2. Introduction
Over the last eight weeks the two of us got first
hand experience in what it is to run an enterprise
IT department for a moderately sized county
government. We learned about the department
from head to tail and also got an education in local
government as well. It was a tremendous
experience in that we learned a lot about making
that jump to a career in IT, and what it takes to be
successful in the field.
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3. Sarasota County Government
• Sarasota County Government provides services to
it’s citizens. Services like:
▫ parks
▫ recreation services
▫ libraries
▫ bus systems
▫ emergency services
▫ sheriffs
▫ jails
▫ 911 services
▫ property appraisers
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4. How does IT fit into County Government?
• Many ways, today having access to a computer is
essential to any job.
• Communication is essential to providing people
services through data and voice.
• Providing easier, cheaper, and more efficient
ways to do their jobs makes everyone happy.
• Protecting vulnerable assets is essential to
running a healthy community.
• County employees and services need hardware,
software, support, and service.
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5. Sarasota County EIT
• A department made up of 76 IT directors, managers, and IT
professionals.
• Provide hardware and software for county employees,
patrons, and elected officials. As well as support through data,
voice, and technical support.
• Administer IT services to the county through eight sub
departments:
▫ Networking
▫ Security
▫ Telecom
▫ System Administration
▫ Applications and Databases
▫ Service Desk Support
▫ Procurement and Finance
▫ Project Management
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6. The Network
• Stores, routes, switches, and protects data for:
▫ Sarasota County Government
▫ School Board
▫ Memorial Hospital
▫ County Clerk
▫ Tax Collector
▫ Supervisor of Elections
▫ Sheriff’s Office
▫ Property Appraiser
▫ State Attorney
▫ Public Defender
▫ Town of Longboat Key
▫ Emergency Services
▫ 911
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7. The Network
• The Network of Sarasota County is the lifeblood
of the county.
• Everything needs data, gyms, landfills, historical
centers, surveyors, etc.
• They have to ensure speed, capabilities, and
security of the network.
• The network at Sarasota County has a
monumental task to handle all this data and its
users.
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8. How Do They Manage This?
• Through a number of service providers(FPL, Comcast,
Verizon), a few administration buildings and state of the art
data center.
• Running mostly on copper, fiber optic, and some wireless. The
Suncoast Regional Data Center is the main hub for the
network and all data running through the County.
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9. SRDC
• Located near 75 Highway off of Cattlemen Rd. Shared space
with Verizon.
• Cat 5 rated building, building within a building wrapped with
steel walls.
• Over 2000 square fee raised floor, 34 feet above sea level.
• All redundant Generators, UPSs, Battery strings, PDUs,
HVAC. 4000 gal diesel tank, fire suppression, site scan
monitoring system.
• Cat 6 copper, 50 micron fiber cabling, IP based KVM switches,
smart power strips, 24 inch raised floor, overhead raceways,
fiber ducts, and wrightline cabinets. SAN storage, firewalls,
routers, switches, servers, telecom equipment.
• Services Provided: Server OS, VMware, backup, recover,
storage admin, and offsite data storage.
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10. Telecom
• County is VOIP SIP for all their telephone needs.
• SIP stands for session initiation protocol, which
operates at the application level.
• Voice has priority over the network.
• Avaya provides the phones and VOIP SIP
system.
• Program phones through Avaya web application,
then any room with a Ethernet drop can be
brought on the network in a few seconds.
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11. Networking Lab
• Networking team gave us a couple of cisco
routers and switches and let us do some
configuration.
• Did things like create IP addresses, ping between
routers and switches, created vlans, added
DHCP server to network, specified number of
hosts, created hostnames, username, and
password.
• Essentially created a miniature network
environment.
