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County CIO says IT budget up amid sheriff integration and aging servers
Summary
Vernon Lutz, the county and city chief information officer, told the Vanderburgh County Council the joint IT budget rises about 9.7% largely because the sheriff's office was added to county systems and older servers must be replaced; he highlighted negotiated savings and said cybersecurity investments helped lower insurance costs.
Vernon Lutz, the chief information officer for the city and county, told the Vanderburgh County Council on Aug. 15 that the joint computer-services budget shows an overall increase of about 9.68%, with the county share rising 10.74% and the city's portion 8.72. He said the primary drivers are bringing the sheriff's office onto the county-managed systems and the need to replace aging server hardware.
"The overall increase is 9.68 for the joint budget. For the county's portion, it's 10.74, and the city's is 8.72," Lutz said, noting last year's addition of the sheriff and courts to the joint environment. Lutz also said some line items spike because older servers must be replaced: the budget rationale shows a large percentage jump tied to server capacity and a multi-year lease plan to fund replacement.
Why it matters: the change shifts licensing and support costs into the joint IT budget and raises near-term spending for capital and contractual services. Council members pressed Lutz for specifics on counts and per-terminal cost; Lutz said the county now supports roughly 1,092 county devices and about 1,011 city devices and that the combined environment has more than 2,000 computers and a replicated disaster-recovery site.
Lutz listed several negotiated savings that partly offset increases: eliminating redundant telecommunications ($50,000 annually), renegotiating SIP trunk service with Spectrum ($12,000 saved), and an Internet renewal that will save about $54,000. He also said ongoing projects have generated roughly $288,000 in savings that help balance the budget.
On professional services and cybersecurity, Lutz said some increases are unavoidable because the county must contract outside the managed-service provider for specialized work (for example, an earlier Cisco call-manager upgrade cost about $30,000). He described layered security improvements such as two-factor authentication and immutable backups and said those investments have helped reduce the county's cyber insurance costs by about $10,000 at the last renewal.
Lutz asked for two additional staff positions in his budget—a project manager and an engineer—to help manage growth and reduce long-term costs. He invited council members to speak individually about those positions.
No formal decisions were made during the hearing; budget actions will be taken at a later meeting. The council requested supporting detail on object codes and split-line items prior to formal adoption.
