That work is led by CIO James Twigger, who started as a systems and network manager 20 years ago and has been with the city ever since. A lot has changed in that time, but Twigger has helped turn Tamarac’s small size into an asset.
“We can adapt much easier and faster …,” Twigger said. “We try things all the time. If something doesn’t work right, we just adapt and change and find a better way to do it.” And a small and agile team has pushed the city to aggressively adopt cloud solutions so they can focus on more complex projects that provide more direct benefits for residents.
At heart Twigger is a technologist, so while as CIO he can’t be as hands-on as maybe he’d like, some of the projects he’s shepherded, like the Amazon Connect platform, allow him to stay involved. “I like to do software coding,” he said, “but it’s very powerful having the tools to do something like this.”
The city also provides some IT services to its neighbors, like a searchable lobbyist registration system that Tamarac first got Broward County to share with them in 2011. Twigger’s team tinkered with the code, added credit card processing and sold the system to four other cities. It’s a model they’ve repeated, where Tamarac maintains a platform at a relatively low cost and takes in a small amount of money to help its neighbors.
