Frontenac County to take over IT services for member municipalities

Jeff Green | Oct 01, 2015

North Frontenac Township met this week and approved a contract that will result in Frontenac County managing Information Technology (IT) services for member municipalities going forward.

The contract was approved by Frontenac County Council at their monthly meeting last week, and approval from the three other Frontenac townships has been secured or is pending.

The Frontenac County IT department, which is currently a four-person team, will be increased to seven people, two of whom will be located primarily in Sydenham and one to be located in Sharbot Lake.

For townships such as South Frontenac, which has contracted out its IT services for years, and North Frontenac, which has been using IT support from Frontenac County on an ad-hoc basis ever since their IT person left a year ago, the changeover to a contracted service from Frontenac County will have minimal effect and will likely result in cost savings.

“Central Frontenac, on the other hand, is not a winner in this changeover, at least in the short term,” said Central Frontenac Mayor Frances Smith.

Central Frontenac has its own IT person, Charlene Godfrey, who takes care of 911 addressing, GIS, and the townships servers, computers and other equipment. Smith said Godfrey might be transitioning to a job at the County next year when the changeover takes place. Under the new contract, there will likely be a person assigned to the Central Frontenac office, but that person will have the title “Help Desk Assistant” and will serve both Central and North Frontenac.

“We will have access to the expertise of the entire team, however,” said Smith, “and over time we expect to see a benefit.”

North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins said that under a payment formula in the contract, which looks at the number of devices each township uses, as well as the number of properties and other factors, “North Frontenac will be paying about $60,000 in 2016 for IT services.”

He added, “this is a savings from what we paid when we had a full time person. With maintenance on all of our equipment, including printers, servers, desktops and laptops now coming under the contract, we should see a savings and a secure level of service for our ratepayers. With the importance of IT in the delivery of municipal services, it is a good deal for us.”

The agreement, which was drawn up by County Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Kelly Pender in consultation with the CAOs from the member townships, outlines how the service will focus on “project management, help desk support, network administration, and coordinated procurement.”

All data will be segregated to each township except where sharing agreements are in place, and the individual township “identities will be maintained except as agreed to by the parties” in the words of the agreement, so it is unclear whether there will be a change in the appearance or capacity of the individual township websites.

South Frontenac launched a new site in 2014, and they already use the same e-agenda software that Frontenac County uses. Central Frontenac has not updated their site in a number of years, and they also use the same e-agenda service.

The North Frontenac site was built from scratch by their former IT person Evan Sepa, and it uses its own .pdf-based e-agenda system currently.

When the agreement came forward at Frontenac County Council, South Frontenac Councilor John McDougall said, “IT has been an ongoing challenge for us in South Frontenac. This is an excellent solution.”