Good morning,

Below are notes from the January Technology Work Group meeting. Of note, there is a survey to be completed regarding the work group’s chair and co-chair positions. Please find the link and further details in the January notes below.

Thanks,

Ian and Lach

• WordPress Demonstration: A demonstration was provided showing the features and capabilities of the WordPress CMS. The system is widely used, which helps ensure regular updates and improvements to the system. The basic system can be enhanced to provide very granular user permissions, integration with third-party email distribution systems, and password-protecting site posts and attached files, and ensuring site security. The demonstration also included a general discussion of resiliency and scalability, and noted that various hosting and support vendors exist, many of whom do business with government clients already and can support the needs of a government website (as opposed to a personal blog).
• The GIS Work Group has started having in-person meetings.
• Shelli Carter is the new Regional WebEOC Administrator. WebEOC received its update to 8.6 as scheduled.
• Mel Bartis, the RCC Chair, tasked all the work groups under RCC with evaluating their chair/co-chair status. Work groups were instructed to consider geographic representation, past work group participation, and any other relevant factors regarding chairing of work groups. Work groups are to provide their suggestions on the chair/co-chair positions for the March RCC meeting. The group discussed the issue, and determined that a web survey would be an appropriate way of suggesting chairs for future consideration. That survey can be accessed at https://houstonuasi.com/technology-work-group-chair-co-chair-survey/ and should be completed by noon on Thursday 27 February 2020 so the results can be considered at the February work group meeting prior to forwarding to RCC.
• The group did a final read-through of the Technology Governance, which will be sent to RCC in March. The only remaining changes were grammatical, as well as a line indicating that jurisdictions are responsible for notifying system administrators of staffing changes to ensure old accounts are promptly disabled and to arrange applicable training for new employees.