OLDS — The Town of Olds' proposed budget includes the hiring of an Information technology (IT) coordinator to among other things, deal with an onslaught of cyber attacks on town computers in the last year to year-and-a-half.
The estimated cost of hiring that person is pegged at $112,500.
The budget, which includes a proposed five per cent tax increase and four per cent cost of living allowance (COLA) comes up for ratification during a Dec. 12 council meeting.
In an email to the Albertan, chief administrative officer Brent Williams said currently, the town has been having its IT services provided by third-party contractor based in Edmonton.
In addition, two or three staff members have helped out by doing things like streaming council meetings, troubleshooting printer/computer problems and other issues as they arise.
"This does take away time from those staff, all of whom have other primary duties,” he wrote.
Williams added that eventually that third party contract will be phased out “so the IT coordinator cost will be offset by approximately 60 per cent in 2024, once our current IT agreement expires in December 2023.
“We felt it prudent to have an overlap period due to the time it takes to recruit and orientate a new employee.”
Williams said the Town of Olds has been hit with an increase in malware and phishing attempts over the last 12 to 18 months.
“Furthermore, we have never invested significantly in document security, so many of our filing remains paper-based, with our electronic file storage being contained within on-premises servers. This provides issues with both efficiency and document security,” he wrote.
Williams said part of the IT coordinator’s job will be to lead the movement of all of that to a cloud-based system.
