The Waukesha Water Utility Commission on Oct. 21 approved a proposal to migrate its billing system to Harris Computer’s cloud-based Advanced Utility Billing (version 5), with initial implementation costs of $695,416 and an estimated 2026 annual cost of $98,441.

Courtney (staff member) told commissioners the move replaces an earlier implementation attempt by another vendor that failed and restores the utility to a supported Harris platform. Courtney said the cost includes $648,416 to upgrade from the utility’s version 3 to version 5, a $20,000 allowance for a REST API to enable integrations, estimated travel expenses for training and cloud-hosting fees of about $55,191. Courtney said the vendor will provide licensing for 20 concurrent users (10 more than currently used) and will hold annual fees steady for three years before routine increases.

The commission heard a brief history of the procurement: the utility solicited bids in 2022, selected a vendor that later proved unable to meet Public Service Commission requirements, reverted temporarily to Harris version 3 and is now approving a planned migration to Harris version 5. Courtney said the city’s IT review validated the security approach at a high level and that Harris releases patches and feature updates in the cloud.

Commissioners asked several questions about data protections, AI use and cyber liability. Commissioner Frank (commissioner) pressed that the contract should explicitly prohibit sharing customer billing data to train vendor AI models or exposing personally identifiable ratepayer information. Courtney said city IT had completed a vendor security questionnaire and that she will request contract language ensuring compliance with state privacy rules and limiting data use for training, but that explicit warranty language about longer-term price caps and cyber indemnity had not yet been negotiated.

Commission discussion also covered whether customers would see notable changes (Courtney said no significant customer-facing changes are expected immediately), whether the new system would produce long-term staff efficiencies through integrations and whether the vendor assumes responsibility for cloud-hosted security (Courtney said the vendor accepts responsibility for security of data while hosted in the cloud but indicated the city retains responsibility for security posture coming from local systems; she said she would confirm details in writing).

Commissioners voted to approve the Harris proposal; the motion passed unanimously (the transcript records the motion as passing unanimously; vote counts were not specified in the public record provided).

Why it matters: the billing system handles revenue, customer records and integrations with online payment processors. Commissioners endorsed a familiar vendor and a cloud migration to reduce unsupported on-premise risk, while pushing for explicit contract protections on data sharing, AI use and cyber liability.

What’s next: staff will finalize contract language, return with any edits and report implementation timing and progress to the commission.