City Council - Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Dockets #0733-0740, 0757, FY27 Budget: DoIT, PEG Access Fund

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Good morning. My name is Ben Weber. I am the Boston City Councilor for District 6 and the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Ways and Means. Today is April 27th, 2026, and the exact time is 1010. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash TV and broadcasts on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. The Council's budget review process will encompass a series of hearings that began in early April and will run through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record. You can do so in several ways. First, You can attend one of our hearings and give public testimony in person or online.

We'll take public testimony during the hearing, usually at the end of the first round of counselor questions. We're also taking public testimony to listening sessions here at City Hall. You can look at the full hearing schedule on our website at boston.gov slash council dash budget. The two public listening sessions will be held here in the chamber in person on Tuesday, it's tomorrow, April 28th at 6 p.m. and then again on Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. You can give testimony in person here in the chamber or virtually via Zoom. For in-person testimony please come to the chamber and sign up on the sheet near the entrance. For virtual testimony you can sign up using our online form at our Council Budget Review website

or by emailing the committee at ccc.wm at boston.gov or by emailing Karishma Chauhan at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A dot C-H-O-U-H-A-N at boston.gov. When you are called to testify, please state your name and affiliation or your residence and limit your comments to two minutes. Testifying in person or virtually, you can also email written testimony to the committee at ccc.wm.boston.gov. Lastly, you can submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website. For more information on the City Council budget process and how to testify, please visit the City Council's budget website at boston.gov slash council dash budget. In-person public testimony will be taken following the first round of councilor questions. Individuals will be called on the order which they've signed up.

I'll have two minutes to testify. Again, if you wish to testify publicly and have not signed up on the sheet already, please do so. Or if you want to testify virtually, email Our Director of Legislative Budget Analysis, Karishma Chauhan at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A dot C-H-O-U-H-A-N at boston.gov for the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. Perhaps for better ways that we can get public testimony virtually, we've assembled a panel today who can help us with that. Today's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740 and docket number 757 for an overview of the FY27 operating budget focusing on the Department of Innovation and Technology. This hearing will also cover the PEG Access Fund. This is one of a series of hearings we'll be holding on the FY27 budget.

For my colleagues' information, Chief Garces will be joining us virtually today, and we can see him up on the screen. These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and were referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councillor Flynn, Councillor Murphy, thank you very much, And we usually waive opening statements at these hearings. So we're going to go right to the panel. Let me introduce you. We're joined by Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston, Santi Garces, who's virtual. Can you hear me? Yes, looks like a thumb. Yes, sir. Yep. Chief of Staff Kerry Jordan, Department of Innovation and Technology. We have Sheila Lee, Director of Operations, Department of

for the Department of Innovation and Technology, and DeWitt's Digital Equity Officer and Director of Broadband and Cable, Brian Donahue. Am I pronouncing that right? Okay. So I'm going to hand it over to the panel. I don't know if you have a presentation, but the floor is now yours.

Thank you so much, Councillor. And again, my apologies for not being there in person. There's a last minute urgent matter that took me away from being able to join you in person. And my apologies, but let me, and again, thanks to my amazing colleagues that are there in person who will be able to support the hearing. Can you see the presentation all right?

Yes. Yes, we can.

Perfect. So again, it is my honor to share with you the proposed budget for the Department of Innovation and Technology for the fiscal year 2027. Foremost, if there are any one in the room that is not familiar or virtually that is not familiar, do it is the city's Principal, like the central innovation and technology team. So we support every department and agency We connect them. We connect them with residents that live in every neighborhood and every corner of the city. We connect about 367 buildings. We connect about 20,000 employees. Everybody who gets a paycheck from the City of Boston gets a by a system that is steward by us so we're really kind of like at the heart of the operation and supporting all of the great work that all of our departments and cabinets do.

So this past year, and thanks to our mayor and to the support of the city council, we've been busy driving progress of this city. The first set of areas where we've been investing is to build a more seamless city experience. So we know that our constituents entitled and they deserve the best of the best in terms of having a government that is simple, that is intuitive, that is effective. So we've been in the process of modernizing a lot of like the inner workings of the systems that connect constituents with the services that they request from us, especially those services that are kind of like in the public right of way. When you report that there's an issue or you request a service, that's what we call the Basic City Services Modernization

We've also been really busy in improving the way that the permitting experience works, focusing on constituents. and we'll share more about that and then we've been again thanks to the investment of the council we've been able to bring capabilities that in the past have been outside of city government inside of city government. So we've also been able to create this new experience for property owners to search information about their properties, not really just property owners, but anyone who's curious to understand what is the SS value, what is the type of use, and many more. In their neighborhoods, they can find this information. In the past, for comparable projects, we've received Bids or quotes for about half a million dollars per these projects and then we were able to do this entirely in-house

So first, I just wanted to share, so this is a side of the puzzle that most people don't get to see, but Lagann has been the system, Constituent Resource Management System. And it's a system that has been with the city for over 20 years. And it's a system that, again, it's a commercial system, It has not been supported by the manufacturer. In fact, the people that make this system have sold over the system several times over. And we are at a Time and a place where this is not really serving our needs. There's a number of operational issues and security issues that have really forces over the past few years to make improvements. And again, this is all of the information, the databases and all the systems that kind of like track all the requests that whether you call through on one or you enter the information in the mobile app.

The new system that we've been replacing is encompassed by a collection of different tools, but the first is this new constituent relationship management system that is powered by a company called Creatio. and it is a Boston-based company. It is a company that is based, their headquarters are right across the street from City Hall. And again, it gives us much more security and many more. and we've been also working with OpenGov, which is a national-based company, but they have offices in Boston. And again, one of the main things that we've been working on Changing the way that we capture this information. So in the past and still in the new system, whenever someone reports that there's an issue, this information is flowing from a constituent to this CRM and then to this asset management system.

Precisely because we have a system that tracks assets, we're able to see if there's recurring issues against the same asset. So for instance, do we get multiple complaints about the same traffic light or about the same street light or about the same rubbish bin or bench in a park? and that helps us plan better and be able to understand if maybe the asset that we have is past its prime and it is better to prioritize through a capital expenditure. So it is all about working better and smarter instead of harder, all of it enabling a better experience for our constituents as well. They don't get to see these systems, but that's what we've been up to. and this current year, our goal will extend over the fall, but to replace this last system. Another thing that we've been working on is on the permitting transformation initiative. And again, this is something that is very much enabled by the work that the council and the mayor have done both through the executive order and by the council.

Order that was passed last year. And one of the things that we have learned is that permitting is an area where Only about 37% of people have reported satisfaction with permitting. This is a number that has improved a little bit. We asked our constituents about how they feel about different city services through some surveys. And about half of the constituents that responded to the survey told us that the primary reason why they are dissatisfied with permitting is because the information that we give them about what they need to do is unclear. So thanks to a combination of our teams, our data analytics team, our user research team, and in partnership with ISD and actually with our residents and constituents, we went and we talked to people that actually request these permits. We were able to understand what are the common things that people are actually trying to do. So most people are not trying to get an electrical permit. They're trying to refurbish their bathroom.

They want to invest in a new restaurant. They want to build a deck. They want to do these things. They want to put solar panels. So we built a new hub in boston.gov slash permitting that is creating this new type of content that explains to people how is it that they can achieve the things that they're aiming to do and relate them to the administrative permits. We're gathering a lot of feedback and kind of making improvements based on what we're hearing from constituents both online and in person and through different engagements that we have. And our goal is, as we go into the next fiscal year and continue using both the capital and operating funds that have been set aside for this, to build a permitting system that works in this way so there's no actual permit type for building a deck or for putting solar panels but there's a number of different administrative requirements to do these things and we want to make it so that The system's working for you instead of you having to figure out how to work out the system.

properties.boston.gov again is a new interface for people to be able to find information about their properties whether you are Think about investing in a property. You don't know who the owner is. You're a property tax owner and you want to see how the assessed value of your property has changed over time. This is, again, a product that was built by our digital Services team in partnership with our data team and in very close partnership with assessing another. So again, this is something that would have traditionally been outsourced, but that we've been able to do in-house because you guys have helped us invest in really talented staff members and continue to build up the capabilities that our staff has had. Next, we've been working on an empowered city workforce. So we've been extending, Beacon is one of the systems that the city has used for HR for the past few years.

and we have extended this to be able to be used by IT for fiscal year 27. We're actually hoping to, our plan is to consolidate a couple of different tools that we have to enable people to submit are going to the law department or to finance and run it all on Beacon. And I'll show you a little bit about some of the advantages that that gives us. The second place is we've been making improvements to our employee self-service. So this coming weekend, if everything goes according to plan, we're still working on this, we will be migrating the The technology that employees use to request time off and to interact with the city. Again, this is the system that everybody, both whether they work in the Boston public schools or in Parks. This is the system that we use for interacting with our employees.

