The county Information Technology committee reported on several operational projects and approved a one-year subscription to a prosecutor portal during a July session.

Committee staff said they completed one project — a new printer-management software — that will produce usage reports the county hopes to use to explore a centralized printing model. “We have completed 1 of the projects, which is our, printer management software,” Kimberly said. The committee discussed continuing high paper use across some county offices despite growing digitization in records and said the new reports will help identify replacement needs and toner use.

The committee also confirmed it has started building a short-term rental software platform to track registrations and occupancy-tax collection in response to a New York State short‑term rental law that takes effect this fall. “We have started building out the short term rental software platform,” Kimberly said, and staff said the vendor-based platform will handle registrations, occupancy-tax collection and produce data feeds for county offices and the state. Committee members asked about what data would be available and what elements would be confidential; staff said they will report to the board and the state on a regular schedule and are still sorting out data‑sharing details between town-level records and the county system.

On cybersecurity, committee members emphasized multifactor authentication (MFA) and stronger passwords. A cybersecurity presenter described MFA as “something you have and something you know” and urged turning MFA on for every account. He recommended longer passphrases and said the county is considering a minimum password length of 16 characters with less frequent forced changes to improve security.

The committee voted to purchase an annual license for the Axon prosecutors portal to allow the county attorney access to law-enforcement evidence systems that are no longer free for prosecutors. Staff said the expense was unbudgeted but relatively small — “approximately $5,000 for the year. Actually, that is 5,038 and change,” Kimberly said — and that Terry offered to cover the cost from available software-subscription funds if the board preferred not to amend a central account. The motion to proceed with the purchase passed after a vote.

Minutes for the meeting and routine reports were approved at the start of the meeting.

The committee did not adopt any new formal county-wide IT policy during the session; staff said further policy discussions about password rules and short-term rental data-sharing will follow.