Dis-Information Technology
At the last Middleboro BOS meeting, the board continued the discussion on hiring an outside company – Hub Technical Services to assess the town’s IT infrastructure for $10K.
According to FinCom, they are looking at the projected deficits and trying to find ways to save money. It’s pretty well known that the town has several small IT groups/people. The library, school, G&E, and to some degree the police/fire departments all have people that manage their IT needs with some level of support from town IT director Roger Brunelle.
To that end, FinCom contacted Hub Technical and invited them to a FinCom meeting – which I happened to attend. FinCom member Jo Thomas seems to be running point on this issue and got references from other towns and businesses that use Hub Tech – all positive as I understand.
Mimi Duphily and Al Rullo seemed to be grasping for ways to torpedo this very sensible idea – particularly Mimi. Presuming that the assessment would lead to staff reductions Mimi said she “didn’t want to put people out of a job”. That’s a nice sentiment but a terrible philosophy for controlling costs, streamlining business operations and improving efficiency.
In the end, the BOS motion directed Al Rullo – a person with zero technical expertise, to talk to the various town departments, and ask them if they wanted an assessment done, and what they would like to get out of it.
At the risk of stating the obvious – this is dumb. It is like going into a hosptial and asking the patients if they would like some treatment and if so what kind they would like. If the town knew what it’s IT infrastructure was lacking, it would be fixed.
The BOS have taken a very sensible proposal, one that FinCom spent significant time and effort on, and gutted it to the point where it is useless. The scuttlebutt from onlookers is that the BOS, particularly Mimi – are trying to protect Roger Brunelle. If so it’s bewildering. Nobody is talking about replacing Roger Brunelle – just assessing the IT infrastructure. When Hub Tech presented at FinCom, they said it was very common to leave people in place, like an IT director to act as an interface with the town.
This was worse than bad leadership. It’s one thing if you fail to lead, it’s another all together when you fail to take sound advice for reasons that you either can’t or won’t vocalize.
It is obvious why the Gazette and the various BoS members cratered. They are protecting Roger. Even Jane — in her short and slanted history of the IT/Fin Com romance does’t raise the fishy bills submitted to Town Meeting for payment by RB which caused a bru ha ha based on his apparently irradic behavior. Please explain Jane. Just dying to hear why that recent nugget was forgotten in the balanced opinion piece. But I do know its an OPINION and it is only worth the paper it’s written on.