And we had an actual quote to do this migration from the current system to the new system, which actually reduces some components and it is more secure. But we had received a quote for $1.2 million to be able to do this transition. And at the time we had decided not to fund it. Instead, our team was able to do the work in-house. They were able to... figure out and learn how is it that we could deploy this new experience and being able to do all the work so the city saved 1.2 million dollars by doing this work in-house and hopefully by next Monday people will be able to see the and then we've also been investing in this Boston Data Hub, so replacing our old data warehousing infrastructure to a cloud data infrastructure that, again, is gathering information from different departments, this shared space for data. And by virtue of doing this work in-house, we've been able to save

about $200,000 a year in licensing costs. And actually in the past, we only had 50 licenses for staff members to be able to access the data warehouse. We have the ability of sharing the data warehouse with all employees, obviously using different restrictions for data that is regulated. But we also were able to save about a million dollars of professional services that was what we were quoted to do the migration by doing the work in-house again. Just the investments that the Council over the past few years have done in letting us have a few more staff members has really paid off in our ability to complete projects for less money. We talked about service management again. What does this mean? It means that for the first time, we kind of have visibility around what is it that people are requesting from DoIT at a large scale. And as I mentioned, our intent is to scale this. So we've, since October... of last year when we went live, we've received 12,000 service requests.

Again, this is all the way from someone requesting us to, Help them with the design for a campaign that our creative services team does, or they need a new email distribution, or they want to, their wifi is not working. We've received 12,000 of these requests. And again, DO-IT is a complex team. We have 43 different technical teams that are managing different components of a really complex technology infrastructure. That is reflected in the fact that we support 413 different services, whether it's Wi-Fi or the fiber network that connects all the different buildings, or the phone on someone's desk, All of these are different kinds of services, so we're able to track what the issues are. We now know that our median resolution time is 3.75 days,

We're really fast at resolving some simple issues and it takes longer to resolve issues that are more complex, but now we have an ability of measuring and try to make improvements towards that. and all of these service deliveries also happening in the context of we've been implementing and working using some methodologies that are called like agile methodologies and DevOps So on top of all of these service request work, we are, every quarter, fulfilling about 400, so in a year, about 1,600 project components. So these are all of the projects that help us do major work. to help us continue to improve our environment, to be more secure and reliable. Just to show you, this is what the new employee self-service environment will look like. If it seems similar to the current one is because the goal was to make it very similar to the current one. But the nice thing is that we've actually been able to simplify.

So we're actually removing some components from our environment, which improves security and reliability. And hopefully our employees will all be able to access this. in a week. And again, we have the great work. This is the work of Kerry Jordan, our chief of staff, in partnership with Marcy Osberg and from others across the city. But we wanted to celebrate all of the creativity and hard work of our employees. Our employees are constantly using skills that we that we've been training people on and just investing time in making government work better for our constituents. So we've been saving hundreds of thousands of hours. When you add up, when you save five minutes, For instance, with the registry, we're able to reduce the amount of time that that constituent waited in the lobby from 12 minutes to about five to six minutes.

When you add that across the tens of thousands of people that come to the registry, you're saving so much time across the board. And we wanted to celebrate all of this creativity and innovation that our employees are driving. Next May 6th we'll be having in Court Street an open kind of innovation expo where people are going to be able to see some of the work that our employees are driving. We have a couple of projects that we know that are really relevant to our to the council and to our constituents. So we want to share with you progress around the work that we've been doing to improve access to information about regulation and the curb. and Route Optimization. So this is how we're working to be a little bit smarter and more proactive. So as of five minutes ago, as of this week,

We have made public what has been a lot of work, and this is accessible on the website, is the Curb Atlas. and we're starting, initially our prototype is just for Chinatown. We'll be expanding to Charlestown later this week and then also for Old City for paid parking. But the council had asked us to figure out how is it that constituents can see where can someone find parking depending on the regulations and the restrictions that they have. So where can someone find parking If they have a resident parking sticker or if they want to do paid parking or if there's a loading zone. And our team, our emerging technologies team, has been able to leverage a lot of these acid data, the data that we have about all the street signs that I mentioned.

Santee, sorry, could you just slow down? I know there's a lot to get through, and it was highly technical. Maybe just a little slower. Absolutely. Thank you.

Absolutely. And if you have questions, obviously happy to go back then. But anyways, The most important thing is we have the ability of letting constituents see where there's parking available and where parking is not available. and their streets, which is a thing that we know that the council has been really keen on. It will allow the team in the streets cabinet to be able to do a better job in planning when there's construction, to understand where there might be areas that are being impacted so we'll be happy to share the link so you'll be able to see again like the prototype is up on the website For Chinatown and later this week, we'll be getting more and more information. Again, it's related to the asset management work that we had shared before. tried to go a little bit slower. I get excited about this stuff.

So another exciting project, which again has been the council has given us some additional resources to pursue these kinds of projects. So the first piece is the underlying data infrastructure that the city has is really important. So the record that we have of where our streets go and how are they configured is what enables us to be able to do route optimization. Our team has done a lot of work improving the quality of this data. In the past, we used to have Four different data sets across the city. Streets had one. The police department had one. And obviously, this creates issues for a number of reasons. But the biggest issue is that it also prevents us from being able to do route optimization and other things. So this is an example of a project that our analytics team has done in partnership with the Solid Waste team. And what you can see is

Mattress pickup, which again was a thing that was required by the state a couple of years ago, has as we know a lot of seasonality so around September 1st there's a large number of people that dispose of their mattresses and it's unusual compared to the regular pattern and currently there's three different pickup zones. So what our team was able to do in partnership with Solid Waste is figure out if there's a way in which we can allocate those pickups differently to try to minimize the disruption. So when the chart, these big spikes are when there's a longer lag, a longer time for people to collect the mattress. But it's partially again because we're using in the past, we're using these like static areas to do mattress pickup. So our team worked with the mattress pickup team to be able to

adjust the way that the pickups are distributed across the three different teams to be able to reduce the seasonality. And you see that in the red chart because there's no spikes. So this is work, again, like I I don't know if it's yet in production or it's something that we're still working on with Solid Waste, but this is exactly the kind of work that we're able to do now thanks to the investment of the Council in giving us this. This is work that was done entirely in-house by our team. So again, connecting our constituents with these resources. We've been spending a lot of time and a lot of money in building a great digital infrastructure. But we know that this doesn't mean much if the people that need it the most cannot connect. We have partnered with 36 community partners, and I know that Glen from BNN is in the room,

BNN is definitely one of our key partners here and they're our partner in being able to broadcast all of the public meetings of the city through our community access and through our city cable channels. a lot of recognition and gratitude for our partners. But again, we've worked to serve over 11,000 constituents to make sure that they have access to devices, to affordable internet, and to digital skills to enable those people to access Digital resources in a way that are safe, in a way that are helpful. And all of that requires a lot of partnership and work from our partners. from our team. We are really grateful for the state being able to give us some funding to expand Wicked Free Wi-Fi. And again, we work closely with our equity cabinet and with others

to make sure that we were putting these investments in the places where it had the biggest impact. So we started to focus on areas where there was high incidence of people that we knew lacked that had limited access to data on their phones. So we put it primarily in commuting nodes. So we expanded to Nubian Square, Mattapan Square, Eggleston Square, Maverick Square, Malcolm X Park, So Wicked Free Wi-Fi serves about 117,000 unique users since we launched. That means that about 50,000 to 60,000 people are using Wicked Free WiFi every month. That's the average for the unique number of users. And we know, thanks to our digital equity survey, that it is those constituents needed the most that are getting access to Wicked Free Wi-Fi. Thanks to the Council for appropriating the funds from another grant that we received from the state.

