PISMO BEACH CITY COUNCIL STAFF REPORT
Agenda Item #12.B
Meeting Date: August 5, 2025
TITLE:
Review of Information Technology (IT) Project Updates
RECOMMENDATION:
No action required; information only.
DISCUSSION:
This staff report updates the Council on the status of the new Technology Master Plan, updates on completed or near completed key IT projects, and updates on customer service performance metrics of the City’s IT helpdesk.
Technology Master Plan
The City Council approved the five-year Technology Master Plan (TMP) in November 2022. The TMP outlines the City’s technology needs through FY 2028 and was developed through a comprehensive planning process led by a consultant, who interviewed staff across departments to identify needs, strategies, goals, and objectives. City staff then prioritized these initiatives based on operational importance and feasibility. The TMP identifies 43 initiatives, each with estimated budgets, and recommends phased implementation and funding over a five-and-a-half-year period from FY 2023 through FY 2028. An update on the progress of FY 2025 TMP projects is provided below, followed by a summary of the projects scheduled and funded for FY 2026.
FY 2025 Projects
Police E-Citations – The system went live in June 2025. In support of this project, IT staff deployed a new database server. For hardware, IT staff configured 11 ticket printers and 11 iPhones.
Time and Attendance System – IT staff supported Finance on this project by deploying multi-factor authentication logins to all City staff. This included for the first time providing City logins to all part-time City staff. The first phase of users went live in June 2025 with the next phase of City staff going live in early fall of 2025.
Multi-Factor Authentication – IT staff deployed the City’s multi-factor authentication solution to all City staff. This year, the multi-factor authentication solution will be expanded to the City’s financial management system, virtual private network (VPN) logins, and Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office). Having a single solution for all of these systems will reduce the number of passwords that staff need to memorize and increase the cybersecurity of these mission critical systems. Managed Detection and Response Solution – After an extensive evaluation process, IT staff chose to deploy a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solution with an outsourced Security Operations Center (SOC) to meet this Technology Council Agenda 8-5-2025 12.B-1
Master Plan project. The SIEM portion of the solution provides the City with automatic log collection and correlation, log retention, and event indexing. This ensures there is a clear forensic trail to determine the cause of an event. The SOAR portion of the solution looks at the logs collected and triggers automatic alerts, incident response workflows, and looks for potentially related events. The SIEM/SOAR solution is then watched by human cybersecurity experts in the outsourced SOC to determine what events are genuine threats. IT staff are still working on deploying the solution to the City’s networks that have very restricted access to the internet. The solution has already assisted IT in identifying two incidents and responding to them much quicker than was previously possible. Police Scheduling and Time Tracking System – A contract has been signed, and the Police Department will be managing this project.
Additional Public Safety Surveillance Cameras – Additional cameras were placed on the Police and Parking Annex building. These cameras provide full coverage of the outside of the building and interior lobby areas.
FY 2026 Projects
Cybersecurity Incident Response
Electronic Content Management and Record Retention
Laserfiche Cloud Migration
Disaster Recovery Planning
Audit Logs and Log Management
IT Security Assessment
City Hall Server Storage Replacement
SCADA Server Redundancy
Backup Dispatch capabilities
Public Safety Center
o Servers
o Storage
o Radio Consoles
o RGB Spectrum Solution
o Network Switches
Council Agenda 8-5-2025 12.B-2
Highlights of Key IT Projects Completed in FY 2025
The highlights of the key IT projects include projects completed during FY 2025.
User Training and Support
Last year, the IT Division organized training sessions for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook, with 48 employees participating. Due to recent staff turnover, the demand for training on City applications has grown. This year, the City conducted training in a rented offsite classroom, which reduced the staff time needed to set up the training environment, lowered costs to the IT Fund, and allowed the sessions to be spread out over multiple weeks. IT will continue to assess whether offsite or onsite training provides greater efficiency and value.
User Account Request Form
The IT Division implemented a new form to formalize and document user account additions, changes, and deletions. This form ensures compliance with the City’s IT policies, procedures, and industry best practices for managing user accounts and permissions. It also centralizes the request process for nine City systems that are not directly administered by IT, streamlining onboarding and offboarding across all departments. With the deployment of electronic timesheets, all paid staff are now required to have City login credentials, making this process even more critical.
Parking and Police Annex
The IT Division worked with the Police Department to plan security cameras and access control systems similar to the ones at the new Public Safety Facility (PSF).
This allowed the City to test out how the technology will work together and better understand how the technology needs to be configured for the PSF.
Corporation Yard Fiber Replacement
The original Corporation Yard fiber optic cables were installed over 20 years ago.
An inspection showed that the original fiber optic cables had installation defects that affected the data capacity of the fiber optic cables. Adding in new fiber optic cables have increased the data transfer capabilities and provided a new layer of redundancy for the supervisory and control system for the Wastewater Treatment Plant.
wIntegrate Decommissioning
wIntegrate was the City’s previous financial management system. The last part of the transition away from wIntegrate was extracting 20 years of permanent records from wIntegrate. This required the transferring of those 20 years of data into a permanent archive compliant format. This shows the City’s commitment to ensuring that its permanent records will be accessible decades from now.
Firewall Replacement
The cybersecurity environment is continuously evolving and the City’s firewall is the primary cybersecurity appliance and the foundation of its multi-layered cybersecurity defense. Deploying the latest generation of firewall technology with Council Agenda 8-5-2025 12.B-3
the latest cybersecurity features is essential to the protection of the City’s networks. The new firewalls also increase staff efficiency by reducing the time it takes to audit all the firewall rules from a couple days to 1–2 hours.
IT Help Desk and Survey Results
Every year, IT staff sends out a survey to canvas City employees on the effectiveness of the City’s IT helpdesk. Staff City-wide can contact the IT helpdesk via phone, email, webpage form, or in-person. The City’s IT Technician is primarily responsible for the IT help desk. Channel Islands Technology Integrators Group (CITIG) is still under contract for after-hours and more advanced support of City systems. The IT Manager manages the IT Technician, CITIG contract, and responds to helpdesk issues as needed. The IT Technician handles over 95% of the IT help desk tickets submitted.
Chart 1 shows IT received 48 complete survey results. This past year, survey respondents gave the City’s internal IT services an overall satisfaction rating of 100%.
Chart 2 shows IT received 21 responses out of 48 responses that indicated they had interacted with staff from CITIG, the City’s contracted IT services provider. This past year respondents gave CITIG staff an overall satisfaction rating of 95%.
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Very Satisfied Satisfied Neutral Dissatisfied Very Dissatisfied Chart 1: IT Survey Results for 2025
Overall Satisfaction with internal IT Services
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Conclusion
In Fiscal Year 2026, staff plans to complete the Technology Master Plan (TMP) initiatives scheduled for the year. Staff will also support the planning and outfitting of the new Public Safety Facility (PSF), including coordinating the transition of personnel into the facility.
These efforts will ensure the City continues to leverage available technologies to deliver high-quality customer service, maintain system security, and support business continuity in the event of disruptions.
FISCAL IMPACT:
There is no fiscal impact from receiving this report as it is information only.
ATTACHMENTS:
None.
Prepared by:
Jason Takagi, Information Technology Manager
Submitted by: Nadia Feeser, Administrative Services Director City Manager Approval:
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Very Satisfied Satisfied Neutral Dissatisfied Very Dissatisfied Chart 2: IT Survey Results for 2025
Overall Satisfaction with CITIG services
Council Agenda 8-5-2025 12.B-5