North Kingstown's IT Department Gets More Praise

Which function would citizens miss most if it suddenly stopped working?

Tax assessor, building official/code enforcement, finance, , , planning and development, , , recreation/leisure services, senior and human services, town clerk and water.

As Jason Albuquerque, the town’s director of information technology, points outs, all those departments depend on information technology – computers, software, websites, telecommunications, cell/broadband services and the multiplying peripherals that go with them.

Yet a year ago, the information technology that keeps North Kingstown up and running was operating from a house at 30 Reynolds St., behind the town hall.

As any homeowner knows, keeping one computer online 24/7 poses challengse – smoothing out unreliable electricity, diverting excess heat, finding places for cables, figuring out why the broadband stopped working, etc.

Now imagine running an entire town’s IT service from converted living space.

“We were using residential air conditioners,” Albuquerque recalled one recent morning. “We had a few brownouts.” As the house became increasingly crowded with equipment, providing emergency backup power in the middle of a residential neighborhood emerged as a major issue.

And then, the town began building a new public safety facility on Post Road, with plenty of electrical power and a backup generator.

Following a study, the IT department determined that it could carve out 500 square feet from the new public safety complex for a modern data center – servers in racks, cooling equipment, remote management and emergency backup power.

Last November, after the police and fire departments were settled into their new quarters, IT began its move, in phases: equipment and fiber optics, then phones, then servers. In December, 30 Reynolds Street’s role as a data center ended.

The three-person IT staff moved on, too, but not to the public safety building, where adding office space posed too many challenges. The IT department now operates its equipment remotely from the historic, fat-pillared Town Hall Annex at 55 Brown St. in Wickford.

The new data center cost about $500,000, Albuquerqe says, including construction, mechanical, electrical and engineering. “This expenditure is to be reimbursed by the sale of unused town facilities including 30 Reynolds St,” he said.

Albuquerque ticks off the facilities that depend on his IT department: “Town Hall, Town Hall Annex, Allen Harbor, Fire Headquarters, FD Station 2, FD Station 3, Fire Station 5, Fire Department of Training, FD Maintenance Facility (Quonset), Police Headquarters, Animal Shelter, Public Works, Faculties Wilson Park, Transfer Station,  Water Oak Hill Station, NK Free Library, NK Golf Course Maintenance Facility , NK Golf Pro Shop.”

And that’s just in North Kingstown. A few years ago, the town signed the state’s first inter-municipal IT shared services agreement with Exeter. As Albuquerque explains, “We support the Exeter Town Clerk, Animal Control, Board of Canvassers, Public Works, Treasurer’s office, Tax Assessor, Tax Collector, Planning and Zoning.”

Early this year, IT’s initiative and expertise in setting up a Tier III Managed Service provider level Data Center earned an award from the Public Technology Institute,  in Alexandria, Va., which recognizes PTI members who demonstrate how they use technology to solve problems, reduce costs, and improve services and internal operations.”

Albuquerque said, “The award is a true testament to the Town IT Department's staff vision to run the most open, transparent, participatory and collaborative government possible.”

Next week, Albuquerque, along with a financial expert from Cisco, will serve as a keynote speaker for a Center for Digital Government