with Larry Davis of Town of Huntersville

We often think about IT departments and strategy in the context of a company - but cities operate similar to a company and have extensive IT requirements because of it. To learn more about IT operations at a municipal level, we interviewed Larry Davis, an awesome client and IT Director for the town of Huntersville, North Carolina.

“I like working for a city because it’s a little more caring. You’re helping the police, medics - it’s more about people than profit.”

People Over Profit

Larry has worked for municipalities for 14 years - he was the IT Director in Cornelius, NC before working for Huntersville. Before that he worked in IT for companies like Kodak. He explained that the biggest difference in working for government versus companies is where the money is coming from - companies grow and scale to make more revenue, while governments have to scale, optimize and operate within the taxpayer funds they’re provided.

“We are regulated way more than a typical company - as we should be. We are dealing with high risk emergency services and we’re responsible for taxpayer money and we have to be really accountable for that.”

Most towns have an IT department, Larry shared. This may be an in-house IT team under an IT Director or an outsourced team - but rarely will you see a mix of the two. The size of the IT team usually, but not always, scales with the size of the town.

“We’re a smaller shop, even though we are the 15th largest municipality in the state. There are three of us in the IT department and we deal with budgets, presentations, strategy, direction... We pull our sleeves up and install stuff as well. We handle the strategic and the hands-on work,” Larry explained of his Huntersville IT team.

Huntersville’s IT Makeover

In July 2019, Larry came on board as Huntersville’s IT Director and replaced the outsourced managed service provider (MSP) the town had been using. He hired a help desk manager to handle the town’s ticketing system and a systems admin to manage servers and networking. They got to work replacing antiquated hardware, improving backup infrastructure, and ultimately rehauled everything that touched the town’s network from servers and switches to cameras and phones.

During that process, Larry reached out to Opkalla, who he had met during his time as the Cornelius IT Director. He knew he’d need help researching and selecting the best cybersecurity, backup and cloud phone solution providers to bring Huntersville up to code and up to speed.

“Because we’re responsible for taxpayer money, we have to get three quotes for any new solution being considered and there are very specific steps we have to follow per town legislation. If the proposed solution is over $90,000, we have to go through an even more extensive RFP process.”

Instead of having to research and haggle directly with vendors, Larry delegated the procurement process to Opkalla who not only saved him time but were able to negotiate the best pricing across the board - without pushing any particular vendor.

“Before Opkalla, I had to deal with the fact that Vendor A may sell Option 1 and Option 2 that we need, but if they have a higher profit margin on Option 2 they’ll only push us towards that one. We now get an unbiased recommendation based on our needs, not a vendor’s profit-margin.”

Town Phone Systems & Securing Public Data

One of Larry’s biggest wins was working with Opkalla to move to a hosted phone solution... in Feb 2020, right before COVID hit. Because of this, the town was well positioned to let employees work from home and avoid major disruptions in communications using the RingCentral platform.

Opkalla also helped Larry implement Cohesity for improved backup infrastructure, Arctic Wolf and SentinelOne for enhanced cybersecurity.

“Because we’re a town, most of the data on our network is public record, not proprietary, but that doesn’t mean we can leave it vulnerable. If someone deletes or alters public record, that’s a big deal. Municipalities have been hit really hard with ransomware so we have to be on our toes about that. Our main goal is to keep that network and data safe, to keep breaches from happening and be as secure as we possibly can,” Larry explained.

To continue those cybersecurity efforts, Larry said their current focus is multi-factor authentication. They are mandated by insurance companies and at the municipality level to have at least two-factor authentication but want to expand on that for improved security.

Dealing with Politics

The biggest challenges to making progress in improving IT systems at a municipal level can be time, budget and politics. Small teams have to prioritize projects and accept that they don’t have time or money to get everything done at once.

Regarding politics, Larry noted, “At a company, you may have a board but as long as you’re profitable you do your thing. In government, we’re not looking to be profitable and our decision makers, and their motivations, can change with election cycles.”

Luckily, Larry has a strong network of other municipal IT teams. Through listservs and annual conferences, they share questions, answers and are constantly discussing what their town is working on.

“If you’re siloed off it’s because you choose to be. Everyone I’ve encountered is willing to help. We’re all motivated to make towns across the state operate efficiently and safely,” Larry added.