Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, August 24, 2010,
Item 6
Going back to the top of the agenda, number 6, consider and take appropriate action on the remaining parts of the blocking and stacking alternative for 700 lavaca proposed by the broaddus team.
>> good afternoon. With me are leslie strickland and jim barr from facilities management. And this is a continuation from last week's discussion. We are hoping to move forward today with some direction on whether or not we should include i.t.s. Or t.n.r. In the 700 lavaca blocking and stacking scenarios and if you have any other directions for us.
>>
>> [inaudible] visited with this item last week and, of course, there were some questions that were -- i asked for the delay on this i best because there were some things that we had looked at with hearing from i.t.s. And also from t.n.r. And part of the question was the -- try to determine -- the question i had posed was the centralization of i.t.s. Posing to my pointed of view as far as decentralization of i.t.s. I was really concerned because, to give an example, in the airport site itself, it was brought to my attention that -- i'm saying the airport -- where you have the tax assessor and you have the county clerk's office, you have the sheriff's office, you know, which really are vital functions of travis county according to sources that we don't have representation from i.t.s. Out there
>> [inaudible]. So i'm kind of concerned about deployment from that standpoint. And i think i may have mentioned that. They said, well telephone -- but there are situation whereby it appears that a presence may have to be out there. And as we continue to expand in other areas. So that was my concern as far as that's concerned. And looked at, you know, the total number of f.t.e.s for i.t.s. And to centralize them all upon the one deal. Like right now we have some in this building, scattered all about, granger and stuff, but basically all basically downtown. And so since that's the case, i said, well, functionally and we look at situations where things happen -- happening meaning we have a failure of equipment, one example, where it does take persons to actually be there to deal with it. Sometimes telephone conversations suffice and sometimes they don't. And, of course, when you look at the minimum response time and then the maximum response time, there was a big difference of two hours and 50 minutes compared to 20 -- 22 minutes. So these were some things that i was trying to research and wrestle with as far as the urgency of the 700 lavaca setting opposed to -- and i understand i think it's seven locations right now that where i.t.s. Is housed. So -- and so i was concerned about the one centralized location opposed to diverse where a person could get to the critical needs of where the service of i.t.s. May be needed. And, of course, i really don't know if that's the best solution as far as them all being up on one roof. That was kind of where i was coming from, and as i stated before, when there's a fire or something, you hope that the closest responder would be there to put out the fire. And so i'm still looking at that and i just wanted to bring that to the attention of what we're doing as far as some of the stacking. Concepts and things like that. So that's why i asked for a delay and stuff till i could really see exactly where we are, where the locations are correctly and now and then the areas that do not have staff available to take care, you know, of critical needs, a broke down in equipment or ---a breakdown in equipment whether they need a i.t.s. Person in that area. The airport boulevard deal is very critical. I don't want to rehash that out again, but it's very critical, in my mind. So that's where i'm coming from. Thank you.
>> let me try and address some of those concerns. This dispersion of i.t.s. Staff today is not so that they are included in -- embedded within all the departments. We are scattered around in different locations downtown and not necessarily associated with any one department. Now, as far as the staff that works with the various departments, we have dedicated project managers that we do have one person as a project manager that's embedded with h.h.s. And is over there most of the time. We have somebody with the sheriff's office that does the same thing. They are going back and forth between down here and at the sheriff's location at the airport. The issue with trying to get everybody back together is so that we can be able to trouble shoot problems, you know, whenever it does require the communication among the various people that are scattered around downtown. And also that -- to go to lavaca would be to have our development people embedded with the departments that are down there so that when we're developing applications, trying to solve problems with a user, we're right there with them. So that's -- and, you know, that's kind of the way it's structured out there today. And i don't envision that change ago whole lot in terms of us embedding folks within the department. We just need to be close to the departments that we're serving so we can get to them.
>> and commissioner, to follow what mr. Harlow has been saying, we did provide an account -- i can go over real quickly where the i.t.s. Staff is located. They are in the granger building on the fifth floor. They have 34 staff there. They are in the gault building with 26 staff, they are in the brizendine and in the university savings basement with 17 staff, and they are in leased space at 9th street with 24 staff. And they are in clustered groups and as mr. Harlow indicated, they are not necessarily populating an area because they've got a division that's troubleshooting within that building, that just happens to be the best way they could assemble staff with the space they've been allocated over time. So ... And then they have a base of operation in the rusk building and open space in the ruiz building but there's nobody staffed there.
>>
>> [inaudible].
>> right.
>>
>> [inaudible]. That area right there.
>> most of the trouble-shooting that we do from a problem call, the statistics indicate, we have the ability technology-wise to take over a p.c. From the help desk area and we can trouble shoot the problem from there 90% of the time. If it's a hardware failure and something has to be replaced, then we have to dispatch either our vendor or someone on our staff to go take care of that situation. But majority of the problems are handled with the technology we have today where we can dial into the p.c. In the location where the customer is having the problem and fix it remotely.
>> and right now their fiscal year statistic for their help desk noncritical calls is about six minutes in response times to close the order. And then on the critical issues, they have over time -- they have a performance measure of about two and a half hours to make sure that something is resolved. But they've been averaging somewhere around an hour for the last four years. Some years it's much less than that. Other years it's a little higher. So they have what p.b.o. Is considered excellent response times. What we would hope to see is you would see improvement with consolidation. That's mr. Harlow's objective.
>> have you looked any more at the possibility as an interim solution putting both in the 700 lavaca from the standpoint of phasing and other buildouts that we may need to look at downtown?
>> operating under the assumptions as we stated them last week and the assumptions we would strictly adhere to program information, the two departments wouldn't fit. But the question is whether or not over time or for a short period of time there's a concession that could be made. But the departments would have to make operational concessions if you want us to investigate that further. Facilities management would have to work more directly with the departments.
>> joe, do you have any additional words before we make a decision?
>> well, i don't know if this is a right or wrong. Seems to be a gray area to me. I would move that we assign i.t.s. To 700 lavaca and plan to address the t.n.r. Issues later. Is there a second? That motion dies for lack of a second. Is there another motion?
>> i move that we put t.n.r. And address i.t.s. On perhaps incremental basis if it works in the interim to have some of their core people in 700 lavaca.
>> second.
>> seconded my commissioner davis. Any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Show commissioners davis, eckhardt, huber voting in favor. Voting against yours truly. That motion cars by a vote of 3-1. Congratulations, mr. Geiselman. T.n.r. Will be moved into 700 lavaca. And we'll deal with i.t.s. At a later point.
>> so would you like us to continue to work on an interim solution with i.t.s. And come back?
>> my core group is -- the leadership that needs to be adjacent and if there is a way to get that in that building on an interim basis as we look at the data center that needs to be in the future, that is what i meant by a core group.
>> okay.
>> more later.
>> thank you, sir.
>> thank you much.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, August 24, 2010, 2010 2:30 PM
