County Tech News

A Quarterly Newsletter by RCIT          April 2017

Message from the CIO

By Steve Reneker, CIO
RCIT is starting a periodic newsletter leveraging our Socrata product which houses county data.  The goal of this newsletter is to provide updates to all staff impacted by the RCIT Consolidation projects and message updates on our progress and encourage feedback to  improve services.
Since the RCIT Consolidation projects began in FY14/15, the real impacts were not realized until July 2016 when RCIT resources were pooled into a shared services model.  It started with consolidating 8 help desks into one at the Riverside County Innovation Center (RCIC) and moving User Technicians to zones to serve facilities geographically to cut down travel and reduce response times. In 2017, RCIT is in the process of consolidating 53 data centers into the central Riverside Collaboration Center (RC3).  Tours of both of these facilities and services will be held on April 24th (visit www.rivcoinnovation.org for more information).
Today RCIT is making great progress to further consolidate RCIT operations to provide greater service to the county. RCIT completed the migration of every employee in the consolidated departments to Office 365 last month and starting in July the last phase of consolidation of departmental application development and support will be initiated with a shared services approach to reduce departmental costs and eliminate single point of failures.
In addition to the Office 365 migration, we are continuing with a number of updates in a controlled and thoughtful manner. The next phase includes streamlining your access and ability to manage and find users through a single Active Directory system, scheduled for completion by mid-2018. Updates will be provided as migrations take place (the Executive Office, Board of Supervisors, Clerk of the Board and RCIT were first).
I am sure some of you are wondering how these projects affect me. As these projects serve to provide you greater access to services at a greater value, I would like to hear from you and begin an open dialog.
ServiceNow is the county incident management and service request system for RCIT.  You can call (951) 955-9900 to open an incident or request or go to the Intranet and submit online.  Efforts are in place to expand the service request types.  When an incident or request is completed or closed, you will be notified; it is important to respond to a brief survey so that we know where improvements are needed and how well to your request was resolved.
RCIT is committed to innovation and business process improvement.  We encourage any and all feedback.  I can be reached at sreneker@rivco.org or (951) 955-3778.

In this Issue

Message from the CIO
Welcome to County Tech News
Introducing GovDelivery
IT Briefs
Staff News
Highlighted Top 25 Project - Office 365
Security Notes
Stats and Facts
A Quarterly News Letter by RCIT

Welcome to County Tech News

By Tom Mullen, CDO
Every day we work to serve our colleagues and customers by providing technical, business and administrative services critical to the overall success of the county.  The role of technology has long since moved from a nice to have feature to a must have core component of every service offering within the county.
This newsletter shares the vital services, successes and important information about RCIT, our staff, our customers, and our experiences we encounter throughout the year.  We will publish this newsletter quarterly and focus on the value we bring to our internal customers and the residents of Riverside County.
  • In every issue we will share highlights from featured projects, initiatives and ongoing operational services from throughout RCIT. 
  • We will share staff news including retirements, promotions, congratulations of employees of the month and those that receive thanks and kudos from our customers throughout the quarter. 
  •   We will share IT briefs by ITOs, BRMs, and service team leads.  
  • In each issue you will find Information security updates and tips.
  • We will share stats and facts that showcase what we do, how well we do it and magnitude of our operations.
If you have suggestions for future issues, questions about the articles in this issue, or general feedback you would like to share, please contact me or anyone on our executive management team.

Introducing GovDelivery

By Louis Arul Doss, Assistant CIO
Countywide internal  emails do not always reach all employees because of departmental firewalls and automated rules that move these messages into specific folders or are simply ignored as SPAM.
RCIT looked for a solution to eliminate this SPAM and improve internal communications with employees.  Additionally, we wanted to provide better tools that allow employees to subscribe to topics they find beneficial and interesting. The solution we selected is GovDelivery (which is now Granicus).
GovDelivery was recently deployed within the county and will be utilized for all countywide internal communications. GovDelivery Communications Cloud is the only platform secure enough to be used exclusively by governments (more than 1,800 across the country) and provides the following benefits:
  • Reduces Spam
  • Opt in feature for receipt of countywide email by topic or sender
  • Adding personalization to improve open, read and click rates of sent messages  
  • Automating message testing and sending
  • Auto-initiating campaigns by schedule or activity 
GovDelivery is a cloud based software as a service solution that enables government organizations to connect with more people, internally and externally.  By leveraging the cloud, Riverside County is able to utilize a number of different outreach mediums, including email, SMS/text messages, RSS feeds and social media integration to connect with target audiences.  
We will utilize this solution for external constituent communications next fiscal year beginning with a few trail departments as a pilot prior to countywide deployment.
For more information please contact Louis Arul Doss, Assistant CIO at laruldoss@rivco.org. 

