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Sarasota County Enterprise Information Technology InternshipPresented by Colin Harvey & Collin Radakovic

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Security

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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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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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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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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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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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SCGOV Forest

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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ConclusionOur 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.