We're going to be in a position to refurbish and improve all of the computers in the Boston community and the BCYF centers and partnering with other departments that serve the public to make sure that our constituents that are needing to use these devices to access career, to access entertainment, to access Skill Building all are doing it with devices that are reliable, that are working, and that's work that Brian's team is peer-heading. So again, we're so proud that this work wouldn't be able to happen if it wasn't for the partnerships that we have with our community organizations in healthcare, in housing, and in many other spaces. and obviously the support of the Council in helping us do this work. So our Proposed budget for FY27. So this is a difficult year from a financial standpoint.

We're working very closely with budget and with our financial team and with others. So we're proposing a budget that has reductions. Again, we're able to do this because we have done investments over the past few years that are allowing us to replace services that are less secure, less reliable, and more expensive to new, more modern systems. We know that we're able to drive down costs across the city when we leverage the fact that DO-IT is a shared resource. So instead of having five different CRMs, having one CRM that serves five or 10 departments is less expensive overall. So even though we have limitations in our ability to serve everybody, we know that this shared service approach has the best bang for the buck. We are also bringing this constituent experience to City Hall.

So we're using, as we mentioned, this user research, Impact Evaluation, and all of these great relationships to serve. So even though DO-IT doesn't necessarily do a lot of work directly with the public, we're supporting all of the departments and agencies that are working on supporting our residents. and making sure that they're having the best of the best resources to have the best experience. And again, digital equity, so always making sure that our constituents have the right resources and the right tools to be able to do their work So again, that concludes our presentation for the day. And we're happy to... Take questions unless Brian, Sheila, or Carrie want to, if I missed something.

They gave thumbs up. I think that means you covered everything. Yeah, sorry there. I felt like I was listening to a podcast where I accidentally pressed like 2.2 times or something. So I went back to like 1.5. Thank you very much. Okay, so we've been joined by Councillor Durkan. I'm gonna start with, go to my colleagues now in order of arrival. Councillor Flynn, you have six minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the administration team for being here. I especially want to say thank you to Kerry Jordan, who I've worked with for eight years, does an exceptional job, but also the entire DUA team as well. Let me start with a quick question or a comment. How are we working, maybe to Kerry, how are we working with advanced technology to improve the delivery of basic city services, but also using city workers in ensuring that Boston residents are part of that discussion as well. What are your thoughts about that, Kerry?

My immediate thoughts? Thanks for the question. Are around our user design team. So there are very few decisions that we make without capturing that feedback, making sure that we're working with residents to figure out exactly what are the needs that we're answering to. So when you look at basic city services, we've been kind of monitoring what are the top tickets, what are the top needs, and then working with the teams to build that out. And then I don't think we're taking any steps without including The people who actually do the work and making sure they're getting the training necessary to deliver for the residents.

Okay, thank you. And whoever wants to take this question, I know you mentioned the BCYF Department getting updates to their computer system. Can you give me a little bit of background information on that as it relates to BCYF centers specifically in District 2?

So we were able to work with the state to receive a grant that is going to refresh all of the city computer labs across the city. So that won't take into account the place that they were starting out at, which I think that a couple of the centers in your district might have needed a little bit of love from a computer standpoint. basically going to each of the computer centers and surveying the folks that are running those centers that are using those centers and making sure that we're able to bring in the exact type of technology that's going to be the most useful to them if they and many more.

Everybody that comes into the BCYF, regardless of where they're coming from from a disability standpoint, are able to use those devices effectively and comfortably.

I was at the BCYF Center at the Blackstone in the South End last week and they had an outstanding mural program that I attended and it was wonderful seeing the young people Working together, learning from each other, providing critical communication skills. But I do know in some of those old, not necessarily old buildings, but buildings that are not all that Helpful to Wi-Fi at times, challenging for Wi-Fi. Is that something you frequently run into?

So that's another part that we've by an enhanced partnership between ourselves and the BCYF by having a public computer labs director to take on that role. We've exactly focused on that exact question and we'll be working over the summer and the next couple of I guess quarters to make sure that we're able to I also know you mentioned Glenn

I've seen the work he does. I've seen the team over there. They do an exceptional job. So I want to give a shout out to Glenn, who I know is an outstanding employee as well. One thing that was mentioned in the opening statement, something about the Boston Election Department and improving how we manage Elections through Advanced Technology. Give me the 20-second version on how we're going to do that.

I can get started and then pass it over to Ryan.

Yeah, just give me the 20-second version.

So again, we work closely with elections and with cross-cutting team from the city, and we're focusing on improving the way that People that were working at the polls were able to get information and report issues that were happening at the polls. So this past election we deployed poll pads and we deployed a new system. So again, we use our CRM, the new CRM, to build a system to track what were the issues and whether they got resolved. And then thanks to Brian and a couple of other members in our team, We're able to expand network connectivity in some areas because the pulpits need to connect to be able to get real-time information. So we both made those enhancements at the network level and then created this new system to track this information. That's the information that we shared with the Secretary of State to drive improvements.

Mr. Chair, I have 10 seconds, but can I ask one more question? Yes. Okay. Just as a follow-up on that, how much money have we spent on advanced technology or contracts relating to Boston Elections Department since it was overseen by the place and receivership by the Secretary of State's office.

I would defer that to the Elections Department. To which department? Two elections.

No, no, I'm talking about advanced technology.

So there is no, again, whatever funding We did not increase expenditures to cover the CRM work. So all of the expenses that were incurred In terms of technology to make improvements to the Elections Department, we're covered by the Elections Department, so they wouldn't be in DUIT's budget. So I wouldn't be able to answer your question. So none of the funding was coming from DUIT.

Was DeWitt part of the discussion on what technology companies would be selected?

We were advising them on how to provision those services, yes.

Okay, yeah, that's what I was getting at is, You know, I don't think the election department would move forward without Dewitt's involvement on a contract that we seek advanced technology to implement and deliver an election. but I know the funding itself is not coming from Dewitt, it's coming from the election department. But Mr. Chair, can I get that question on the record and maybe the election department in Dewitt could somehow provide me the answer.

Yeah, we'll work on that. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for giving me an extra minute. Okay. We've been joined by Councillor Culpepper and Councillor Murphy. Six minutes.

Thank you. Two things. One... There was a thorough overview, a lot of work. And you guys live it every day, so you know. But your department has a handle in every department, I would say. So a lot happens every year. I know this could take 20 minutes, so I'll ask this question second. But one thing I did want to just kind of have you talk through, what are the top three projects you feel like you worked on since last year? But I'm going to ask my other question first, just in case I run out of time. You know, it's 2026, so we could have probably said this in 2015, 2020, but we are becoming more reliant on technology and it's going faster than it used to. And as we upgrade departments to become

more just literate about it but also giving them the tools to be more digital and many of the hearings not just budget ones I've had this year so far we talked a lot about getting communication out pushing out and another plug for BNN, like a resource many residents do, you know, turn on that TV channel, but many like libraries and BCYF and, you know, Thank you. Thank you. Shifting to where we know we're going to be and making sure we're not leaving anyone behind. I know that's always the big digital equity question. also knowing like isn't there like a state law that we can't ask residents to opt out of getting their taxes paid even though that would be probably easier to like not send out we're spending millions of dollars on

Postage and stuff so I think on our end we need to push that but so the digital equity I think every year it seems like it's getting smaller the group but the divide in my mind is getting bigger And then if you could just touch on maybe three of the biggest projects, maybe they were departmentalized, but that you worked on since last year. Thank you. Anyone can start.

