County IT director outlines Office 365 rollout, cybersecurity and AI policy priorities

Matt Kelleher, Muskegon County’s IT director, presented a strategic planning update describing a multi‑year roadmap and recent accomplishments in the county’s technology stack.

Kelleher said the county migrated 37 departments to Microsoft 365 and is working to complete the rollout for remaining departments by the end of 2026, noting some departments cannot move to the shared tenant due to state or federal security requirements. "We have migrated 37 departments up to this point, and we have about 33% planned for finishing this off by the end of the year," he said. He told commissioners that about 30% of departments cannot move to the shared tenant because of special state or federal security requirements.

Kelleher reviewed operational work including installation of a new data center, a firewall replacement to mitigate security risk, and a countywide phone upgrade. He also presented help‑desk metrics, saying the county handled 11,373 tickets in 2025 with projections above 12,000 for 2026 and 13,500 for 2027 if trends continue. Kelleher and commissioners discussed goals for reducing ticket volumes through staffing, root‑cause analysis and potential adoption of single‑sign‑on or credential solutions to cut lockout incidents.

On AI and cybersecurity, Kelleher described pilot uses (for example, Microsoft Copilot saving staff hours in data conversion) and emphasized policy development and guardrails. He noted the department is over 50% complete on risk assessment, threat detection and compliance steps and plans tabletop incident‑response exercises this year.

Commissioners asked about timelines, staffing, redundancy and budget models (rate‑study/chargeback vs. operational subscriptions). Kelleher said transitioning funding models would be a heavy lift requiring consultants and coordination with finance.