What We Do
The Management Information Systems Department is responsible for providing phone and data services for all City Departments. Our goal is to provide high-quality support for City functions, reduce costs through automation, and improve services, ultimately to benefit the citizens of our community. The MIS Department is located in City Hall.

Our Purpose/Goal Statement
“To effectively utilize existing and emerging technologies to automate and streamline work processes performed by the City; to facilitate, expand and improve data and phone services to City personnel; and ensure the security and integrity of the City’s information systems.”

The Department
A task force was established to study the need for consolidating computer operations. As a result of that study, the MIS Department was formed in June, 2005 to unify services that were formerly administered separately thoughout the City of Columbia. Melissa Baker, Mike Ellis, and Shonda McCord were assigned to MIS as Computer Services Specialists. Rick Harrison was added in late September, 2005 as MIS Director.

Our first year has been a busy one. We've organized the department, established policies and procedures for operation, and created a “Help Desk” to provide support services to our user community. The City's public web pages were redesigned to include information about City operations, calendars of events, and a new search feature to aid in locating items of interest. New technology and software was installed to manage our MIS-related assets, create an inventory database of hardware and software, enforce security, and distribute new applications, software patches, and upgrades to the fleet of City computers via an automated process. Upgraded anti-virus software and an anti-spam appliance were implemented to safeguard our network. Two servers and forty-one computers were replaced as part of our regular equipment replacement cycle, as designated in the 2005-2006 budget, with the old equipment put up for public auction.

What's On The Horizon?
In addition to maintaining day-to-day operations, the following projects are planned for the coming year and have been incorporated into our Strategic Plan:

Tax payments via the Internet. When implemented, property taxes may be paid through the world wide web.

Migration of phone systems to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to unify the City's phone system, reduce costs by pooling resources, improve services, and facilitate disaster recovery and fault-tolerance. Funds are allocated in this year's budget to replace the aging phone system at Wastewater with a VoIP-based system. Other departments will be upgraded in stages over the coming years as systems reach the end of their useful life and resources are available.

Wi-Fi: We are investigating the feasibility and costs of wireless technology to ensure phone and data services are available to emergency services personnel in the event of natural disaster or terrorist attack.

Disaster Recovery Planning - Prepare for a disaster or event that cripples or destroys MIS operations. A detailed plan will be created and implemented to provide recovery policies and procedures to the extent they are financially feasible.

System upgrades – The department will continue to replace outdated equipment per the MIS Schedule as approved in the City's budget. The network backbone is being upgraded from 100Mb to 1Gb to provide greater bandwidth and facilitate the implementation of VoIP.