I can get started and then maybe I'll let Brian make a double take on the digital equity piece. So again, I think like the three major projects that we've been working on are, again, the modernization of the basic city services, the 3-in-1 infrastructure, is a big complex project and we have been migrating a number of departments so we have the parks department already in the new system we have street lighting urban forestry and then Our goal is to get public works over into the new system by June and then transportation in the fall. And I'll conclude all of the major departments So permitting improvements is the other one which we shared. And that's a big, complex project. And again, we decided to start tackling issues around

The content, the clarity of the information first is the area where our constituents told us that there's a biggest gap. and again I would say like digital equity is another of the major areas where we've been working on Brian can add and more to this, but actually since 2019, we've been able to reduce the number of households without internet access in Boston by about half. There used to be about 32,000 households without internet access. It is, as you mentioned, it is a problem that is tough to deal with and it's hard to track because there's a number of reasons why people are disconnected and we know that some of it is affordability, Some of it is access to quality internet, access to devices, access to resources to be able to do the work. And we try to make sure that we're providing services to everybody regardless of how they prefer to work with us. But we know that digital access is a key part.

We've made a lot of improvements thanks to your support and thanks to Brian's work. But I'll turn it over to Brian to maybe... Dig in a little bit more about how is it that his team is approaching the digital equity work?

Yeah, and I won't belabor the point about the community Computer Labs, because that's something that I think that everybody is very excited about. From our standpoint, another exciting partnership has been between our department and the Office of Returning Citizens. And we're making sure that folks who are returning from prison are able to Get the types of access that they need. In addition to that, getting some of the skills and the basic pieces of the puzzle that they need to participate in society once they're coming back. And one other one that I would highlight even maybe as a pet project is our enhancing our partnership with Madison Park. So Glenn over at BNN has been hosting some of the students For after school sessions and getting them kind of exposed to what it looks like to do this type of work in the field from an audio and video production standpoint. In addition to that, we're also having one of the folks apprentice co-op at the

We're really excited about that and just heard today that one of the students is placed high enough in the SkillsUSA competition to be traveling for that. So he's got to miss work on Thursday and Friday, but we're excited to have him back when he's done. So just hitting a couple of the different pieces of the puzzle, but happy to talk through any other parts of that at a deeper level if you'd like.

Thank you. I'm good, Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much. Councilor Durkan, you have six minutes.

Thank you so much, Councilor Weber and Chair. Well, Chief Garces, we haven't had a chance to see each other. I guess we still haven't because you're on the little box over there. But we haven't had a chance to see each other. Since I worked with Skanska through the Longwood Place development to secure Wi-Fi, public Wi-Fi for that development, which is I think it'll be great for the nearby Longwood Medical Area. That was an ask that I made through the Article 80 process of the developer. I know that we are Without federal funding, or there's been major cuts to federal funding for digital access, and I was just curious if, you know, what We did there at Longwood Place. Through that development could be a model for expanding public Wi-Fi through the city in times of financial hardship.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, we're excited to see different partners coming together to enable connectivity. And again, we know The data shows us that people, especially those that have the biggest need, are using our free Wi-Fi to connect. I'd be happy to work with the Council and with others that are trying to bring these kinds of amenities, being something that we think a lot about and that's something that Brian and Sheila and Kerry think as well is making sure that we have the funding to be able to keep up those services you know like we have to replace the access points and we need to That's something that's always in our mind whenever we're expanding an area and why we've been so strategic and pinpointed, but we're always happy to work on and expand. We're grateful that digital access is such a priority for you as well.

Thank you so much. And so looking through, and anyone can answer this question, but looking through the history it seems like personnel have gone up $500,000 and contractual services have gone down a little over $750,000. I'm just curious, I know as a council, As a councillor now in my third budget season, I know that there's way more flexibility with personnel money than there is with contractual services, so I just was looking to see if there was An overview of why personnel has gone up and why contractual services have gone down and whether in personnel going up or those jobs that already exist or those you know just sort of an explanation for that.

I can start and maybe Sheila can supplement my answer. But again, so the first place that I would say is The pattern that you're observing is there's actually been a deliberate investment both from the mayor and with the support of the council in bringing things that in the past have just been contracted out in-house. As we showed earlier in the presentation, that's made it possible for us to save millions of dollars of funding that we otherwise would just be spending on contractors, instead spending on our employees. and we continue to benefit from the expertise of our employees that are here at the city for a longer period of time. That's a starting place, do it. Like if you compare other cities like Boston, the number of employees that work in technology but also in digital services and data is actually much bigger.

If you compare, San Francisco has about 400 people in their IT department, but they also have about 160 people that do data and digital. So they have a couple of different cabinets that do what DUA does. So the good thing is Boston still is able to really deliver some great things at a staffing level that is still substantially lower than what other peer cities do. but generally speaking this shift that you've seen is a deliberate strategy of bringing those resources in-house with our union high quality employees and trying to avoid outsourcing some of the work.

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense, and I'm happy to have that answer on the record. Just curious, I noticed that in fiscal year 24, which obviously, you know, that the equipment expenditure was over $4 million. And then when you go down to 2025, it's $2 million, down to 26, 1.5 million. and then this year what's recommended is 1.3 million which is down 182,000 from last year. I'm just curious if you can explain that trend and sort of like what What equipment was being purchased in 2024 that is no longer needed as we move into these later fiscal years?

Sure. Sheila, do you want to take this question?

So a lot of the times during the fiscal year when we require it, we will slowly shift money based on actuals when we have savings in other areas so that we can buy equipment during that year. But for planned equipment, we and so on. Specifically, we want only certain things. And then for this budget year, we've also, the lease purchased, Thank you.

Thank you. I'm just curious. I'll need to get back to you on that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm just curious because obviously equipment has gone down significantly. I mean it it looks like like every other department you're spending less on supplies and materials and it looks I mean to me this budget looks healthy and like I'm I don't have any further questions about this budget. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. We have been joined by Council President Liz Breadon. Councilor Culpepper, six minutes.

Thank you. Chairman Weber. And thank you to the panelists today and for all that you do. I had a couple of questions that had to do with the cable and the reduced cable substitute. Subscriptions, knowing that the seniors, many of the seniors watch BNN and they have specific programs that they Look at and anticipate with regard to the 10 to 15% cut and it says annually, are you saying that that's something that you anticipate for Thank you for the question.

We've been able to avoid Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Once we are able to update it, that it will be lower ongoing costs. But happy to talk more about that. But yeah, that is not, again, our decision. It's the function of these. This funding source being directly tied to how many folks sign up for cable. So we are having to deal with the fact there's a lot of cord cutting. And I know that a lot of folks still

and many more. We're thankful for the partnership and we're trying to be very creative with how we find cost savings and shift pieces of the puzzle that are things that the city could help with.

So what years has it been declining by the 10 to 15 percent?

It's been declining by that much for the last five, six years at this point.

And so what are you doing to attract additional cable subscription? What kind of outreach? What are you doing?

So we do a lot of community engagement on the standpoint of finding ways that folks can find affordable packages for themselves. So we don't necessarily do outreach directly on behalf of the cable companies. But we do have a function within our office that helps folks who are finding it unaffordable to find better options and find deals within those cable companies and kind of not to say lean on them, but have conversations that enable us to make it so that they're able to keep their subscriptions and not have to find other cost savings.

What's the percentage of folks that are challenged financially? with keeping their subscriptions.

I'd have to get back to you on that exact number. I know that we have maybe a couple folks every month that call up and say, I think that one, just Peter from my team, just helped one person who was coming from The mayor's office hours that had that exact problem. So I'd have to get back to you on the exact percentages.

And as you cut and as you look at how you reduce the programming, How do you make a decision of What gets reduced? I mean, will one day the council not be able to be seen because of the cuts?

We haven't at this point had to reduce any programming. That's a discussion that we have with Glenn at BNN about The different ways we can offset those costs, but up to this point, we've not had to make any programming costs whatsoever, I think. Is that right?

