Consultants urge adding network engineer, business analyst and project manager after IT audit

Matrix Consulting Group presented the results of an IT operational efficiency audit to the North Richland Hills City Council on March 23, urging changes to staffing, governance and performance measurement to reduce operational risk and support the city’s growing technology needs.

"I'm Alan Pennington, president of Matrix Consulting Group and was a project manager on this engagement," Pennington told the council as he summarized the firm’s five-phase review and an employee survey that drew several hundred responses. He said the city’s IT team is "currently staffed at 12.5 positions" supporting roughly 800 employees and regional public-safety systems such as 9-1-1 and detention services.

The audit found several strengths—broad staff knowledge, responsiveness and generally acceptable service levels—but also identified gaps. Pennington said policies and procedures are "not fully updated," routine help-desk work is underreported, and a number of functions rely on single individuals, creating operational risk. "There’s a lot of functions within IT that are relying on a single individual," he said.

To address those risks, Matrix recommended a set of governance and operational changes: establish an IT steering committee to prioritize citywide technology requests and produce an annual IT work plan; develop a multiyear IT master plan; finalize and exercise continuity-of-operations and disaster-recovery plans with defined recovery time and recovery point objectives; and update internal policies and provide related staff training.

On operations and workforce, Matrix advised adopting clearer performance metrics and a more formal project-management approach for complex, high-risk efforts. The consultants recommended reorganizing several roles (for example, converting a vacant assistant director position into a technology services manager), restructuring help-desk roles into tier 1–3 classifications and adding four positions over time: a network engineer, a business analyst, an IT project manager and an additional systems analyst. Pennington described the network-engineer role as a near-term high priority: "Network engineer is one where we made that recommendation... that's one of our higher priorities because you have one."

Council members pressed on implementation details. One asked whether the city’s new ERP was recently implemented; Pennington said the ERP rollout began in 2023 and utility billing was completed last year. On training, Matrix said it does not provide end-user training as part of the audit but that implementation support can be provided by other vendors. Pennington described the recommended staffing increases as staged over multiple years rather than immediate hires.

City Manager Paulette Hartman said staff will review Matrix’s recommendations and prioritize items to bring forward during the budget process. "Our staff work begins," she said. "We'll be reviewing the recommendations and looking at the ones that we need to implement first." She also told the council that some recommendations have already seen early implementation and that the city treats IT as critical infrastructure.

The presentation drew repeated attention to single points of failure. Pennington and council members agreed the department currently runs lean and that adding targeted positions or managed contracts would reduce risk without unnecessarily inflating the organization. The consultants suggested cross-training for resilience in the near term and returning to more specialized roles for critical areas—such as dedicated public-safety analysts—over time.

Next steps: staff will review the full Matrix report (to be distributed to council members), incorporate priority items into the upcoming budget discussions and return with specific recommendations and cost estimates for any proposed position changes.