The Village of Skokie

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Village of Skokie is entering a new era as it begins to offer new ways of providing services to its constituents, its businesses, its vendors and other parties who transact with the Village whether frequently or infrequently. These offerings are based on desires expressed by the Village's Board of Trustees, the managerial and supporting staff members and the public as a whole. Our recent public survey shows a desire by many to utilize the Internet and other electronic means to participate in Skokie government and to conduct business with Skokie government.

As the Village has added greater use of automation and technology to perform its tasks, we have recognized the return on investments in technology through efficiencies of staff and the reduction in paperwork. It is now our desire to add new steps which will further reduce the burden on existing human resources by providing various parties with the means to gather information and to carry out some transactions with reduced need for staff interaction. While the facility for electronic transactions will develop, we will, as always, continue to offer the personal services that have always been recognized in Skokie.

While the benefit of electronic services has been weighed for years and while we have come to a point that we now feel that this is a beneficial investment, the decision to move froward has inherent security issues that must be addressed. We must be able to provide these services securely, robustly and accurately. We must be able to keep our systems responsive and readily available. We must protect information that we maintain and gather and assure all parties that access to information is limited to those who need access. Along those lines, we must develop policies to determine what information is available to whom. We must take steps to protect systems from failure and security violations. We must also ensure that our information and systems provide redundancy to recover from any failure that may occur.

Issues

Ш Prioritizing Design and Implementation of Electronic Business Applications

Ш Application Data Access Security

Ш Threats and Vulnerabilities inside and outside our environment

Ш Security Measures Available

hardware vs. software

internal staff vs. external providers

Ш Redundancy provisions

Ш Cost-Benefit of security provisions

General Needs

As our systems are developed, we must address all needs of those systems to make them easy to use, but secure against all threats. Decisions must be made with the assistance of all stakeholders and communicated throughout the organization as to the inherent risks of e-business. Decisions must also be made regarding those risks that we choose to aggressively protect against and those protections that we are willing to forego due to the cost. In some instances, we may find it necessary to avoid an offering because we find its risks too great to justify cost of protection.

While we are interested in providing new, easy-to-use services to various parties that we anticipate will greatly reduce taxation of our human resources, we also must recognize the need for protection of all parties from the threats that exist. Most of us have seen the benefit of electronic business, but it is necessary to look behind the scenes to see the measures necessary for safe transactions and the costs associated.

General Overview / Electronic Government Application Definitions

Village Business Defined

The Village of Skokie is a municipal government located eleven miles north of downtown Chicago. The Village is approximately ten and one half ( 10.5 ) square miles with one hundred fifty five ( 155 ) lane-miles of roadways to maintain supporting sixty-three thousand ( 63,000 ) residents. The Village is responsible for typical municipal services including:

Street and Alley Maintenance Snow Plowing Leaf Removal

Garbage Collection Recycling Water Utility

Vehicle Registration Police Services Fire Services

Crime and Fire Prevention Sewers and Drainage Personal Health Services

Public Health Environmental Health/Animal Ctrl Building Safety

The Village also offers services that are not necessarily typical but offer additional benefits to the public such as:

Sidewalk Snow Plowing Meals on Wheels Senior Citizen Transportation

Human Services Senior Counseling Youth Counseling

Youthful Offender Programs Family Assistance

In addition, the Village also has an Administrative Hearing system to minimize use of county court systems for minor ordinance violations such as Parking Tickets and Residential/Commercial Code Enforcement violations.

Each of these functions requires support by a number of departments and staff of over five hundred employees. Implementation of computers and other technologies have enabled staff to provide many of these services to constituents with more efficiency and greater accuracy than in the past. The Village has prided itself on using technology to its advantage and has won awards based on its innovation and/or improvement in the use of technology.

The Village of Skokie is, like any other government entity, in the business of providing good living conditions to its residents, providing good community relations and balancing development of homes and businesses to the benefit of all who live and work here. Each of the services previously mentioned works toward the goal of a well-balanced, enjoyable environment to live, to do business, and to learn.

Current Position / Application Plans

The Village has a multitude of existing, ongoing and forthcoming issues that require study and recommendation for security planning and maintenance. While we have taken great care in the protection of our data, new threats, new direction, new requirements for privacy and general concerns about reliability require us to place emphasis on our security systems.

The Village conducted a random survey in late 2003 covering twelve hundred households. The survey covered various topics including