And when you look at the... The BNN and the operations, when you look at what's at risk, if revenue does continue to decline, what's really going to be at risk and what's the impact? on the public access to government proceedings and community media.

At this point, I think that it's an uphill battle across the country and definitely across the state for community media. I know that there's a lot of advocacy that's going on and something that we're pushing at the Statehouse right now is something that would help to Thank you for your time. Thank you. So that's something that Glen's been taking the lead on as far as advocating for that at the State House. And we're excited because that would, if those types of legislation are able to pass, then we would be able to shift where we're seeing the 10% reduction in the Cape basically the people that are cutting their cords are going somewhere and they're going to the place that we're hoping to work with legislature and the statewide organization that is the community media lead to get that type of legislation passed that would be able to.

Is that some kind of home rule petition? Are you just working with the legislature for increased appropriations?

It's not a home rule petition to my knowledge. Again, I'm not quite an expert on this. Maybe Glenn can give a minute or two when he gets his time. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Not a home rule petition or anything?

Not a home rule petition to my knowledge. I think it would be a new revenue generating mechanism to get some of the money from the folks who are benefiting from the cord cutting those companies like Amazon and Google.

And so how would that work? Let's say you did get additional money. And let's say some of the subscribers had to pay for Google. How would that work?

It would be a very small addition. Again, I'm not an expert in legislation. We can give you a longer briefing, actually, if you'd like.

Okay, well, just how would it work in terms of right now they're going to Google, they're not paying anything. To go on to Google. If they had to, how would that work?

I see what you're saying. So it wouldn't be on the Google Mail type of stuff. It would be on those additional services like YouTube TV, I think, is one that is responsible, or you point to as... Colpepper, and so on.

I didn't hear a beat.

Okay, well there were two of them. They were, I could hear them. But did you mind, so we're just going to, we'll go to the second round. No, no, I'm good.

I have other questions, but I'll pick them up in the second round.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for listening out for that beat.

Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll. Breadon.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I see from that do it is losing almost 3.7 million in external funds funding and how do you expect this to impact External funds projects and do you anticipate a loss of programming due to these cuts? I'm just looking at the sheet here. How is that going to impact and do it?

So, oh, someone responding.

I'll let Santi start, and if there's follow-up questions, happy to.

Yeah, so again, a lot of our digital equity funding has been supported through federal programs that have been funneled through the state. and have allowed us to really expand on a number of areas so like we continue to work with this state and there's programs that are just getting started so we we know that there will still be some time to make progress on those initiatives. But as Brian was mentioning and kind of related to the line of questioning that Councillor Culpepper was making, there's some things that we'll have to figure out around digital equity. There's some other programs like The stuff that I shared related to the Curb Lab is funding that we received from the federal government from USDOT. Unfortunately, there's no additional funding on that program, but to some extent, we're grateful that the project's going to wrap up and we'll be able to show digital maps of parking regulations.

To some extent, we're working really hard with our budget office and with folks in City Hall to try to figure out Thank you very much. Thank you. We've been trying to attract funding from philanthropies and from others to try to make up some of those. broadly speaking from DoIT's perspective there's not any projected loss of service that we have and our ability to do programming again is mostly focused on digital equity and I'll turn it over to Brian to see What else I might have missed?

Didn't miss much. I think that we're doing what we can with the funding that we have in hand. Councilor Flynn mentioned improving the Wi-Fi in the community centers, and those are types of projects that we're trying to make sure we're making these Early Investments, and so that once the funding is going away, that we'll be able to say, we checked that box, we have high quality Wi-Fi, high quality devices in each of the computer labs before the funding sunsets.

And are we partnering with the broadband companies like Comcast and Aspire? Are we partnering with them? Are they providing services to or subsidized access for our community centers or anything like that.

Yeah, we work closely with all of the ISPs in the community. RCN is one, Verizon, and Comcast as well. Comcast in particular has made an investment in lift zones inside of the community centers. So. In locations where it was difficult originally to make sure that we had good connectivity, that was a program that they had built out a while back. So we do work closely with them and we're regularly in contact with them for what I was mentioning earlier as far as Making sure that residents who come to us and say, oh, my bill is unaffordable are able to at least get down to the most affordable option that's available to them.

And then in terms of just neighborhood equity across the city, how do it ensuring digital services and infrastructure are equitably distributed across the city? I know Alston Brighton has a high proportion of renters, immigrant households, students. How are we making sure that digital access is available to folks across the city? And is there an update on, and how do we know, how is there a way to evaluate broadband reliability and public access across areas like Alston Village or Commonwealth Ave? How do we find the gaps in the system?

Happy to talk through that and maybe leave a little space for Santi's additional comments, but we had partnered with the state to run a digital equity survey back in 2024. So we have at least neighborhood level data that I'd be happy to dig in on with you if it's something that's helpful. We are looking forward to working with BNN on updating that survey and figuring out at an additional level where we've moved as far as progress goes since 2024. and we're excited to get that feedback and would be happy to work with you all to make sure that each of the districts has outreach that we've done for that survey's purpose.

Liz, people are feeling the squeeze at the moment. And I think, you know, and so many more people are using internet access, et cetera, to do telehealth visits with their doctors, et cetera. So it's almost become an essential utility In terms of accessibility for For seniors, how does this year's budget expand digital accessibility for seniors, particularly in places where there's large numbers of folks who are trying to age in place? If they live in a big multi-family building, it's one thing, but if seniors are living in the neighbourhood on their own, how do we... Work on expanding digital accessibility for those folks.

I appreciate that question. It's definitely an area of focus for ourselves in addition to our partners at the BHA who have a significant focus on this. One of the programs that we have worked with the state to The digital equity fund grants. Those in the previous iterations. had an emphasis on the senior populations, a couple of the different partners who have that specific focus, so telehealth or specifically for nonprofits that serve folks so they can help Agent Place. Those are the two of the programs, but those are programs that are state funded and are things that we are going to go through one more cycle of at this point that'll be through October, November of this year. So we're excited to We just got the applicant list back and we're excited to partner with those organizations to make sure that we are emphasizing on the aging in place aspect of it.

Are we still working with Tech Goes Home and those groups like that independent not profit at this stage but are we still working with those folks to try and get a lot of more Knowledgeable Users.

Yeah, so we are partnering with, like Santi mentioned, about 35, 36 nonprofits at this point. We had funded previously a number of programs in the community centers that were supported by Tech Goes Home. Tech Goes Home recently had to roll up operations, so we're actually Working with BNN and with the community center leadership to make sure that we're filling the gaps and able to both ensure that high quality digital training is going on in our community spaces. but also make sure that folks are able to get the devices and the internet access they need to thrive in today's society.

Okay, Madam President.

I did try a little Culpepper move there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know people are selectively losing their hearing. Okay. I can give myself six minutes and test out my auditory abilities here. OK. So just in terms of number of positions, in the department and vacancies. Like if you look going back to 2022, there were about 36 vacancies. And since then, I think this suggests that you've done a good job in terms of hiring. We've added positions, maybe 22 positions, I think, and the vacancies have gone down to about 23 positions. 22, 23. So for FY26, there were 178 positions and 155 were filled.

Is those numbers level for FY27?

Yes, and I think that to your point, Councillor, there's been, we fill some very highly specialized positions, and one thing that we've been really keen on is whenever there's a vacancy, being thoughtful about like, updating the job descriptions, you know, like technology is changing and we want to make sure that we have the right skills. So I think that But our intent is to continue the level of staffing level, obviously working with our partners in budget and people operations As they've been some slowness, we've made a commitment to reduce the number of positions posted. So our goal is that given some of the financial constraints that we're able to prioritize positions to be able to post them and backfill them to make sure that there's continuity of service. Our goal is to stay leveled in our current headcount.

Okay. I guess number one, you face some challenges in filling highly technical positions. I think there's some companies out there that seem to have A lot of resources there in the tech. This is a growing industry. No, I'm just kidding. I mean, it's obviously the All the money in the world apparently is in these companies. So what are the sort of positions you have trouble sort of matching folks' wages on?

