All right, like to call to order the technology committee um at I don't know 11 35 a.m.

on October 21st, 2025.

I'm gonna dispense with the pledge.

Hello, everyone.

All right.

I'm gonna dispense with the pledge.

Could we have a roll call, please?

Member Altenberg?

Here.

Question Casmin?

Chair Clark.

Here.

Member Dan Ford?

Member Frank?

Here.

Member Peterson.

Member Roberts.

Terrific.

Thank you all for being here.

And we're good with you.

Is there any public comment?

There's that.

All right, Chair's remarks.

I'm uh excited to see everyone here today.

And uh that's it.

We have no unfinished business.

Our new business is the um item 8.1, which is committee action approving the recommended fiscal year 2026 budget for enterprise information technology.

Can I get a motion in a second, please?

Motion by Dan Forth, second by Altonberg.

This motion by what's it second by Peterson?

Terrific.

All right, CIO Blanding.

We see you are uh visiting us remotely using technology.

I am good morning, Chris Blanning CIO.

I appreciate the ability to return attend remotely.

I'm at an annual CIO conference I attend most years, and it just fell on this week.

So we're in good hands.

We have Terry Kath, uh deputy IT director, um representing in person.

So thanks, Terry.

I guess I'll turn it over to Nick at this point.

You're gonna start us off, Nick.

Thanks, Chris.

Just a brief uh introduction.

So the uh this budget can be found on page 86.

The FY 2026 recommended budget for enterprise IT totals 17,996,08, which is a decrease of 540,167 or approximately 3% from FY2025.

This change is primarily driven by a reduction in contractual spending within account 71125 staff augmentation following the completion of temporary support engagements tied to major technology efforts, including enterprise system implementations and enhanced cybersecurity controls.

With those engagements complete, the FY2026 budget returns to a more typical operating level and other contractual commodity and capital accounts remain stable.

With that, I'll hand it back over to Chris.

Thank you.

Thanks, Nick.

So uh just clearly uh wanna thank everybody involved, Nick, Mike Wheeler, uh, but specifically in IT, Terry Kath and Heidi Hernandez seems they've lived and breathed budgeting for the past several months, like a lot of people have.

But thank you to everybody to help push putting it together.

I'd also like to thank the county administrator's office, Patrice Sutton, and you, the county board for your continued support of technology at Lake County.

So this budget allows us to focus on sustaining our operations, um, focusing on excellence, which we do every day, and supporting our recent cybersecurity and infrastructure modernizations we put in uh over the past few years.

So a lot of our budget is software and applications line item, which goes to uh continued support of those operations and initiatives.

Um good news.

Our our budget for personnel.

We um started the year with a six percent vacancy rate, but we've been diligent on filling positions, and we actually achieved 100% uh fill rate uh in February.

So that's good news.

We're retaining folks, keeping them excited working and keeping them busy.

So that uh and other than that, our head count remains uh equivalent to last year's.

Um so anyways, I just wanted to give a high level.

Um thank the team for all they do every day and uh glad to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Anything do you want to add anything to our you're good?

Um I just had a question about the ERP system.

Is where when we look at budgeting, I was looking, I know software and online services went up a lot, but budgeted.

Is that where the ERP system is going to live?

Is in this budget or do you know, or um for our online software for workday?

Yeah, I'll give my high level, and I'm sure Patrice Sutton will correct me if wrong.

Uh we are prefunded that.

Um, and I believe that's multiple years, Patrice.

Yep.

Through 2026, um, you're not gonna see it in the EIT budget, but then subsequently it will be in this budget.

Yes, that's correct.

That'll be interesting.

I think when that happens, we can hopefully look at the the our our legacy systems and those costs and look at the new systems, and I think it'll be really interesting to see the difference.

Um, and so the okay, so that's not why that was increased.

That's okay.

That was my question about that.

And I noticed we have got a lot more servers.

Is that when we look at the increase in servers, is this cloud servers, or is this like it says that you know there's 491 servers versus last year?

