Busy in Bee Cave

Bee Cave, Texas, is a small city with big plans. It has 2,200 residents, but its population is projected to grow by more than 600 percent by 2030. It has a new City Hall, and numerous other big projects are under way. Many of them are IT projects, the kind that normally occur in much bigger cities.

"We want to ensure that investments in IT position Bee Cave as an 'intelligent city' of the future," said Richard Reynolds, chief technology officer for the city. Reynolds and his team have been busy putting in all kinds of infrastructure, in addition to more advanced projects. These include sharing 911 services with a nearby city, unified communications, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), in-car video for police vehicles and wireless access for the public.

Bee Cave is 14 miles west of Austin. It was incorporated as a city in 1987, but its rapid growth has come in recent years. That growth is due, in part, to an ambitious City Council, which encourages Reynolds to think creatively while planning for the future.

"We definitely try to provide a long-term, strategic view," Reynolds said. "Capacity planning and extensibility are always factors." Those are just a couple of reasons the small, growing community presents a unique opportunity. "That's one of the things that personally attracted me to Bee Cave," observed Reynolds. "It's not often you have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor and design and build things from scratch from day one."

Reynolds' drive and vision - aided by support from government leaders - resulted in him being named 2008 IT Executive of the Year for Public Sector by the Austin chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals.

Thriving on Challenge

Reynolds has worked with CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G) on numerous projects. CDW-G has assisted Bee Cave with network routing and switching, backup, servers, firewalls and more. The company even worked with the city to provide audio and video production equipment for the Council chambers.

Despite the challenges of working in a small city, Reynolds and his team have tackled many projects. The city recently finished deploying an improved public wireless infrastructure in City Hall and the public library. The system allows people access to the city's fiber Internet line so they have much faster Internet connections. Citizens have already given city representatives positive feedback on the expanded services.

Reynolds and his team installed extra security for the wireless infrastructure, reversing the intrusion prevention system to protect against attacks being launched against entities outside the network. This way, no one can use the wireless access to launch cyberattacks from the city's IP addresses.

The city is also setting up private wireless infrastructure for employees in City Hall and the Police Department. It's combining voice and data communications and allowing city employees to access network resources securely when away from the office. "We've done our best to unify most of our communications, so city staff can work from just about anywhere," Reynolds said.

The city also completed a migration to a new, in-car video-recording system for police department vehicles. "Officer safety is a primary concern for having video in the units," said Reynolds. "So anytime an airbag deploys, it will capture the previous 30 seconds. If the vehicle exceeds a certain speed, it'll automatically begin recording. Anytime the officer activates a horn, siren or light, it begins recording."

In addition to creating a safer environment for officers, the new system also increases public safety by giving commanders better information when making decisions. "The system is capable of streaming that video, which would let the chief see in real time what's going on in the units, from his desk," said Reynolds. "He would be able to see what's happening and make a tactical decision on whether he needs