Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Provo City's IT Focus Three public forums on iProvo will be held, beginning today.  The forums will discuss the benefits of fiber optics and financial information related to this ambitious municipal broadband project.  Provo's mayor, Lewis Billings lists the city's most significant accomplishments during 2003.  Here are a few that interested me: In addition to the FTTH (Fiber to the Home) demonstration project, the system is connected to approximately 500 apartment units and 15 businesses with services from a retail provider. Provo is helping and benefitting from telecom connections to other non-Provo projects such as the Canyon Meadow development (60 units), the Parkway Crossing development (188 units), and data services to Spanish Fork and American Fork. A new one-stop business registration program was successfully initiated in cooperation with Salt Lake City, Sandy City, a number of state agencies, and the IRS to develop a system through which a new business owner can register with all necessary agencies at one time. The annual budget and Comprehensive Annual Financial Report were distributed on CD and made available on the Provo City web-site, saving on printing costs and increasing their usability. Usage of the procurement card program, which streamlines the purchasing process and saves administrative costs for the City, increased by 183%. A major upgrade to the Human Resource Management, Payroll, and Benefits software programs was achieved, converting the system to an Internet architecture.  A new enterprise management system (CA Unicenter) with Network and System Monitoring, Asset Management, and Software Deployment was installed. An upgrade to the Public Safety backroom area was completed which included the replacement of servers, upgrade of the NetRMS report management system, installation and conversion of the existing Police CAD system, installation of a new firewall and router on the state WAN, and a new VPN solution for secure remote access to police records. All CDPD systems in police vehicles were upgraded to GPRS for 5x increase in speed and improvements in coverage.  This also included upgrading and enhancing the PSI software for patrol cards to allow near-realtime dispatch information and department-specific search capabilities. A wireless network for patron laptops was installed (City Library) This really is a pretty impressive list (I've only mentioned a fraction) and demonstrates that Provo is still a pretty progressive place. 7:39:29 AM    comment []

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