IT Briefs

These are brief updates on ongoing projects and services from throughout RCIT.

HRMS Upgrade vs. New System

One of the anticipated projects is PeopleSoft HR system upgrade or adopting a new system. This vital decision will be made and announced in April, 2017.
RUHS and DPSS will be adopting Kronos time keeping system. RUHS will be going live in first and second quarter of this year with three different phases of the Kronos project.

ServiceNow Assets

The Service Now (SN) Asset Module went live on the 15th of March 2017. 
RCIT is the first to leverage this feature and will be loading capital IT assets, consumables, walk-away assets, telephone parts, and radio parts, radios, SoftTrak, and Remedy information.  We are striving to unify all asset management within ServiceNow.  We are planning for DPSS to migrate over to SN asset management around June 2017.
RCIT is constantly improving the ServiceNow solutions. We encourage you to browse the knowledge base and to attend the service portal user office hours restarting in May 2017. 

Cisco Phones and Business Continuity

Has your department developed a business continuity plan addressing how to continue serving our constituents and other county departments in the event of a commercial power failure or data circuit failure?  With the new Cisco telephone system, you are able to have RCIT program main phone lines or other important voice applications such as contact centers to reroute these critical public facing functions to alternate answering points.  This function can be configured to happen automatically or be invoked by a manual process. 
If you are interested in getting more information, please contact Lena Aguirre at (951) 955-7735 to set up a meeting to discuss your business needs. 

Timesheet Workflow Automation 

RCIT automated the way we approve our timesheets. RCIT went live with this system a few months ago and now it’s available for all Departments.  Departments can save paper, ink, time and make the approval process more efficient.
For more details contact your PeopleSoft Manager Gil Cancel at 951-955-8187 or email gcancel@rivco.org.

RIVCOconnect

RIVCOconnect is a first-in-the-nation multi-jurisdictional regional broadband project aiming to stimulate economic growth and improve affordable access to gigabit fiber optic high-speed broadband services for all residents and businesses of the County, including all 28 member cities and participating local tribes. RIVCOconnect.org

PLUS System

PLUS (Public Land Use Software) system is another large county project. TLMA is leading this great effort, and as a TLMA partner, RCIT is providing all the required support. Both departments are determined and destined to make this project another success story for the County of Riverside. 

How to set up your voice mail for the first time?

  1. From your own phone, press the Messages button. 
  2. Enter the default PIN (password) followed by the # key.  Contact the Helpdesk at (951) 955-9900 if you need the default PIN.
  3. Record your first and last name (press # to end recording).
  4. Record greeting or select a standard greeting (press # to end recording).
  5. Enter your new PIN (5-8 digits) followed by the # key.
  6. Enter your new PIN followed by the # key again to confirm.
You cannot reuse the default PIN (password), your extension, your extension backwards, something sequential (e.g. 12345) or all the same number (e.g. 55555) as a new PIN. 

How to change or reset your password?

  1. Press Messages key 7841 or 7965.
  2. Enter PIN (password) followed by the # key when prompted.
  3. Press 4 for setup options.
  4. Press 3 for preferences.
  5. Press 1 to change your PIN.
(HINT: Once you access your VM you can press 431. You do not need to wait for the prompts) 
You cannot reuse the default PIN (password), your extension, your extension backwards, something sequential (e.g. 12345) or all the same number (e.g. 55555) as a new PIN. 

Staff News

Who's coming and going?

