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Committee forwards citywide text- and social-media archiving contract to improve public-records compliance
Summary
IT staff proposed consolidating text-message and social-media archiving under Smarsh for about 395 city lines at an estimated $42,000/year. The committee agreed to forward the contract to the April 7 consent agenda; staff said the change will speed responses to public-records requests but will raise annual archiving costs over a police-only contract.
The committee voted to forward a proposed citywide archiving contract with Smarsh Professional Archive to the April 7 consent agenda after staff explained the system will capture city-issued phone text messages and consolidate social-media archiving into a single searchable platform.
Thomas, presenting IT materials, said the consolidated Smarsh contract "will cost the city $42,000 a year all in" and noted that the city previously paid about $17,000 a year to archive police phone lines only. He added that the migration from the city's prior cellular plan to FirstNet produced roughly $68,000 per year in operational savings that staff intends to use to offset some of the archiving cost.
Thomas also explained the scale of the change: "We have 395 lines citywide" that would be covered under the Smarsh contract. He argued that central archiving would simplify legal compliance and make public-records responses faster and less costly than ad hoc, forensic extractions of individual phones.
Councilors asked for clarification on net fiscal effect. Staff acknowledged that archiving costs will increase compared with police-only archiving but that overall IT and cellular savings reduce the net impact; staff also highlighted an anticipated $6,000 annual savings from consolidating social-media archiving under Smarsh versus the prior vendor. Staff emphasized that having comprehensive archives reduces litigation and production risk under public-records law.
The committee unanimously moved the item to the April 7 consent agenda for council approval. The contract is valid initially for one year (to align with the carrier transition) with the intent to negotiate a multi-year agreement thereafter.
