[Spooky23]

That just perpetuates the problem.

Smaller cities don't have the financial wherewithal to competently run internet-facing services. Usually the best administered parts of a city are in police departments where sworn officers are filling IT roles, aided by injections of grant-driven projects done by consultants. That's not a good situation for anyone. The winning move is not to play.

I regularly hire people from cities and school districts due to some unique aspects of my workplace and benefits that makes it a smart move for them. We routinely take folks in senior tech or director roles and drop them into entry level titles -- and they are very happy to get significant raises.

End of the day, the "fix" is to dump money into rolling out modern solutions. Every user-facing city IT function should be delivered on an iPad or Chromebook.

[knightofmars]

"...dump money into rolling out modern solutions."

Yep. Ongoing maintenance and pro-active replacement is a cost. A cost that needs to be solidified as an ongoing expense. A lot of the people in leadership positions see technology as a one-time cost. ("I still have the computer I bought 10 years ago at home! It works just fine. Why do we need to buy new computers?")

[Spooky23]

Absolutely.

I volunteer at my son's school and the overall security/integrity of the place is 10x better than it was a few years ago. That's because of Chromebook, and Google's management model of paying a fixed cost to manage the device for the life of the device.

[stcredzero]

Usually the best administered parts of a city are in police departments where sworn officers are filling IT roles, aided by injections of grant-driven projects done by consultants. That's not a good situation for anyone. The winning move is not to play.

How about turnkey police department SaaS, delivered over a separate network over low orbit satellite connections? That will be separate from the public-facing police SaaS apps.