The City and County of Honolulu is investing $16 million into the county's information technology department in an effort to keep Oahu in step with the latest technological advancements.
The funds, which come from the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, or SLFRF, will be used to acquire updated networking devices; more storage for archive and backup; servers for more private cloud computing resources; an e-Discovery solution that automates and facilitates the electronic discovery process, and thousands of phones whose replacement has been deferred due to insufficient funding, according to Honolulu County officials.
The SLFRF funds will also be used to procure, setup, and deploy desktop computers with newer software, as well as minimize the risk of a security breach and "ensure rapid recovery from failures."
“The Department of Information Technology has been critically underfunded for the past decade,” said Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi in a statement. “All of our City departments are becoming increasingly dependent on IT for operations, and to be completely candid the systems and software we’re working with now are largely outdated. With this funding, we will be able to increase productivity, efficiency and security in ways completely necessary for this point in time for our island community.”
The Department of Information Technology’s operating budget has stayed near flat for the past 17 years, while metropolitan cities similar in size have invested heavily in the global technology transformation, according to officials.
“While the City has greatly expanded its application development capability, the funding for hardware and other infrastructure has been declining for several years,” said Department of Information Technology Director Mark Wong. “The SLFRF funds will allow us to provide much greater efficiency, reliability, and security to City operations.”
Councilmember Calvin Say, who chairs the county budget committee, added, “The City Council included additional funding for Department of Information Technology projects using State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds in its FY23 budget, because we are moving rapidly toward a more digital world in which maintaining and upgrading our City’s information technology systems becomes increasingly important.
“In addition to enhanced transparency and access, investment in our IT infrastructure allows us to provide more and better services to our residents with increased efficiency and ultimately, lower costs.”
