MOTION-- The COVID-19 crisis transformed the way city departments perform their professional duties. Thousands of city employees now carry out their jobs remotely, aligning with the Mayor's Safer LA initiative. The nature of work has changed, and like their private sector peers, city employees have risen to the occasion to continue providing essential city services from home. Many city departments maintain independent IT support teams, which until this year largely relied on in-person support services at facilities located throughout the city. Given the shift to work from home, these IT teams and related contractors worked to help the entire city transition to work from home, and have themselves adapted to provide support remotely.
Los Angeles now faces an unprecedented budget shortfall as a direct result of the COVID-19 crisis, and city departments must identify savings to mitigate cuts to government programs. It is imperative that the City identify all possible efficiencies that can reduce expenditures without sacrificing services. Now that departments operate in a virtual environment, there are great opportunities to realize economies of scale and consolidation of duplicative IT contracts and staffing across departments, and to ensure that both staff and technologies are integrated into a centralized structure for data management and effective provision of IT services.
I THEREFORE MOVE that the Council INSTRUCT the Information Technology Agency, in concert with the City Administrative Officer, to coordinate with IT staff throughout city departments to review contracts, services and systems in active use throughout the city and identify where there may be duplication or redundancy, and identify opportunities to consolidate contracts and services within 1TA to realize savings and operational efficiencies.
I FURTHER MOVE that the Council INSTRUCT the Information Technology Agency to work with the Library department to identify any areas where the Library can partner in the provision of services to curate digital data on behalf of other city departments in the same way that libraries historically have curated data in analog formats.