New Hires

Mario Ordonez, DBA III
Luis Hernandez, User Support Tech II
Neil Cabacang, User Support Tech II
Derek Roberts, User Support Tech II
Jonathan Hutchinson, User Support Tech II
Jeffery Throop, User Support Tech II
Patrick Polycarpe, User Support Tech II
Scott Black, User Support Tech II
Karen Batjer, User Support Tech II
Wendell Davis, User Support Tech II

Promotions

Gilbert Cancel, ITM II
Justin Kimble, System Admin II

Retirements

Debra Potter, System Operator III
Aline Kelcher, Communications Tech III

Separations

Roxanne Chavez, Office Assistant II
Gary Schreiner, Info Security Analyst II
Devin Parrish, Admin Services Assistant
John Haschak, Radio Comm Engineer II

Employees of the Month

January 2017
Brian Gaut, User Support Tech
February 2017
Jason Bender, Communications Tech
March 2017
Teresa Schmidt, Communications Tech
Chief’s Citation Award 
Tony Dellinger and Trish Byrd were presented with the Chief’s Citation Award for their exemplary customer service and technical expertise at the Murrieta Police Department Annual Awards Ceremony held in March.  This award was presented for their work in bringing the Murrieta PD onto the PSEC radio system.

Highlighted Top 25 Project - Office 365

Use Office Anywhere
Provide users with the Microsoft Office applications they know, optimized for their devices, so they can work their best wherever they are.
Simplify Collaboration
Hold multi-party HD online meetings with screen sharing, note taking, and annotations. Start an IM, call, or video chat with just a click.
Safeguard Your Data
Your data is segregated from commercial data, is stored within the U.S., and access is restricted to screened Microsoft personnel.


RCIT has deployed Office 365 Exchange online through the County of Riverside’s new communication and collaboration service, comprising of 24 email systems and over 10,000 mailboxes, to 27 departments and agencies.


This is a major move for the County and will provide a more stable messaging and collaboration platform, with centralized administration and support, where new features will continually be made available to all employees over time. 
Users have 24/7 access from anywhere over the internet with Office 365 on their desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile phone using Outlook Web Access (https://outlook.office365.com/owa/).
Office 365 refers to subscription plans that include access to Office applications plus other productivity services that are enabled over the Internet (cloud services). Office 365 includes plans for use at home and for business. Learn about Office 365 for use at home. Office 365 plans for business include services such as Skype for Business web conferencing and Exchange Online hosted email for business, and additional online storage with OneDrive for Business.

Block a Mail Sender

Applies To:  Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016
When you no longer want to see messages from someone, you can block a sender.
Right-click a message from the sender you want to block, and then click Junk > Block Sender.
The blocked person can still send you mail, but if anything from his or her email address makes it to your email account, it’s immediately moved to the Junk Email folder.
It’s a good idea to periodically review email messages identified as junk to make sure you’re not missing important messages.

I Changed My Mind

If you later decide you want to unblock a sender, use Junk Email Filters to change which messages you see.

Security Notes

Protect Yourself from Email Phishing Attacks
There are several steps you can take to increase your defenses against the most common dangers of using email, including attacks known as phishing.  
Phishing uses email or a messaging service (like those on social media sites) to trick or fool you into taking an action, such as clicking on a link or opening an email attachment.
By falling victim to such an attack, you risk having your highly-sensitive information stolen and/or your computer infected.
Protect yourself and our county by being vigilant to the most common signs of phishing attacks:
  • Messages directed to “Dear Customer” or some other generic greeting.
  • Messages requiring immediate action or creating a sense of urgency, such as threatening to close down your account.
  • Messages claiming to be from an official organization, but having grammar or spelling mistakes or using a personal email address, such as @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or @hotmail.com.
  • Be suspicious of any messages requesting highly-sensitive information, such as your credit card number or password.
  • If you receive a message from someone you know, but the tone or message just does not sound like him or her, be suspicious. Call the sender on a trusted phone number to verify they sent it. It is easy for a cyber attacker to create an email that appears to be from a friend or coworker.
  • Before you click on a link, hover your mouse cursor over it. This will display the true destination of where it will take you. Confirm that the destination displayed matches the destination in the email and make sure it is going to the organization’s legitimate website. Even better, type the proper website address into your browser. For example, if you get an email from your bank asking you to update your bank account, type your bank’s website address into your browser, then log into the website directly.
  • On a mobile device? No problem. Simply hold your finger down on the link and you should see the true destination in a pop-up window.
  • Be careful when messages have attachments. Only open those you are expecting. Infected email attachments have become a very common attack method. In addition, many of the infected attachments that cyber attackers use today cannot be detected nor blocked by many of today’s anti-virus programs.
It is your job to use email safely and be on the lookout for phishing attacks. If you receive a phishing email, or if you are not sure if an email or message is a phishing attack, contact the RCIT Helpdesk or the Information Security Office (micro 5-8282).

Riverside County Stats

Source: Riverside County Economic Development Agency, February 2017