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Westchester ACT committee hears IT and data-integration plans; cybersecurity highlighted
Summary
The borough's ACT committee received updates on GIS and permitting integrations, an August target for a new finance system, and an annual IT report stressing cybersecurity, backups and phishing education. Staff cautioned about legal limits on publishing enforcement data and noted integrations tied to the existing domain.
The Administration, Communication and Technology (ACT) Committee on the Borough of Westchester heard a quarterly data-manager update and the annual information-technology report highlighting progress on system integrations and ongoing cybersecurity work.
Nick, the borough's manager of enterprise data and applications, told the committee his goal is "to wire up all our systems so they talk together to minimize the amount of painstaking manual data entry" and demonstrated a GIS-based rental-license map that distinguishes student-allowed and non-student rentals. He said the rental map rebuilds weekly and that SALDO and conditional-use mapping work remains to be cleaned and linked to the website.
Bill Mann, presenting the annual IT report, summarized investments in cybersecurity and disaster recovery, regular penetration testing and layered defenses including Barracuda and other vendors. Mann described cloud-to-cloud backups and on-prem backups to reduce outage risk and said the department runs monthly phishing tests and incident-response training. He said help-desk volume is substantial, citing 822 tickets handled in one recent week, and characterized the FY IT budget as $289,000 with an unexplained transcript figure described as "about $14.07" left over.
Both staff cautioned about legal and privacy limits: Nick said publishing enforcement or violation details could raise legal risk and advised consulting the borough attorney before making certain data public. On AI tools, Mann urged a cautious policy approach: "Copilot's there to help you or you can't hide behind it," he said, and recommended limited enterprise deployment, role-based access and explicit training.
What happens next: staff will continue system integrations, schedule trainings, and proceed with the finance-system implementation with a stated estimated go-live date of August 31. The committee encouraged staff to bring concrete targets and timeline updates to the council as the projects progress.
