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Franklin County IT director outlines Microsoft 365, Munis cloud and Teams voice moves; touts Power BI and NIST adoption
Summary
The county’s chief information officer described recent migrations to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams voice, the move of the Tyler (Munis) ERP to the cloud, and plans for Power BI, automation and enhanced cybersecurity guided by NIST standards.
Franklin County’s chief information officer, Josh Henkel, briefed the Board of Commissioners on major technology upgrades completed this year and the department’s near-term priorities, including cybersecurity, automation and business intelligence.
Henkel told commissioners the county completed three major projects: migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365; moving the county’s Tyler ERP system (Munis) from on-premises servers to the vendor cloud; and replacing a legacy ShoreTel phone system with Microsoft Teams voice. He said the phone migration reduced incoming “channels” from about 150 to 50 and lowered recurring connectivity costs.
Nut graf: County IT leaders said modernizing enterprise systems and consolidating platforms will improve security, allow better integration of third-party applications, enable automation of routine tasks like onboarding, and permit county-wide business intelligence using Microsoft Power BI.
Henkel said Microsoft 365 enables unified authentication, policy enforcement and automation that will bolster security and allow future automation. He described Power BI as the next tool to pull integrated data from Munis and other systems into consistent, reportable dashboards for finance and other departments. Henkel also said the county has adopted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework as a baseline for cybersecurity decisions.
Commissioners praised the IT staff for training and support during the transitions and noted the county is in a “sweet spot” — large enough to implement these systems but small enough to integrate them tightly.
Ending: Henkel said the department will focus on staff training, disaster recovery planning, and rolling out Power BI and automation in the coming year; commissioners did not take formal action on technology funding at the meeting.
