After his first month on the job, Grimes County’s very first I.T. director told county commissioners there’s lots of infrastructure needs to address, like dissimilar networks and outdated and dissimilar gear.
Greg Cannon said that causes lots of problems when you have repair issues, because the different manufacturers can claim the issue of the moment is due to another firm. He also told the court that up until now, there has been no network monitoring and no documentation.
Since he’s come aboard, Cannon told the court he has compiled nearly 350 pages of documentation in case he’s ever unavailable so that someone else will know what’s what. Ultimately, Cannon predicted, it’ll probably be more like 600 pages.
The good news, he added, is that having one person to take care of everything is going to cost the county less than it’s been paying by, in his words, “managing the I.T. department by proxy.”
Cannon estimates the total savings to the county will be something like $11,000 a year.
But between getting everyone in the county on the same network, with the same mail system and the same software, one thing’s for certain, Greg Cannon has his work cut out for him.