2025-75 An Ordinance Adopting the Fiscal Year 2026 Budget

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT Program Description The Information Technology (IT) Department at the City of Decatur is committed to providing a safe computing environment including strategic planning, data protection, and support for telecommunications, computing infrastructure, software, application development, City Website, computer desktop environments, and city-wide fiber network management for the City of Decatur. The IT staff researches and implements cost effective solutions which enhance the City's ability to provide protected quality services to City staff and in turn to the citizens of Decatur. Data security and protection remains our number one priority and concern. The city utilizes reasonable protection methods and education to safeguard the city systems and users from cyber and malware attacks. Citizen engagement is a close second priority as we develop electronic solutions to increase communication and education with our Citizens. IT operations are funded by the General Fund. IT also has responsibility for Fund 40 and Enterprise Fund 77. Fund 40 is the Public Education & Government (PEG) fund where the City receives revenues for franchise rights granted allowing the installation and operation of a cable communication network and for expenditures defraying the operational cost of the public education and government television station, local comcast channel 18. Enterprise Fund 77 is the City Fiber Optics Enterprise Fund which accounts for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the City owned fiber optics network. Revenues are generated in this fund through the sale of physical fibers within the city fiber network and/or the re-sale of internet access through its connection with the Illinois Century Network (ICN). Both funds 40 and 77 have their own more descriptive narratives. Software costs are placed into departmental budgets and not in the IT budget if they are used by or impact only that department. For example, Fire's traffic control software cost is only in their budget. That way, the organization can find the true cost of providing the services of that department to the public. However, if the software is used by multiple departments, then the software costs are placed into the IT general budget. The costs of supporting interdepartmental software's are then apportioned out to the departments by a fixed allocation, or overheard charge, based on the amount of access and usage volume of the centralized software by the individual department. By this means, software costs can be covered by non-property tax funds, such as Transit and Public Work's water enterprise funds. Staffing The IT staffing has been unstable again in FY2025 due to an early exit of the individual who replaced a long-term employee assigned to the Police Department. IT maintains an external part-time contract with Pulse Marketing to assist with Webmaster duties for the city website. IT has also contracted an ex-IT employee to assist with data conversion for our Code Enforcement migration away from our old legacy DB2 29