© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

St. Louis County Technology Set To Get An Upgrade

The St. Louis County Council is set to approve more than $650,000 to upgrade the county's technology, including a new website and disaster backup.
David Kovaluk | St. Louis Public Radio
The St. Louis County Council is set to approve more than $650,000 to upgrade the county's technology, including a new website and disaster backup.

The St. Louis County Council is on track to approve more than $650,000 for improvements to the county’s information technology system.

The council gave first-round approval to the upgrades on July 2. Final approval is likely to come at its July 9 meeting.

The supplemental appropriations include money to automate most of the county’s internal and external processes and restore the IT help desk for employees, said Rick Nolle, the county’s chief information officer. There is also $50,000 to upgrade the county’s mobile app, and $150,000 for a new county website.

“Our website is over 10 years old, and in internet years, that’s like 70 years. That’s a lifetime,” Nolle said.

The funding requests also include money to make it easier for the county to get back up and running in case of a disaster.  

The St. Louis County Council is set to approve more than $650,000 to upgrade the county's technology, including a new website and disaster backup.
Credit David Kovaluk | St. Louis Public Radio
The St. Louis County Council is set to approve more than $650,000 to upgrade the county's technology, including a new website and disaster backup.

In recent years Baltimore, Atlanta and several cities in Florida have been hit with cyberattacks that have crippled their systems.

Nolle says the county currently backs its systems up to external devices called tape drives, and stores those drives in a vault. He wants to spend $113,000 to shift the backup system to the cloud instead.

“And so if we get locked, if we get a disaster, we can start rebuilding systems in hours and days, rather than days and weeks it would take to go grab the tapes and physically go and connect the tapes up to drives and get them into computers,” Nolle said.

Nolle said there is enough yearly turnover among the county’s tech staff that increasing automation shouldn’t cause anyone to lose their jobs.

Follow Rachel on Twitter: @rlippmann

Send questions and comments about this story to feedback@stlpublicradio.org

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.
Rachel Lippmann
Lippmann returned to her native St. Louis after spending two years covering state government in Lansing, Michigan. She earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and followed (though not directly) in Maria Altman's footsteps in Springfield, also earning her graduate degree in public affairs reporting. She's also done reporting stints in Detroit, Michigan and Austin, Texas. Rachel likes to fill her free time with good books, good friends, good food, and good baseball.