City IT director urges investment in data tagging and camera server replacements

Jerry Klein, director of CCITC, told the Capital Improvement Projects Committee on July 17 that the city’s existing Microsoft data loss prevention tools are limited and intermittently over‑encrypt internal messages, and that a more capable data tagging and data loss prevention product would better protect personal and health information and guard against inadvertent uploads to external AI services.

Klein described three recurring technology categories the joint city‑county IT body manages: PC replacement, server replacement and camera hardware. He said the CCITC team proposed an enterprise Microsoft license that would standardize upgrades and allow deployment of the newer server version across devices; the licensing request was presented as an upgrade rather than a simple renewal.

“We use a Microsoft data loss prevention product. It’s pretty limited… We can point this suite of data loss prevention software at a server, and it’ll go through all of the files on the server, and it’ll evaluate what and it’ll tag them,” Klein said, explaining how tagging would let IT block inappropriate transfers or AI uploads of PII or PHI.

Klein also said archive servers for the city’s Genetec camera system are approaching end of life in 2027 and that replacement is time‑sensitive to preserve security and public records retrieval. He noted that some federal and state grants have limited eligibility — for example, grants may not reimburse past work — and that CCITC had previously been unable to use a grant to reimburse work already done.

Committee members pressed about grant eligibility and whether federal cybersecurity grants would cover the proposed tools; Klein said past grant language limited reimbursements to new work. The committee ultimately agreed to remove the Microsoft enterprise licensing from the above‑the‑line CIP recommendation and discussed pursuing alternative funding streams for CCITC priorities.

Next steps include staff follow up with grant program contacts and the finance committee as the revised CIP recommendation moves forward.