Audit Finds Niles Information Technology on Track

Niles’ Management Information System (MIS) is in fairly good shape, according to an audit discussed by the village board at its committee of the whole meeting Tuesday night.

Consultant Michael Crowe, who worked on the audit between November and March, said he found 16 items that should be changed or improved. That’s actually fewer than he usually finds when he audits similar size governmental bodies for the first time, he said.

Overall, Crowe said, Niles is about where it should be in terms of information technology--not “bleeding edge,” but slightly ahead of the curve.

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Several of his observations had to do with taking the time to fully document the work of the MIS department, from creating a multiyear strategic plan and vision, or mission statement, to having a set procedure for project management and a help-desk system in which calls for assistance are recorded in a log and their progress tracked.

While MIS director Bill Shaw did not entirely disagree with Crowe’s recommendations on that front, he did tell trustees that not everybody would be happy with changes that make for longer delays. If staff have to take five to 10 minutes to log in a help-desk call, then do a 15-minute fix, then take another 10 minutes or so to record the resolution of the problem, the time taken to resolve simple issues multiplies, he explained.

Crowe said moving to such a system would be a “culture shift” and would not take much time as people adjusted to it.

The consultant also recommended that the MIS department rely more on commercially available software and hardware, rather than building their own desktop computers and writing their own programming codes.

Shaw agreed with him to an extent, saying the village’s next computer purchases would be “off the shelf” because manufacturers had lower prices to where it was no longer cost effective to build units in-house.

He also said the village tries to buy software whenever possible, but often has to develop its own to make two different applications work together. He also noted that the department appeared to spend more time on code-writing because staff was in the middle of a big development project when Crowe visited.

“If I visited you the week you were painting your house, I’d think you spend a lot of time painting,” Shaw said.

Crowe also recommended that the village bring all of its computer users up to the standard of Microsoft Office 2010 as soon as possible. The village still runs Office 2003.

Trustee Louella Preston agreed with that suggestion, saying she often had difficulty opening documents from other governmental bodies because of outdated software.

“Our perspective is you should give people more tools than they think they need and see what they do with them,” Crowe said, adding that he would include changing restrictions on the use of websites such as YouTube or Facebook.

“If someone spends all day on Facebook, that is an issue for that person’s department manager,” Crowe said. “It’s not an issue for IT.”

Shaw said that employees often thought he was behind the restrictions on their technology use rather than village policy being responsible. He recalled how hard it was to persuade the village to give employees e-mail addresses in the late 1990s.

“They said, 'Why would anybody need that?' ” the village's MIS director said.

The board did not get to each of the recommendations in its 80-minute discussion of the audit, but trustees said they could take up any further questions with Crowe.

Trustee Chris Hanusiak asked why the board received Shaw’s responses along with the audit, when trustees specifically requested to see the final audit before the report was given to Shaw.

Explaining that he was shown a rough draft as part of the audit process, Shaw said that it would take quite some time to comply with all of Shaw’s recommendations.

“It’s a lot of paperwork,” he said. “And paperwork takes time.”