I mean, we do a lot of work, again, first trying to update our positions to meet kind of like the marketplace of skills, and that's also one of the things that drives us to continuously modernize some of the tools that we use because like the Using tools that are more modern means that there's a higher availability of people with those skills to maintain them. The reality, as you pointed out, the private sector when it comes to technology just pays much more money and then there's also benefits like bonuses and a number of different benefits that people have in the private sector but I think that we've done a really good job of trying to position Do It and the City as a leader in a space doing technology for public good.

The projects that we're doing and the work that we're doing and again to a great extent because the mayor and because you all trust us and and have given us the resources being able to work on projects that are interesting that are impactful all of those are the things that have allowed us to Bring people that are not motivated just by the money, they're motivated by mission. We struggle a little bit with all of them, to be honest. The more technical ones are harder to fill.

So for the FY27 budget, have you eliminated any positions, long-term vacancies?

We are on a holding pattern with some positions, but again, one of the things that we do is we upgrade the positions as they become vacant for whatever reason. So every time that there's a vacancy, we go back and review where do we know that we have gaps and how is it that we could what would have the highest impact so we've made changes of staffing on to add additional positions to our network team because again we support

The 23 vacancies, how many of these have been open for longer than I don't know. You can define what a long-term vacancy is, but how many have been open for a long period of time? More than six months. I don't know.

I'll defer to Sheila, but what I would tell you is that we have a plan. If we were able to post on again, it's just our agreement with budget and with the mayor is, to hold on posting but we have a plan to post every one of those positions if we had the availability tomorrow and then we would try to hire them.

Okay, so in terms of the contractual services, that's a large decrease. So, you know, can you give us specific examples of contracts? or have you decided which contracts you won't be renewing and you know what I'd appreciate later like maybe a list or you know if you if you If you've made decisions already, and if you want to highlight any contracts that you won't be able to renew because of the decrease in contractual services.

I can give you a list. Some of them are, again, whenever we've had a position that we could replace a contractor with a full-time employee, we've done that, and that's what's led to some increases in our staffing levels. We've replaced The solution that we use for our data warehousing tool to a new one that costs us less money and gives us broader access We are counting on being able to eliminate the contract for our CRM which we spoke about in the presentation so we can give you a more comprehensive list but that's just a sample of some of the things that we are cutting next year and we're fortunate in that the timing of the new things are coming at a time that we were able to replace the things that we're using and be at a lower operating level.

Okay, I think I heard a bird chirping in here. I'm not sure what that sound was, so I'll just keep going. Okay, there's one. Okay, so we're going to go to public testimony and then go for a second round here. So Glenn Williams from the Boston News, sorry, Boston Neighborhood Network. I'm going to... It's two minutes. You keep your eye on the clock whenever you're ready to start.

Thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate being here. Councillors, how are you? How everybody? Councillor Culpepper, I'm glad you brought up that cord cutting thing. because it's such an important thing. I just came back from Washington DC testifying to the House of Representatives people and all that stuff and then May 6th I'm on my way up to the State House to talk about streaming. Franchise fees back in the 80s. All of these big companies gave the municipalities 5% of the basic subscription to do things like BNN does. Cord cut, cord cut, cord cut. Now they're using the same infrastructure to do the streaming, but they're not giving in the 5%. So we're going up to the State House on May 6th to say how come, and we deserve the 3.5% to 5% for our franchise fees so we can do the things that BNN does. I'm sure you're all familiar with a lot of it.

All the sports stuff, all the city council stuff, all the parades, all the things that go on in our city. We're very, very proud to be part of the of the functioning group. But one of the couple of the things that we've started to do that we're very, very proud of is we've brought other organizations and we've partnered with a lot of them. One of them is circles of support. People whose parents or partners have been wrongly accused of things. They need some place for the families and the kids to sit and talk. They come to BNN. Content creators with Robert Lewis over in the mayor's office of tourism and stuff. We just finished and had a graduation at Emerson where we brought all these kids in, taught them

In six weeks, twice a week, they produce programming for the television, for the radio, for editing as well. Madison Park we do. and we bring kids in from Madison Park to attach to their workforce. Mass art as well and one of the big ones.

Mr. Williams, could you get this? You know, obviously not a long line behind you. We have one person on line. I'm going to give you an extra minute, okay?

For the best. Thank you, Councilor. I appreciate that. Harvard Health has a veterans program where there are senior citizens who need help with technology. They come to Boston Neighborhood Network and the questions they're embarrassed to ask their grandkids and stuff. What's the A with the circle for? How do I order something online? But they come to us and they have been for a while and we're very, very proud of that. I've been working with Brian. We're going to be talking about going in to the community centers, building some satellite places for BNN where people can go and learn What's that A for? We're in their own communities. So we're very, very proud of the work that we're doing. And if there's anybody that has any questions, I think you cats know where I am, so you can Please get in contact with us, okay? Thank you very much for the extra minute, Councilor. I do appreciate it.

Please be safe. I'm a big supporter of BNN. I did a BNN interview yesterday at the Pond. Every chance I get, I'm sure my colleagues show up for BNN. Is it in my district, Councilor Culpepper? I don't know, it may be moving. The plates, the tectonic plates move and it might be in my district. Yeah. The building right next door is in my district, so, you know, it's close. Okay, so we have one virtual, one person signed up virtually, Laurie Radwin. Can you hear me? I'm still seeing Chief Garces, which is, yeah, no, that's, I'm now seeing his name.

Laurie, if you can hear us, you gotta. Be promoted. We can move on and then if Miss Radwin can log on, then we'll just pause between councillors. Okay, well, Laurie, if you can log back on, we'll... Get your testimony in. But for now, we're going to go to a second round for my colleagues in order of arrival, which would be Councilor Flynn for you, Councilor Culpepper. Councilor Flynn, five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, thank you to the administration team that is here. Before I ask my question, I did want to mention that I'm in a graduate leadership program, and one of the discussions we've been having is about and many more. My question is how is the city currently using Where are we utilizing the technology from and is there a data center in the city or state or how Is Boston using it? But I also have a hearing order coming up this week. I would like residents to have a discussion about a data center. may be considering a moratorium on having a data center, but learning more about it.

But any thoughts that you might have on this issue

Sure, absolutely. So I'm happy to share again. Foremost, I'd say artificial intelligence is a complex topic and one that brings a lot of conflicting We're really proud that when we have worked on building our policy, we've worked closely with folks from the ACLU, from AFL-CIO, with our employees, with academics around how we regulate this. So I would say there's a couple of examples of where we use artificial intelligence. The first one is actually in the Council's website for roll calls. One of the issues that we had is that it is really difficult for constituents to be able to understand what the council was voting on. And we actually had built summaries using artificial intelligence to be able to show people what the item that the council was voting on. Those summaries get statically generated, so it's not like a chatbot, like you just generate a summary statically.

But it is something that is now in Boston.gov. The second example of using artificial intelligence is in the search functionality of the website. So we actually, in the traditional search, we had only 10% satisfaction. One out of ten people told us that they found what they were looking for when they used the traditional search. We upgraded to AI search that basically uses some techniques that are similar to large language models. It's not entirely the use of large language models. But it allows people to find information using semantic search. So you could find things that are similar contextually based on what you were actually looking for. and what we've noticed is that there's a four times improvement in satisfaction. So we've been very deliberate. We've been doing all of the work by Doing computation within cloud services that the city controls.

So the companies that we use, all the data is kept Confidential and under the same level of protection that the city has. I just say with regards to data center, the city uses a data center that is located at 1 Summer Street.

Generally speaking- 1 Summer Street?

Yes, there's one major data center in the city. I'd tell you like the cost of electricity in Boston is not really kind of like a driver for major data center investments, but having that one Thank you very much.

Here's a quick question, though, because I'm running out of time. But is the one on 1 Summer Street, is that plenty for the city of Boston? Or do we need to expand that?

