It's been said that "you can't fight City Hall." Ask the people who work for the City of Aspen and they will tell you that organizing municipal government is an equally daunting challenge.
Operating on an antiquated system that included an old main frame and 20 computers, the daily business of this famous mountain town and surrounding county was - to the dismay of officials and residents alike - disjointed and inefficient. Remote offices were not connected. Departments were not linked. Paperwork was overwhelming. Information was difficult [and occasionally impossible] to obtain. Working with Jim Considine, Director of Information Services for the city, Anne Chetham-Strode, Network Manager, knew she wanted a state-of-the-art client-server environment that would integrate all current and future business processes, but didn't know exactly where to start. She contacted The Root Group for help in drafting an RFP and evaluating the responses.
She got that and more.
"I was confident with The Root Group immediately. From the start, they grasped the scope and complexity of what we wanted to accomplish, as well as the sensitivities - both personal and political - that a project like this entails. I selected them to coordinate the entire project."
Root Group professionals were quickly dispatched to Aspen [a tough job, but someone had to do it] and within a few weeks, a preliminary architectural design was submitted and network blueprints configured. "Their responsiveness truly impressed me," Chetham-Strode reports, "it is unique in this business." With a goal of creating a modular, scalable metropolitan area network [MAN] that would provide full TCP/IP connectivity between all departments and functions, the initial phase incorporated Public Safety, Information Systems, Community Development, and Finance. Starting with the network design, the buildings housing these departments had to be wired for CAT5 cabling to the desktops, fiber-optic cable to several buildings, and equipped with necessary switches and hubs [a job made more difficult by the rugged mountain terrain and lack of sophisticated service in the area]. In each department, a SUN server was installed to act as a departmental e-mail print and file server. [These departmental servers also currently act as NIS+ replica servers to provide naming services]. Within the departments, existing PC clients were set up with Oracle database, mail, file and print sharing to the servers. NFS was configured to provide file sharing services. And should a network outage occur, each department would function as a separate island until connection with the MAN could be reestablished.
Phase one also included drafting and implementing a security policy, re-addressing all network devices and installing a firewall with DMZ, and perhaps most important of all, documentation and training for City of Aspen/Pitkin County information systems staff to maintain a secure environment. Today, all users have full, secure Internet connectivity which is used for e-mail and WWW access.
The process continues. The modular and expandable network now includes the Water and Public Works Departments [connected via PPP and MultiLink PPP connections via modems and the Netblazer] as well as the famous Wheeler Opera House. Long range plans include incorporating Windows NT into the current heterogeneous environment, and development and implementation of a strategic migration plan. "We feel the effects of The Root Group's philosophy of client partnering every day," Considine concludes, "the difference is like night and day."