There's only 352.

Um, I just was wondering, are we are these cloud servers or are they actual just like hardware servers?

Yeah, we know we're moving to cloud, but you hear about the stuff with Amazon going on with their web service.

So we heard that here at this conference that it affected things.

Um it is we have a virtual server environment.

So it I've kind of talked about it's like this big warehouse, and then you divide it up virtually with different apartments.

Um so that number ebbs and flows.

Uh, we have been reducing our our on-prem physical servers and moving them to that environment as well as to cloud.

So it's probably a combination of all okay.

So that's like a combination of yeah, I just was interested to know if we were increasing more in hardware.

So it's more not with the hardware more with cloud.

And I'm sure we'll have a conversation, yeah, about how to back up the cloud at some point.

Yeah, we will absolutely.

So we're talking about that a lot at the conference right now.

We are have a related question.

Uh sale landing.

You know, as it uh aligns with our sustainability goals.

Is there any sort of a metric out there that says, hey, for every terabyte of data you take off of a physical server and put it in the cloud, the carbon footprint, the water usage is X.

Is there is there anything like that out there?

And can we start to measure what our uh sustainability impact is for transitioning data to more to the cloud?

Because obviously there's some convenience and security reasons for it, but there's also an impact that that I think we need to be thinking about and measuring.

Yes, absolutely.

I I believe you had mentioned that one point in the past brought something similar up, and uh we did some research at that point to kind of to look into it.

Um I don't have that data right here.

I apologize, but we will we can bring that.

I'll tell you in general, what we learned is what they're gonna say is they can do things at scale.

Um, and so it is a good uh effort to get it off of our prem.

I understand your point that we're just taking it from our prem and putting it somewhere, but are we doing it you know in a sustainable manner?

And from the initial research, yeah, everything they're doing is at scale and with efficiency, so it would be better there, but I'm glad to follow up with further information, Chair.

Yeah, I appreciate the response.

I just think if there isn't a metric, then then we want to think about it uh from um you know energy usage and other standpoint.

And I understand that that's what the industry is gonna say, but I I'd like us to just understand is there a measurement that we can use?

Can't can we just understand what it is?

Uh it because it it's likely that we're gonna continue to trend this direction.

And again, aligning with our sustainability goals, the first step is measuring so we understand our impact for any of our policies and infrastructure.

Thank you.

And I think from sustainability, looking forward, I mean, so we move toward more AI environments and stuff too.

It's just something to think about when we look about with our policies about the sustainability of them.

And and a question about the and I can't remember of our devices.

Are we I know we looked at for part of our digital growth initiative, having our devices that are being replaced, being like refurbished and given to to like places like PCs for people.

Are we doing that at all as part of our our um sustainability or and also just to support the program, our digital growth initiative?

We are absolutely recycled out our our machines when they're end of life.

Um we did look into PCs for people specifically.

Um there was a challenge, I believe with the term donation, I think, and one of the county policies or something.

So um we we didn't go that route, absolutely.

Yeah, because I thought we had the discussion in that it maybe was possible, but maybe I'm imagining this from another that it we were gonna look at to see if it was because I understand we can't donate things, but even for the small amount we get for recycling, if there was a way to look at instead of just um you know looking at doing some kind of thing.

And I I thought we had discussed that it was possible, but it does merit further conversation.

I'm not sure.

Maybe it could merit further conversation.

Yeah, nobody said no, you can't do this.

It would it needed further conversation.

So we okay.

Well, hopefully we can do further conversation on that.

Thank you.

Anyone from tech, yeah.

I had one.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I wanted to follow up on your server question, Terry.

Uh reminded me that it's a kind of a high uh a good point.

When we have this virtual server environment, we did add servers because we um health and the courts are now housing theirs into that unit that we have.

Whereas perhaps you remember when we talked about this uh as a technology improvement program, we they had their own units, and when those went end of life, they were gonna consolidate into our one big unit for efficiency.

So that represents that and is a good story, I believe.

That is.