Cost vs. benefit

County hesitant to spend more on technology to improve remote working

Taylor County will keep with the status quo for now, while looking ahead to future plans when it comes to creating additional remote working opportunities.

That was the message out of a lengthy meeting of the county’s executive and personnel committees on Friday afternoon.

“We need to prepare ourselves for more people working from home than we have right now,” said board member Rollie Thums. “We cannot afford to stand still, we need to prepare.”

“We need a strategy to do that,” responded board, and information technology chairman Mike Bub urging the county to look at developing a larger plan rather than taking a piecemeal approach.

Friday’s discussion was prompted by a request from county human services director Liza Daleiden to Melissa Seavers from the information technology department about the possibility of getting an additional work station set up to utilize as a remote desktop for a staff member using a human services- specific program remotely.

The short answer to that question was that it could be cost-prohibitive and time consuming to make happen. The long answer led to revisiting the discussion on if county employees should be able to work remotely and what impact this may have on the county in the future.

The clinical software in question is called TCM. The software only runs within the human services building although when the county purchased it, it was done with the promise that the developers would be going to a cloud-based platform that could be accessed anywhere. Development of that promised online version has been slow in coming to Taylor County, and while the company is working on it, the effort will be a long haul.

“If they had an online version this would be a moot issue,” Bub said.

The TCM software is used by between 15 and 20 staff members at human services. In order for those who are working remotely to access the program, the IT department repurposed scrapped desktops from other departments which are set up for people to log into from their laptops using a virtual private network (VPN). With a limited number of machines, access to the software is being scheduled and juggled between those working remotely.

Bub explained that if the county wanted to expand this, it would mean having to purchase both a desktop and a laptop computer for each position, something he said was not in the budget. He also noted that remote working has led to many more support calls from people who are having internet issues at their homes and seeking help from the IT department about it.

“We have been doing a good job to schedule and share,” Daleiden said.

“I didn’t know it would be that big of an ask. I didn’t expect that it would be such a big issue,” she said, noting she had an employee who was struggling and was looking at ways to help that employee.

Board member Scott Mildbrand said it was important to look at what the human services board approved in February 2020 when they authorized up to six people to work remotely as a recruitment and retention tool.

“I think the pandemic is lessening,” he said. “I think the scope of this is too much and I think the simple way of solving this is to have more people come back to work.”

“I am going to agree with Scott,” said board member Lester Lewis. “We are a year into this pandemic, I think we can see the end of it,” he said, noting that he hopes for things to approach normal. His major concern was with the budget and not having expansion of the infrastructure for working from home in the budget. He said if there was any expansion it should be taken up in the budget process next fall.

Daleiden said she disagreed on the idea that the pandemic was lessening. “The pandemic is nowhere near over,” she said, noting the employees she has had out recently with the virus. “I am not comfortable bringing everybody back right now,” she said.

Human services employee Jen Meyer defended the department’s record of service during the past year even with people working from home. She noted that the number of crisis calls they have had to deal with has increased from 200 two years ago to over 400 now. “I feel like what we are doing is working,” she said.

According to county health director Patty Krug, the number of new cases being reported is down to one or two per day versus a few months ago when the daily counts were over 40. She said the rollout of vaccines will also make a difference.

Bub noted that regardless of the status of the pandemic, remote working is something that is here to stay. He noted that Taylor County could see an employee living in someplace like LaCrosse County. He said the county still needs to plan for the future to make this possible.

Mildbrand disagreed with the concept of hiring employees who lived in other places. “I think people who work for Taylor County should be invested in Taylor County,” he said.

Mildbrand also emphasized that government is a service industry and that 27% of people in a recent survey were dissatisfied with not having direct person to person contact. “I think that 27% is worth looking at,” he said.

“I am not in favor of spending more money on more computers,” said board member Chuck Zenner. He said he saw it as a scheduling issue and that they should work to schedule the use of the existing resources better.

Krug said the county needs to look at having the infrastructure in place to allow for remote working beyond the current pandemic in order to be able to respond to other disasters that may happen in the future. “We have to be prepared for any disaster through the county,” she said.

For now, the county is sticking with its status quo for the number of remote workers and is in the process of installing VPNs on all county-employee laptops. The VPNs, Bub noted, are essential in maintaining network security for employees working remotely.