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12. Security
• Applications / Devices
▫ Blue Coat Proxy
Controls web traffic
Intermediary between workstations and outside
Blocking of sites
▫ Check Point
IPS
2 x firewall for EIT, SCSB, 911, VPNs
redundancy
▫ F5 Switches
Application layer firewall
Handles load bouncing
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13. Security
▫ Nessus Vulnerability Scanner
Searches for exploits in network
Strict rules by default; need to tone them down
Pass data found to excel spreadsheets
▫ MSUS (Microsoft Server Update Scanner)
Pulls Microsoft updates to a log to allow proper download
times
Helps avoid potential zero-day attacks
▫ Solar Winds
External email that first line of spam defense
▫ Spam Assassin
Internal email that rates mail; score of 5 or greater is
discarded
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14. Security
▫ Antivirus
Mcaffee
ClamAV
▫ Splunk
Helps streamline work efficiency
Logs all system data in easy to read documents
Examples of what is logged: packet flow data, database
audit logs, Windows events, Active Directory changes
User documentation is crucial
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15. Security
• Procedures
▫ Password Policies
To prevent guessable passwords such as ‘123abc’
GPO set password to be eight or more characters,
includes a number, and a symbol
Policy management and being proactive are key
Employees can exploit the system
▫ Password Auditing
Audits the list of passwords from employees
Runs John the Ripper as brute force and dictionary
attacks to find weakest passwords
Runs Metasploit to find passwords that are a bit stronger
Can use to find passwords that have been used more than
once
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17. Security
▫ PCI Compliancy
Currently working on PCI compliance level 3 of 4
Credit card security
▫ Investigations
Incidents may occur involving workstations
Work with HR to build a case
Past cases with malicious site activity
▫ Company Auditing / Pen-Test
Clifton Larson Allen auditing firm pen test
Scored very well
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18. System Administration
• Under director of IT production operations
• Keepers of the SRDC, Email servers, and other
county servers.
• Maintain the county's email servers, active
directory environment, and Vmware.
• Deploys physical equipment as well, during our
time with this team we transferred servers for
911 services from Administration building to
new Emergency Operations Center
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19. Exchange server
• Handles the county's email system.
• County is all Microsoft so they run Exchange
server 2007 migrating to 2013 by late June.
• Runs off of two servers, Sheriff has two severs,
Fire department has one, and so does the clerk
of the court that EIT manages.
• Dealing with when to delete email, currently
keep all email since 2007 servers are getting full.
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20. Vmware
• County utilizes a lot of virtual machines for their
server needs.
• This cuts down on space, heat, time, and money.
• Use Vmware as vendor for their virtualization.
• Running a few applications on virtual machines,
time sheets, and SharePoint.
• Testing zero clients portals for patron machines
in library that essentially run a virtual machine.
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21. Active Directory
• AD is heavily utilized by the county.
• Its essentially their Microsoft environment, a
collection of computers and servers.
• Associates users, groups, workstations, servers,
and objects.
• Operates in the bcc.scgov.local domain which is
part of the scgov.local forest.
• AD aids the county in administering its users,
workstations, servers, and objects through GPOs
and other policies.
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23. Applications / Data
• GIS (Geographic Information System)
▫ Application used to capture, store, manipulate,
analyze, manage and present geographic data
▫ Used at Sarasota County about 10 years
▫ Google Maps / Map Quest basic examples
▫ Base Layer is made up of just Ortho Images or top
view shots of areas like Google Maps
Examples of some integral layers
Actively maintain 300 layers; 100 static
Census Data
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25. Applications / Data
▫ Pichtometry
In addition to Ortho Images, Sarasota County has
access to Oblique Imagery which can produce
images with a side view.
Hosted by Pichtometry
6 year contract for fly-over pictures of Sarasota
Resolution is 4 inch/pixel
Measurement feature possible due to fly over scans
with radar and laser technology like that of
submarines
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27. Applications / Data
• Maximo
▫ Asset tracking management system created by
IBM; said to be best in industry
▫ Holds all asset data for a specific parsec or
address; what it is, date installed, age, status
▫ Sarasota County uses it for:
Inventory module warehouse control
Purchase module for inventory
Tracking module inventory, products, and assets
Asset module to create asset records (model /
manufacture)
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28. Applications / Data
▫ Maximo and GIS work together; GIS holds the
geographic location of the asset while Maximo
manages it.
▫ The assets are logged using GPS coordination and
then logged to the GIS database using netmotion
▫ Some Sarasota’s main asset categories:
Parks, traffic, water, transportation, irrigation,
sewage and storm water
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29. Applications / Data
▫ Examples of ‘storm water assets’ are manholes,
drainage ditches, retention ponds, gutters, etc.
Water pumps and lift stations are ‘water assets’
▫ Trees were one of the first types of asset to be
listed in the GIS and Maximo applications.
