County's new Central Square 911 system goes live; IT staff testing servers and closing nursing-center transition

The Stephenson County IT manager told the board Oct. 8 that the Central Square 911 project has gone live since the last meeting and is operational.

Staff reported ongoing testing to ensure seamless connectivity with multiple vendors that use county servers. The IT manager said the county has completed a restore and is validating integrations before deploying additional servers (notably on the fifth floor) to minimize downtime.

The nursing center's IT transition is nearly complete. The county earlier reconnected some services at the nursing center while the facility prepared to operate independently; the manager said the county has removed licensing from county accounts and is forwarding mail and administrative traffic to the facility's new addresses. The county expects modest license-cost savings going forward.

The IT manager said the state's CrowdStrike endpoint security deployment required special grouping for the nursing center machines and that work continues to remove the center from county licensing after access to a few remote machines is restored.

No formal action was taken; staff will continue testing and report back when integrations are complete and when the nursing-center IT transition is finalized.