We've been able to use that. Again, it's a co-located data center. It's not just owned by the city. It's been sufficient for the city's need, but there's a need to shift Some data center pieces that we're happy. Anyways, I'm happy to have a further discussion with you about that. But right now, that's our primary data center. We've been actually migrating a lot of our environment to the cloud.

Yeah, I do know that there are What concerns residents have about data centers and the impact they have on the environment, they have on quality of life issues, but is that something you are factoring in if Boston does expand in building another data center.

Absolutely. We're really concerned. And again, like our mayor is obviously someone who puts climate change and climate Thank you very much. 1% of our total compute costs. Any computer system takes energy, like Instagram, Netflix. and we're very deliberate about making sure that whenever we're using these tools that we're being responsible and taking into consideration the energy sources whenever possible that are powering these data centers. and we are very careful and conscious about when is it that we use these technologies.

And I know I'm pretty much out of time. My hearing order would be for the City of Boston to consider having a moratorium on a data center until we do an in-depth Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had one question. I want to steal questions from my colleagues, but based on our collective ages, we may not be the most tech-savvy threesome on the council, but So in terms of AI and AI agents, I know that is sort of seen as one possible future, people using AI agents to aid their work. And I know it's particularly helpful Computer Coding and things like that. So is the department using AI agents? Is there any plan for that to sort of increase productivity or solve problems or is that a... Bad idea. Is the technology not there yet?

I don't know. Like everything, I think that there's some... Gradients and around like these things. So the first thing is that from a policy perspective, we think that technology is there to support people. So we can see the benefits, and particularly when we're working on our AI policy, we work with people like the Perkins School for the Blind, and we know that enabling more accessible use for the website, like for instance, No screen reader is able to describe a chart or a graph. And some of the visual language models are able to do a really good job of enabling people to interact with data that they haven't been able to. That is to say, we always think about what is the benefit against the costs and the risks of the technology. We have built procurement to a procurement agent to help support our employees be able to do better quality drafts of procurements. It is not intended nor will it work in helping

People evaluate a procurement, but I'll tell you that we've done a randomized control trial, we've done some rigorous evaluation of these tools, and we've noticed some marked improvements in the speed, the quality, and even the confidence that these tools are actually useful as reported by our employees. So we're being very deliberate like this notion of like agents kind of without Guardrails and Without Control is not what we think is suitable, but we have done some work in helping build some of these things and I'm happy to share in more detail again. This is a topic that's complex and has a lot of nuance.

Okay, yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, so, Councilor Culpepper, five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just had a few questions about the 1% decrease in the... and the fiscal 27 budget with regard to the 311 system. What impact, if any, is that going to have on the day-to-day operations knowing how challenging It is now, even before the reduction, what impact is that reduction going to have on 311 Operation Services?

So we're able to reduce this expense in the old three-on-one system because we have been implementing a newer one. So I'll tell you about the system that we're replacing. It's a system that in the last year had about 30 days of partial or total inaccessibility. There's components of it that failed and many more. So we are able to budget out the support for the current system because we are in the process of replacing it. And this has been a project that was started in fiscal year 2024. and we are on track to do the last few bids.

The first kind of major milestone will be in June of this year and then We expect to have another major milestone sometime in September or October of this year. And that aligns with our renewal and with the systems.

Completely enter the new system. Is this a system that cut the resolution time down to 3.75 days?

That's a separate system. The system with the 3.75 days is the internal system that DO-IT uses. The system that we are replacing. That's not the... No, that's the internal one. The one that we replaced is the one that's creation on lagoon, creation on beam or cartograph. are the new systems. So here's what the new system's doing. The first thing is, I mean, in terms of resolution, it just enables people to, like our crews, to be able to see the work in the same way. But it's actually allowing us to be able to be more proactive in inspection. So one of the things that we know is 311 is a system that is based on complaints. because it's based on complaints, it suffers from the disparities that not everybody complains about issues the same way. So we know that in general, some neighborhoods and some groups of people complain to 311 report issues more frequently.

With the new system, because it is based on acids and the conditions of those acids, our hope, and this is something that will take more time to get there, but our hope is that it actually will improve the quality of experience for constituents because it makes the crews and departments be able to manage and understand the state of the assets even before A complaint is received because we're being more proactive but that's something that again like we're just right now we're just in the process of transitioning the systems but the capabilities of the systems are intended to be more equitable in the way that we

So in other words, the resolution time for the 311 system is a lot smoother and the resolution time is a lot quicker under the new system?

In the new system, in the short term, the resolution time should be comparable. In the long run, our hope is that there's less three-on-one complaints because less things were broken in the first place because we were more proactive in fixing those issues. That's the hypothesis.

So you're saying out in the community you expect the 311 calls to decrease?

So again, our hope in the short term, we're just replacing the system. So like if you complain, you're not gonna notice an issue, but I mean.

Not the system, I mean, in the community, you're saying that the complaints are gonna decrease Because of the new system, what's gonna happen in the community to decrease complaints?

Well, the thing that would decrease complaints is if the issue that people are complaining about wasn't an issue in the first place, right? Like if the sidewalk wasn't in good condition, if there was no pothole in the first place, if the street light didn't go out. But again, this is one where in order for things to not break, you have to be proactive in fixing them. And part of the issue is the old system did not track what are the things that we have out there. The new system does. And actually, you could see it in the data that we're already sharing in the open data portal. You could see all the street lights in the different districts. You can see the street signs. Again, the technology itself is not going to improve the quality of the experience for constituents, as you point out, but we're building the foundation that will allow us to do a better job of tracking how those assets are.

and anticipating and anticipating yes sir yeah yeah I had one more question Mr. Chair if I may sure with regard to their new properties.boston.gov now You can go into the properties.boston.gov and put in a street address and bring up the information. And does that work consistent with the registry?

So we work with assessing, and one of the places where we've been working on to make improvements, again, there's a lot of underlying data infrastructure that we manage. The ownership information, as you pointed out, primarily comes from the register of deeds. But we're working with assessing about how is it that we can improve the quality of the data, like the frequency with which we get data from the Register of Deeds because we know that that's important to deal with quality of life issues like code enforcement and other things. So that's an area where we're actively working to try to improve that information.

And so what's the goal with that? properties.boston.gov if the information is coming right from the registry? What's the goal? Why the need for this if they can go right to the registry of deeds and get the same information?

So there's information that the city provides that is in properties.boston.gov, like the SS valuation, like that's something that our assessing department creates. The permits associated with that address are things that the city collects. So really it's kind of creating a central holding place where we can relate every piece of information that we have about a property It just happens to be that the ownership is coming from the Registry of Deeds, but most of the other information is information that the city itself is generating. And again, as I mentioned, it's something that's just We launched it earlier this year. We expect based on the feedback that we hear from constituents to continue to add more information there.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Culpepper. Thank you, Councilor Weber. Okay, we've been joined by Councilor Worrell. Councilor Breadon, you have five minutes.

I'd like to just continue on in the conversation about the properties registry. Are we able to, one of the issues that we've found in terms of Code enforcement is we don't always have accurate addresses and ownership data on certain properties, which makes it precludes us from being more aggressive in code enforcement in some cases. Is the use of AI and technology, is it going to make it easier to do that in a more streamlined and accurate way?

So I'd say our team and our data engineering team is working really closely with different departments, including the law department, assessing, collections, treasury, So the first piece that we're trying to tackle is getting more frequent information from the registrar of deeds. The second piece is, again, like legally, if you've registered the ownership of a property under an LLC, A corporate veil. That LLC is the one that owns the property. There's some information that exists about the people that are affiliated from the LLC, but it becomes More difficult. So what I would say is that these are not simple issues as Councilor Culpepper brought up about the basic city services. The technology itself doesn't solve the problem alone, but it does enable us to do things that we were not able to do in the past.

And our hope is that we're already starting to see our ability to be able to pull data more regularly, to be able to improve the way that, and that's partially what we're gonna do with the permitting improvement work is, Thank you for your time. So that we can do a better job of being able to hold the property owners accountable and keep these quality of life issues under control.

