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City IT director presents five‑year technology roadmap, council asks for measurable success metrics
Summary
Sammamish IT Director Jim Hominyk presented a strategic plan that prioritizes financial and permitting system modernizations and centralized, integrated systems; council asked for metrics tying investments to efficiency and security improvements.
Jim Hominyk, the city’s information technology director, presented a multi‑year IT strategic plan to the Sammamish City Council at its Jan. 14 study session, outlining a roadmap that focuses early investments on a financial system modernization and later work on permitting and asset management systems.
The plan, developed over 2024 with internal staff and the city’s technology partner Flow Analytics, followed a needs assessment and inventory of about 39 staff interviews. Hominyk said the assessment uncovered some unexpected, independently run systems — for example, park lighting and irrigation systems that IT had not previously documented.
“From that, we developed strengths or saw strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats,” Hominyk told council. He described a foundation of “a right sized IT team” and recent cybersecurity hardening after a cyber incident several years ago, while flagging gaps such as incomplete documentation and limited integration across systems.
The recommended near‑term investments — already included in the current 2025–26 budget — prioritize a financial system upgrade and a future permitting system replacement for community development, followed by enterprise asset and work‑order management. Hominyk said the financial system procurement has narrowed to two vendors and that the city expects to ramp permitting replacement work later in the year.
Council members pressed Hominyk for specific, measurable success metrics beyond project schedules and budgets. Councilmember Kaylee Clark asked about timing for the permitting system; Hominyk said permitting work is slated to begin later in the year after the finance modernization. Deputy Mayor Amy Lam and other council members requested measures tying system replacements to staff efficiency gains, the number of retired legacy systems, and security posture improvements.
Hominyk agreed to add more concrete tracking: delivery milestones tied to contract and budget targets, milestone scorecards for requirements met, and later dashboards that can publish operational metrics for staff and the public.
The plan also recommends establishing a technology change advisory board (CAB) with department leaders to prioritize projects across departments and a continued emphasis on data security and platform standardization. Hominyk said enterprise systems with workflow capabilities and AI‑enabled features are part of the requirements for new procurements.
Council advised staff to return with clearer metrics that show efficiency gains, the number of legacy systems retired, and measures of improved security (such as patch cadence or time‑to‑patch) so residents can better understand the return on the city’s technology investments.