▫ Maximo is good with keeping data integrity by
forcing data addition or changes through a process
Individual editing -> QA -> Default (standard)
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30. Applications / Data
• Amanda
▫ Is a business process automation application for
government agencies
▫ 10 years of use at Sarasota County
▫ Everything in Amanda deals with process up for
review; handles people, properties and processes.
Used mainly as a permitting system
▫ Front end portal used by users to look up status of
permits or past permits as they are permanent
Good for inspectors / supervisors of work sites
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31. Applications / Data
• Other Applications
▫ Net Motion
Net Motion is an application for seamless transition
of network connection while staying connected to
BCC domain
▫ HELP!
Is this ticket system that was designed in-house and
is maintained in-house. Basic ticket queue system
that is used in just about every area
Security, System Admin, Telcom, Apps, Vitil,
Networking and many other areas
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32. Applications / Data
▫ Recware Client
Used by parks and recreation as a way to sign up for
summer camps or reserve park utilities.
▫ PC Res
Acts as an interface between the user and the
desktop of a library computer that requires you to
scan your library card to reserve computer time.
Many small applications within the library
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33. GovMax
• Fiscal budgeting software for municipalities.
• Saw a need for a government budgeting software
is built from the ground up. On version 6.0 now.
Manages and hosts application as well.
• Sold to other counties, 19 total and expanding.
• Originally wrote in VB6, then switched to .NET.
• Now frontend is some .NET and java script but
mostly in C#.
• Backend is SQL server.
• Team outside Apps/development team.
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34. Reporting
• The many applications used by the County serve
mostly reporting services and business
intelligence.
• The two reporting software's they use to
formulate these reports are Business Objects and
Crystal Reports, which are SAP products.
• These reports doing a myriad of things for the
county to producing reports on land
development or record all government spending.
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36. Vitil Solutions
• Vitil Solutions
▫ Vitil is the company Sarasota County outsources
for workstation maintenance
▫ Takes care of: re-imaging workstations, break-fix,
updating/ installing applications, and supplying
replacement workstations
Dell distributor
▫ They service the workstations at Fruitville Library,
E.O.C., B.o.B, Little B.o.B, and the County
Administration building
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37. Vitil Solutions
▫ They use System Center Configuration Manager to
store programs, applications, and updates that can
be downloaded onto a workstation by plugging in
a USB and downloading from the server
▫ Like the rest of EIT they utilize the HELP!
Application to do service
▫ We re-imaged a workstation and ‘refreshed’ a
workstation at Fruitville Library
▫ All parts kept in warehouse next to Vitil
operations center
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38. Vitil Solutions
• Help Desk
▫ Spent the day with Vitil Solutions help desk
▫ first level calls
▫ Six help desk employees for Sarasota County
▫ Help desk is contacted by users; they check
knowledge base for action needed
▫ If problem can be fixed they will guide user
▫ If problem is beyond scope Vitil sends issue to
appropriate team
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39. Financial/Procurement
• Cost models, per fulltime employee, workstation,
etc.
• Internal service.
• Does not take money from the general fund.
• Four year refresh cycle ensures equipment is not out
of date and a plan is in place to keep tech current.
• Offsets budget, cannot generate revenue for profit.
• Partners rent space in SRDC, bills every dept. for
services.
• Completely transparent bid/quote service, some
employees issues p cards for purchases under
$1000.
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40. Project management
• In organizations like Sarasota County projects
need to be completed and they are many.
• Business analyst are a core component to project
management, the County does not have many
business analysts.
• Always running into issues with schedule,
budget, and scope
• Scope creep
• Four dedicated project managers at the EIT
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41. Project Management
• County relies heavily on it to complete large
works that affect citizens.
• Project management is embedded into IT,
construction, and new product development.
• County was in the process of completing
relocation of it’s emergency operation center.
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42. Conclusion
Our time at Sarasota County was an amazing
experience and it was an honor just to participate
in the internship. It was fascinating to see the
County’s EIT department handle the myriad of IT
needs. I think we both learned a great deal about
what it is to have a career in IT and do it well. It
was also very eye opening to see how involved IT
is even in a smaller county like Sarasota. It was a
wonderful experience and I would highly
recommend it to any other USF student.
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