The other issue that we have in the city is just keeping track of Schedules for maintenance and repair of buildings. Are we using artificial intelligence to try and address those issues? Regular maintenance schedules for for equipment and buildings, et cetera. I can see lots of potential for efficiencies and more Accurate targeting of timely maintenance rather than waiting until something completely collapses.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that when it comes to buildings, that's something that property management and public facilities manage that do it really hasn't in the past. Basing on capacity, I haven't been too involved, but we've been in constant conversation with Chief Irish about possibilities of working there. On the public right of way, we have been doing a lot of work, and in fact, It is only through artificial intelligence that we have the ability of extracting information from the acids. Actually, the map that you saw related to parking regulations, it's only possible to do that thanks to AI. because the signs are so unique and the regulations are, every sign is a little bit different and you've seen it. Some signs have like taped over The hours in which you have restrictions for parking or whatnot, that we have to use AI to be able to extract that information. So again, this is where we weighed the environmental impact

Some of the issues with these technologies against our ability to have reliable information, but we are using AI to help deliver meaningful improvements in the experience for our constituents.

And then the other thing is always a big concern is just cyber security in this modern time where we're vulnerable to Domestic and international threats. You don't want to give away the secret sauce here, but do we face regular cyber threats and how are we managing to handle those. Because I hear of places like hospital systems getting knocked out and all. Are we in good shape for cyber security?

Yes, I would say again, and if the council was ever interested in having an executive session, because obviously some of the information related to our security posture is not public, just for safety's sake, but what I would say is yes, Every public entity in the US is subject to attacks. We work very diligently. And when you sense a sense of urgency in my tone about replacing some of the systems that we have, For more modern systems, a lot of times is because we're trying to align our ability to secure those systems. Older systems no longer have the security patches that newer systems have. So our ability to have relatively new computers, relatively new software is perfectly related to our ability to be secure.

One thing that has been improving, and again, just to thank the Council for the ordinance that enabled DoIT's ability, and I know that Councillor Yu and Councillor Worrell and others were key parts of that, We've been able to start responding in partnership with Boston Public Schools and others whenever we know that there's an issue. So I don't want to get into the specifics, Thanks to Greg McCarthy, our Chief Information Security Officer on our security team, we're doing a better job of making sure that we're coordinated because We're all interconnected and the reality is that because we're interconnected, we all need to be hardened and we need to be monitoring and being able to address issues quickly.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you for all you do.

Okay, thank you, Councilor Worrell. Five minutes.

Thank you, Chair, and I'll try to keep it brief. I'll keep it for five minutes. Cost savings. I know you just spoke about the ordinance that this council alongside the mayor was able to pass. Through that ordinance, can you just talk about some of the cost-saving strategies that you were able to get with the new contract? Yeah, absolutely.

I'll list a couple of examples. So the first one is we were able to consolidate in the past, like different departments had Zoom licenses and they had their own Zoom subscriptions. Thanks to our CTO Vanessa Kaskiris and Michael Huang and Kerry Jordan, who's great, we're able to use the same funding that we had to pay for about like A few hundred Zoom licenses to have over 2,000 Zoom licenses for the same cost because we're able to consolidate into one single contract. We've been able to consolidate and shift the phones, laptops, and a lot of the equipment that BTD used for parking enforcement. and Dewitz providing that service and we're saving about $200,000. So that's funding that was being spent on the previous vendor that is no longer spent. We've been doing a lot of works.

I wouldn't share the details because it relates to our security posture, but again, we're doing a lot of work with Boston Public Schools in collaborating to be able to have a better, more secure, more reliable environment. As I mentioned, we were able to do this upgrade to our employee self-service portal that was quoted to us for $1.2 million, and we were able to do it entirely in-house. The migration of the new data warehouse tool, which is the tool that allows us to connect data from different departments. We're able to do that work, which was quoted to us by a vendor for about a million dollars. Thank you. Thank you. The ability of us working as a central shared services department, which is what the ordinance enabled, has been paying off. And we're incredibly grateful for the council and for the mayor, obviously, for letting us

be able to do a better job coordinating and delivering better quality of services, more secure and for less.

Right. No, that's great to hear. And then when it comes to cost savings, I know that the council passed some, I believe, contracts that went over the three-year period. Are you thinking about or do you think that we should be revisiting those contracts to see if we could renegotiate better terms or do you feel like we have locked in those The best terms in those long term contracts.

So, yes. So one of the things that thanks to your help, what we've been starting to do is lining up our contracts with the expected use of a technology. So One of the issues that we have is just because we got a new, let's say, our financial system, the difficult part is not just installing the financial system, but configuring it to work the way that we need it to. Migrating the Data. So it's actually really expensive to shift technology. It costs us millions of dollars to be able to do that. So when we align our Our foreseeable useful lifetime of a software piece or a hardware piece with the use case, we're actually creating budget stability So one thing that is you can't see quite in our budget numbers, but technology usually increases in costs actually higher than inflation. So these multi-year All three contracts actually have allowed us to lock in really beneficial rates early.

It's usually technology goes increases in cost faster, especially like you're starting to see increases in cost in memory and a number of areas. We always reserve the right of being able to sever a contract like if we think that we're not getting favorable rates, but actually what those long-term contracts have allowed us to do is lock in lower rates early, and have a lot of budget stability because we know that we're gonna stay in that system for a foreseeable amount of time.

And then when it comes to 311, Are, and maybe this is a question for 311, but are we able, as district councilors, we have constituent Calls and sometimes they feel like they're reoccurring. Are we able to track by district reoccurring or just see all the calls that come into our specific districts?

So the great thing is that we actually share publicly all of the 311 calls and about the different types of calls. And as I was mentioning to Councillor Culpepper, we actually are increasingly sharing information about the assets across the entire city. So we'll be happy to work with you. But again, all of that information we're making public already. And it is a matter of being able to filter and getting the right information. You should, and even as we transition from one system to the next, you're able to get all of that information.

All right. Well, thank you everyone. And thank you to your team for all the great work and cost saving strategies that you have brought to the city. Thanks.

Okay, thank you very much, Councilor Culpepper, Councilor Worrell, sorry, expected, you know, anyone's talking, it's probably Councilor Culpepper, but thank you, Councilor Worrell. So just in terms of the FY27 budget, You know, we talked a little bit about vacancies and you have, so there's like salary savings. I think it's like 1.3 million and it's something like 23 vacancies. Can you just explain what went into that? Because my understanding is that, you know, for the budget, we're not budgeting for all the vacancies. And so, but if you can just talk about what went into that, setting that figure.

Yeah, so I can get started and then maybe Sheila can jump in. But it might be a question really for our finance cabinet. generally speaking as you mentioned we have a number of positions that we're budgeted for and then kind of like an expected amount of vacancy that we will have some of it is based on historical levels but again like we The city has been slowing down hiring, which has enabled us to cover some of the financial gaps for this fiscal year and for next. So that salary savings is a calculation of what's the difference between what was budgeted versus what we expect to be filled. We trust, we have a very great relationship with our budget office and we work out of trust and with people operations. So we try to be very vocal when there's a position that we're like, if we don't have this position, there'll be a lot of pain.

For us, because again, we're managing big systems that are critical, three-on-one, payroll, our vendor portal, our systems that take in revenue. So Do-It really needs to have support for a lot of these really critical systems. So we're vocal whenever we need to prioritize, but generally speaking, we're working off of a gap between the budgeted positions and the actual positions that are expected to fill in. But if we were to have Leeway. We would hire all of them and we would try to make sure that every person that is hired to do it translates into more saving and more value for our constituents and for the city.

Okay, thank you very much. So I think we have one more person online, is it? No, apparently not. Okay, well, thank you very much. That's it for our questions. I appreciate everyone making the time this morning and for your very thorough presentation. For all the data you provide us and all the services you provided, you know, both us as city councilors and government employees, but also the public here in the city of Boston. So with that said, this Okay, this hearing is now adjourned.