Markeshia Ricks Photo
Controller Jones in the hot seat.
City Controller Daryl Jones asked the Board of Alders to open the city’s purse a little wider in the quest to attract someone to get the government’s information technology system into shape.
Jones made his pitch to the Board of Alders Finance Committee at City Hall Tuesday night at one in a series of hearings on the mayor’s proposed $525 million operating budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.The IT-chief pitch drew skeptical questions.
Jones had a tough enough sell last year when he convinced alders to approve $101,898 to fund a new chief information officer (CIO) position. It might be even tougher now that the ask is for $43,102 more for the position.
Right now the city’s IT department reports to Jones as part of the finance department. Jones had said last year that given his other responsibilities, the work was more than he can handle. The goal is to make IT a stand alone department that reports to a new department head.
The new CIO would still report to Jones, but would be responsible for managing the day-to-day hum of IT professionals who support City Hall and all city departments, including some of the biggest task masters, like public safety and the Board of Education. The new CIO would also be responsible for managing the city’s many IT projects.
Jones said the city never went ahead to try to fill the position after last year’s approval because consultants reported that the salary wouldn’t attract qualified candidates in a competitive market. So Jones said the administration decided to come back this year with the higher $145,000 request and broaden the job description by folding in responsibility for overseeing the Board of Ed along with other city departments.
Hartford pays about $140,000 to the head of its IT department, Jones said. And he said given the scope of work, managing not only all of the city’s IT professionals, but also the BOE’s, it’s a lot of work.
Festa.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa balked last year at the idea of paying more than $100,000 for the CIO position. This year she came with a little research of her own. After sleuthing sites such as payscale.com, Festa said she found the median salary for a CIO in the public sector is about $81,000.
“That just seems like it’s pretty high,” she said of the proposed $145,000 salary, which doesn’t include benefits. She suggested that the city should promote its deputy IT director, give that person a $20,000 raise to do the CIO job.
Jones replied that deputy director job is a union job and moving that person in that job now would be “more complex than that.”
Jones said that at $145,000, the city would be “lucky” to attract someone for the amount of work that the job requires, and that in fact in the private sector pays probably twice that amount. Jones, who worked for New York City’s transit system, said that organization paid its project managers $150,000.
“Yeah, but that’s New York City,” Festa said.
Marchand: Would a short-term web designer be of more benefit than an expensive CIO?
Westville Alder Adam Marchand asked the wisdom of hiring a pricey CIO, when one of the main complaints he hears from the public concerns the city’s dysfunctional website.
Marchand asked if it might produce a better, short-term return on investment to get that website-improvement project moving quicker by hiring a web designer for about $57,000, or whatever the going rate is, than hiring a CIO “who would approach that project from 35,000 feet.”
Jones said in fact a plan to fix the city’s website is underway and will be close to a place where the mayor and alders can see it by October. He said ultimately the CIO position would oversee all the various projects that are underway when it comes to improving the city’s lagging information technology.
He said the city needs someone whose sole focus is the city’s IT infrastructure to pinpoint savings and standardization.
As an example of the need, Jones cited the recent attempt to upgrade the city’s finance software. He said when the Board of Ed was notified of the need to upgrade that software, it was discovered that the BOE is still running Windows XP. Its software can’t be upgraded because it is incompatible with the current operating system.
The BOE has 11,000 computers. The professionals who maintain them would remain their own separate department but would come under the purview of the new CIO, under Jones’ plan.
“That compromises security,” he said of the old operating systems. The new CIO would be responsible for helping the BOE get up to speed. He said a new CIO would oversee another upcoming project: the implementation of a storage plan for police body-camera data, which if it were outsourced, as was suggested Tuesday night, could cost the city a lot of money it can’t afford to spend.
This is not necessarily reflective of a majority of city employees who I would guess/hope have reasonable talents but it has been my experience that there are some front line city employees who are digital illiterates (for example, not knowing that there is content in a PDF beyond what one sees in a single pop up screen right after opening it.) The city would be well served with a kind-of merlin character that wanders around to front-line personnel probing them about their knowledge and giving quick lessons on the fly.