitchell addressed the issue in regards to the timeline and when the Commission would like to wrap up the report. He is concerned it will be during the Christmas holidays. Mr. Mitchell noted this Commission meets only once every four years and he would like to think they are going to work hard until the very last moment and submit the best document they can. He personally thinks that at this point, the group needs to realize they are not going to have the report done by Christmas. Mr. Perry stated he will be off island for New Year’s. Ms. Garson said the final report is due January 20, 2015. Ms. Kierkiewicz said is it ambitious to say they want to try and get a draft together by November and map out what needs to happen between now and getting a draft put together because Mr. Matsuda’s departments still needs to be interviewed. Ms. Kelly has two departments with Mr. Matsuda. Ms. Kierkiewicz said the group still needs to talk about what recommendations to include. 25 Ms. Maddox noted she is not suggesting the group is any where near ready for a draft report; she’s suggesting that if they can agree on a general framework, it will help the group as they are thinking about things. Her draft was intended for everyone to start formulating preliminary thoughts. Ms. Kelly agrees. Ms. Maddox said the Commission is now realizing how much work is involved and agrees that they want to put together the best product as they can as a Commission. Ms. Maddox noted Mr. Masuda was a subcommittee member for five departments: Environmental Management, Fire, Parks and Recreation, Public Works and Water Supply. Mr. Mitchell is taking two of those departments, Public Works and Parks and Recreation. Mr. Perry has Water Supply with Mr. Matsuda. Mr. Perry asked if the Commission is going to wait for Mr. Matsuda or just do the interviews individually. Ms. Maddox said the process does not allow the Commission to reconstitute the subcommittees at this point without some formal action and whoever Mr. Matsuda’s partner is has the ability to schedule and move forward with the interview. Ms. Kierkiewicz asked if another commissioner could be invited to a meeting with a department head knowing Mr. Matsuda is not able to attend. Ms. Garson replied the Commission will have to reconstitute the subcommittee. Ms. Kelly suggested inviting the department head to a Commission meeting. Ms. Maddox asked whether the approach could be to extend invitations to those five departments to come to the commission meetings rather than doing it individually and going to those departments. Mr. Espejo thinks it would take up too much time from their regular meetings to have all those department heads come. Mr. Perry’s inclination is that the individual meets with the department head and if there are follow up concerns or questions, then it would be a time to invite the department head to the meeting. Ms. Maddox asked Mr. Mitchell if he is meeting with Parks and Recreation in October. Mr. Mitchell replied he is keeping his schedule clean so his teaching duties will be taken cared of. He plans on diving in on Parks and Recreation and Public Works; if Mr. Matsuda can assist that would be wonderful. He wants to formally thank Ms. Kierkiewicz; she did a great job on the Department of Information Technology. 26 Mr. Mitchell said if Mr. Matsuda is not able to serve come November, they will be able to support and help each other. Ms. Kierkiewicz said Energy should be one of the overarching themes to be added to Ms. Maddox’s framework document. Ms. Maddox clarified that for the subcommittees that included Mr. Matsuda, the person who is present will go forward and schedule meeting with the department heads. 8. ITEMS TO BE PLACED ON NEXT AGENDA Mr. Mitchell will report on the Office of the Corporation Counsel at the September 18, 2014 meeting. Ms. Kelly and Mr. Espejo will report on the Office of the Legislative Auditor and Immigration Office at the October 2, 2014 meeting. Ms. Kierkiewicz asked Ms. Garson if there is anything else the group should be discussing at this point. Ms. Garson replied that the group should really start thinking about recommendations. If department heads are making recommendations that relates to their department, the Commission should take a look at that recommendation since they are the ones that knows their department. If there are follow up questions once the recommendations are made, the departments can respond to that. Ms. Maddox agreed and stated Human Resources and the Police Department had their wish list as well. Ms. Kierkiewicz asked if recommendations should be sent to Ms. Kualii to be placed on the agenda. Ms. Garson replied yes. Ms. Maddox asked whether recommendation could be draft recommendations. She raised the concern that if recommendations come out on the agenda, the Commission may not be at the point to have necessarily agreed on a recommendation but it may be a potential recommendation. Ms. Kierkiewicz pointed out that a lot of the department heads did the homework for the group by making recommendations and now will need to pull up the pieces that are innovative. Ms. Kelly stated the Police Department asked to see any recommendations before it is submitted to the Mayor so using the word “proposed” when placing the recommendations on the agenda will allow the department to review the recommendations before it is in the final report. Ms. Garson used the Department of Information Technology as an example. She noted Mr. Jacobs already sent his recommendations in his response letter and discussed with the group today. However, if a recommendation did not come from a department head, she suggests going back to the department and inform them of the recommendations that way they are aware of what will be placed on the agenda. 27 Ms. Maddox stated it is a good opportunity for the departments to look at the recommendations prior to it being placed on the agenda. 9. DISCUSSION REGARDING LOCATIONS/DATES/TIMES OF FUTURE MEETINGS/VIDEO CONFERENCING Ms. Maddox noted she will not be able to attend the October 2, 2014 meeting and asked Ms. Kierkiewicz to chair that meeting. Ms. Kelly noted she will not be able to attend the September 18, 2014 and October 16, 2014 meetings. Mr. Mitchell stated he will know more by the September 18, 2014 meeting if he will be available for the October 2, 2014 meeting as the DOE is short on substitute teachers. 10. ANNOUNCEMENTS The next meeting of the Cost of Government Commission will be held on September 18, 2014 at 1:00 p.m. at the Puna Conference Room, 25 Aupuni Street, Suite 1501, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720. 11. ADJOURNMENT Motion and Vote: Ms. Kierkiewicz moved to adjourn the meeting. The motion was seconded by Mr. Perry and all commissioners present voted aye. Meeting adjourned at 3:14 p.m. Respectfully submitted: /s/ Jennifer M. Kualii Jennifer M. Kualii, Secretary 28