City IT staff told the Gardner City Council at a work session that the city has begun migrating some systems to cloud services but still needs specialized local support for police records and computer-aided dispatch systems.

IT staff said the Axon system used by the police department is being moved to the cloud, and that the city has started migrating some Office 365 services. Staff recounted a 2017 refresh of an on-site architecture and said new hardware purchased for the city's local datacenter entered the budget in 2023 and is expected to have a six- to eight-year life cycle. City IT staff recommended exploring further migration of rack-mounted systems to cloud-based solutions to reduce capital expenses and free up staff time for cross-training.

An IT staff member said that, while cloud hosting can limit some local control, it can cap capital expenditures and allow existing staff to be cross-trained; the staff member described specialized customizations in the in-car systems as requiring "very specialized expertise." The IT presenter said cross-training and certification pipelines are part of the department's plan but that the current workload and the need to support RMS, CAD and Axon for the police department create a case for a specialized IT analyst.

Council members and other staff raised concerns about adding an ongoing personnel cost. One councilmember said adding staff should be a last resort and that attrition may handle future staffing needs if cloud migration reduces on-premises roles. Another councilmember noted the city has several other positions being filled, including police officers and a building inspector, but said the chief had emphasized the importance of the IT position to support public-safety systems.

Staff emphasized the trade-offs involved: capital spending on on-premises infrastructure is a sunk cost and will likely grow as storage needs expand, while cloud solutions can shift some costs from capital to operating budgets. The city did not adopt any formal change to its IT plan during the work session; staff recommended continued evaluation of cloud migration, cross-training and a targeted staffing approach tailored to public-safety systems.

Clarifying details from the discussion included: the 2017 architecture refresh, new hardware budgeted in 2023 for a 6-to-8-year expected life span, the Axon public-safety system being moved to the cloud, and staff concerns that significant customizations in in-car police systems require specialized knowledge. Staff said licenses for non-rack hardware are already included in existing budgets and that cloud migration would not produce immediate license savings for those items.