technology

Data backup and disaster recovery are more important than ever to municipalities. In addition to traditional disasters such as fire, flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes, ransomware has now become a devastating modern disaster for municipalities across the United States. When a disaster hits, permanent data loss is often not close behind if a town or city doesn’t have the right data backup and disaster recovery solution in place.

Municipalities, especially smaller municipalities, can often feel left behind with information technology. It’s understandable. With constrained budgets limiting the ability to hire expensive IT professionals, municipalities can struggle to maintain computers, internet connectivity, wi-fi, and email. Because municipal staff are so strapped for time, they often let essentials such as antivirus software, data backup, and cybersecurity best practices go by the wayside—or settling for a “good enough” situation.

Early in the winter of 2019 fellow Albany resident SteveKnox and I started talking about how important the availability of high speed fiber optic affordable internet service is to the continued health of our community, and what could we do to ensure our region did not get left out as internet service providers (ISP) build out ever-faster networks in more urban and populated areas.

If a disaster strikes, can your organization continue to provide businesses and residents the same level of service? Before any significant amount of work can be done to establish a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP), it is essential to know exactly what the scope of the plan will be and who will be involved in its development. The following are some important considerations.

New Hampshire Town and City magazine spoke with Jason Levine, LGC's Senior Application Developer, about the Intranet. Here is his primer:

T&C: Most of us are familiar with the Internet, but what is an Intranet?

It won’t be long, some analysts predict, before your old cell phone goes the way of the Boy Scout telephone, two tin cans connected by a string. Meanwhile, you might consider purchasing a smartphone or upgrading the one you have.

Smartphones are handheld computers that allow the user to make phone calls, check and send emails, surf the Internet, take high resolution photographs, get travel directions by GPS, and make life and work easier and more interesting  with tens of thousands of other applications.

How does your organization budget for technology?

If you’re like most small, local governments across New Hampshire, you’re probably quick to call the repair person after a computer breaks down or a mobile device, copier, printer, scanner or anything else connected to the IT system, stops working. But it’s just as likely that you view technology, and the need to pay for it, as a necessary evil.

For at least a decade, corporations, universities, and other large organizations have been using electronic time sheets, saving time and money in payroll and human resources departments and giving managers a quick and thorough accounting of how their employees are spending their time. Electronic time sheets also conserve paper, eliminate the agony of digging through paper files to find old records, and provide a wealth of other information including logs of used sick and vacation time, and other types of absences.

You may have heard the term “narrowbanding” and you may know that it has something to do with the radio communications systems used in your community. This article will provide the information you need to comply with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate that will affect two-way radio communications systems, including those used by state, county and local governments. Effective January 1, 2013, all radio systems operating on frequencies between 150 and 512 Megahertz (MHz) must employ “narrowband” emissions.

Concerns about cybersecurity may not be on most people’s minds. But whether you’re managing a town, a school district, or a personal, online bank account, you should be aware of threats to your information, money, and safety, says Leslie Williams, Chief Information Security Officer for the New Hampshire Department of Information Technology.