In recent years Lowell has experienced a citywide renaissance, becoming home to art and music festivals, farmers' markets, outdoor concerts and a myriad of artistic offerings and endeavors.
As the city has transformed, so has the technology infrastructure that helps keep it running. Lowell's Chief Information Officer, Miran Fernandez, takes this seriously, with full support from City Manager Bernard F. Lynch. Fernandez and his team have taken a high-level view of Lowell's technology infrastructure requirements and have devised a strategy to protect the city's investments. As part of that strategy, the city has made significant improvements in network infrastructure, replicated data sources and upgraded hardware and software systems.
Many of these changes have driven increased efficiency and helped streamline the delivery of essential services. For example, with upgrades to the city's servers and software, the processing time for generating utility bills was reduced from more than 12 hours to only two hours, with a significant impact on the related demands on employee and technology resources.
For the next phase in the transformation, Fernandez focused on a disaster recovery program. As a member of the city's Emergency Operations Team, he explained that a disaster recovery program is used to identify critical business processes and users, and to define and document recovery procedures.
Lowell, including the city's public school system, has used Tyler Technologies' financial management software for seven years and the company's pension management software for even longer. "Apart from the actual revenue data," said Fernandez, "payroll and retirement data are two of the most important functions we process in-house ... and we need to protect them."
The disaster recovery team will help identify critical business processes and users, define and document recovery procedures, and test the disaster recovery plan. Services include off site back-up, use of a recovery server, alternate processing locations and remote access. Tyler transparently retrieves a copy of Lowell's data every night and retains it in a data center located in Falmouth, Maine. Lowell's critical users can always process work at the data center via modem or by utilizing Tyler offices. Following a declared disaster, the city of Lowell can be back up and running, using the previous night's data, within 12 business hours.
