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Jones argued for a new IT chief.

Your computer systems are so old.
How old are they?
So old that Microsoft doesn’t even support your version of Windows.
Oooooh.

If city government’s computers were the subject of a round of the dozens, you might have heard that joke Tuesday night.

But the tone was more serious when the computer system came up for discussion in City Hall’s Board of Alders chambers.

Daryl Jones didn’t come to the chambers to tell jokes.

Testifying Tuesday night at a Finance Committee budget workshop, Jones, the city’s controller, came to make a pitch to the alders to approve a full-time chief information officer for its Office of Technology.

The new chief would be responsible for keeping the city’s computers and its systems running and would be paid $101,898, under the mayor’s proposed new $506 million budget.

Right now, Jones is overseeing the IT (information technology) department in addition to serving as controller. He called the IT position a full-time job.

With epic challenges.

Like trying to operate a citywide network that crashes when someone clicks on a YouTube video. A network that still relies in some cases on floppy disks.

IT operates the city, ” he said. I’m doing it now because a year and three months ago we removed the IT chief, because that person crashed the network. I spend most of my time dealing with IT.”

That’s because things that most people take for granted like playing a YouTube video are the equivalent of a snowflake starting an avalanche for the city’s computer systems.

If you went to the Internet and went to YouTube, for instance, you would download a virus that would destroy the drive, the virus would get into the network and crash the network,” he said. That has happened eight times in the last year.”

Jones said the city is in the middle of an all-consuming overhaul of its systems and hardware. He said over the next eight weeks the department will replace 450 computers, three-quarters of which still run on Windows XP.

Windows XP is so old that Microsoft no longer provides technical support for it. Because there is no full-time person dedicated to the city’s technology needs, Jones said, the city is barely living in the 20th century — and is losing money in the process.

Markeshia Ricks Photo

East Rock Alder Anna Festa (pictured at left in the photo) was skeptical. She told Jones: Show me the savings.

Festa said given that so much of technology has moved away from being housed on people’s hard drive (thanks to cloud technology), why wouldn’t the city just outsource much of its systems and save money?

We’re not a tech company,” she said. Why do we need to pay someone on staff that kind of money for IT?”

Jones’ reply: You have to be able to get to the cloud, and you don’t want to outsource the city’s entire IT shop.

He pointed to the city’s fire department, which late last year took heat for failing to report data to the state. He said the department didn’t report because it didn’t have the technology to do so. In fact, fire officials reported that their systems were so old that not only were they still using floppy disks — they were operating on MS-DOS. (Read more about that here.)

Still Festa balked at the salary. Jones called it modest given the scope of the work. He said that outsourcing that hands-on, day-to-day work would likely cost more.

I have to be able to go to the taxpayers and say why we are spending this much,” Festa said. I need you to show me where you’re making cuts, where we’re making money, because we can’t afford this. Point blank. We can’t”

We cannot not afford it,” Jones said. It’s hands-on, every day. I can’t do it.”

Jones said for every $5 the city spends on IT, it gets double that in savings on the back end. Festa: Show me the numbers.

Fellow East Rock Alder Jessica Holmes also said she would like a breakdown of the specific duties that Jones is handling now that would be performed by the new IT chief. She said she is in full support of the technology overhaul the city has been undergoing and believes that it will help reduce the many inefficiencies in city government.”

If we had had proper IT 10 years ago, and maintained our technology, we might not be faced with the overtime challenges that we’ve had,” Jones said.

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