Aug. 13, 2025 — Norfolk County Chief Information Officer Sam Evans told the county commissioners that completing the Tyler enterprise resource planning rollout is the IT department’s top priority for the year and the cornerstone of a broader multi‑year technology plan.

Evans said the county has a pilot of the Tyler employee access portal under way and described it as necessary groundwork for a later electronic time-and-attendance module. “Our biggest priority for this year is the Tyler, enterprise resource planning software that we have and everybody uses including the Aggie,” Evans said.

Why it matters: The Tyler rollout touches human resources, payroll and other core functions across county departments; officials said it will change how employees request leave, access tax documents and log time. Commissioners were briefed on plans that span two to five years, with higher, medium and lower priorities noted for different initiatives.

Evans summarized six workstreams: software consolidation, cybersecurity, registry operations, information access, infrastructure and IT service. On software, he said the county will continue to consolidate duplicate licenses to reduce cost and management overhead and roll out a password manager (KeePass) and Windows upgrades. On information access, he proposed public-and-staff dashboards to display service metrics — for example, counts of clients served or notaries processed — and said those dashboards would help make county services easier to track.

Cybersecurity was raised repeatedly. Evans said the department is updating the county’s written information security plan, expanding multifactor authentication for priority applications and using cloud defenses available through Microsoft. He described a recent upgrade to email protections provided by Mimecast — a feature Evans called CyberGraph — that will add banners to flag unusual incoming messages and reduce business-email-compromise risks.

Evans said the department will continue to integrate the Wollaston Recreational Facility technology with county IT services, citing recent equipment and support for tournaments and public events. He also said the county’s registry of deeds system, BrownTek, remains stable and runs on an IBM “power system” backbone; he indicated upgrades to that hardware are likely in the next two to three years but that there is no immediate plan to replace BrownTek.

On emerging technology, Evans said the county will explore limited applications of artificial intelligence, such as assisting financial analysis in the treasurer’s office, and will continue to iterate as vendor tools evolve. He also described ongoing cybersecurity training for employees through a state‑sponsored program (KnowBe4) and regular network hardening following an incident last year.

Commissioners asked clarifying questions about registry planning, unified communications (for example, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet) and the timeline for the Tyler modules. Evans said some items are immediate (employee portal pilot and time-and-attendance next) while other items are lower priority and multi‑year.

Next steps: Commissioners will receive additional department updates over the summer; Facilities will present in two weeks, and IT will provide more granular implementation timelines and opportunities for commissioners to review non‑high priority items on request.