During the meetings this week on Tuesday there will be an installation ceremony at 2 PM, the informational at 4 PM and the Regular at 6 PM.
At the informational they will discuss April’s Finances and the 2035 Downtown Plan.
At the regular meeting there are several items on the consent agenda that need explanation, hopefully they will be pulled.
Item #6, Approval of Contracts,
Sub Item #2, Provide the City of Sioux Falls a network monitoring service for cyber security; Amendment to add addition of services: Expertise on Demand by Mandient and M365 Assessment, Effective upon full execution, Paragon Development Systems, $104K+ (Not sure if this is an evaluation or something else. But I find it interesting that PDS mostly serves the healthcare industry. There have been several councilors ask the administration over the past couple of years if our city is secure from cyber attacks with NO response. Apparently they are finally noodling around on the idea.
Sub Item #9, Water Reclamation Facility Improvements; Amendment to design agreement Carollo Engineers, Inc., $12 Million + (That’s quite the amendment! You could buy 3 new Pavilion roofs with that kind of money!)
Sub Item #16, Bishop Dudley Hospitality House, $120K (While I support funding the shelter, it would be nice to get a presentation as to what has been happening at the place and surrounding area the past year).
Item #52, RECONSIDERATION OF THE DEFERRAL OF A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF SIOUX FALLS APPROVING DIAGONAL PARKING ON S. GRANGE AVE. (This item was originally considered at the meeting of May 10, 2022 where the Council voted (8-0) to defer the item to June 7, 2022. If the motion to reconsider the deferral passes, then the motion to defer to June 7, 2022, will be considered again. The Council may vote to again approve the deferral, amend it, or vote it down. If voted down, the resolution itself will be considered by the Council.)
As I predicted, the diagonal parking is back for reconsideration for the 9th and Grange coffee shop. I was told that the property owner will be paying for the city to build the space. Hopefully we will get an answer at the meeting.
Item 6, Subitem 9 is most likely in reference to the changes made on April 13, 2022 and are finalizing the changes made, which was already consented to by the council last month.
I am trying to think of a good name for this new coffee shop. How about Granular Grange or Derange Coffee …. Strange Coffee? ….. Prearranged Coffee & More on Grange? (Or, does that last one have too long of a lengthy British touch to it? … (Come to think of it, the Brits prefer tea … ))
Spending seems justified. In this era, cyber security is important. As fast as the city is growing, significant water plant work is required. The Dudley House needs these funds and more. There are to many homeless for such a prosperous city. Diagonal parking is easier for seniors and new drivers. There’s room for more cars.
Having some experience in infosec I believe the M365 is a special purpose audit group. In the world of accountable organizations (not saying the City is in that group) they are hired to run through a checklist of things that can go wrong and identify how to fix them. Usually the lists are made by taking historic reports of successful breaches and identifying what it takes to block those. I suspect the lists are available from sources like Microsoft or other groups but in the commercial world companies and insurers feel better if a third party does the audit. I would opine that making Microsoft products secure is a bit of an oxymoron but the point of the audit is usually not to make the platform secure but to be able to point to a court that “reasonable” steps were taken. Depending on the quality of the individual doing the audit it can be a very worthwhile exercise or it can be a waste of money. If you get a good person who lives to study this narrow area of technology it is doubtful that it is economically viable to have internal people spend the time learning the space. All technology resolves to the talent of the humans driving it.
The folks at PDS appear to claim their expertise is in developing viable work at home for management and virtualizing strategies. I think the City could have found a few retired credit card technology executives to give them better advice (including our prior mayor). One of the large credit card companies was so good at work at home that a very large percentage of their employees worked at home or other global locations long before the pandemic. That policy works for them for three reasons none of which will appeal to the City. The first is there are audit trails of everything the employee does. Work standards are established and met. Second there are meaningful background checks to weed out people with a history of integrity problems and there are meaningful audits which search for integrity problems and deal with them promptly. Lastly, there is constant quality control where people’s actions are scrutinized for legality, diligence and appropriateness. I just don’t see the City management buying into that level of accountability. Consequently, I don’t see the point of the consultant.