Leading the e-volution

Forty years ago, Lakeland, Fla.’s computer system, which was robust enough to run seven applications and still have idle time to rent to neighboring jurisdictions, was featured in The American City. According to a November 1968 article, Lakeland started electronic data processing in 1964 and, for $3,900 monthly, leased a Burroughs B283 computer system that it used primarily to process bills for its 32,000 utility customers, which consumed 60 percent of the computer’s time each month. The rest of its time was spent preparing payroll checks, tax bills for 16,000 parcels, and monthly reports on budgetary accounting, inventory, unpaid parking violations and vehicle maintenance costs. The unused 25 hours per month were rented to neighboring jurisdictions to prepare payroll checks and utility bills.

Now, the Lakeland Department of Information Technology’s 75 employees support all city departments and more than 240 applications, including Oracle Financials, People-Soft for HR and payroll for the city’s 2,000 employees, and IBM Maximo for work order management, inventory and asset management. The city has 136 Windows servers, 10 HP/UNIX servers, 1,600 workstations and laptops, 195 networked printers, and 17 large-scale plotters, and it distributes more than 121,000 customer utility bills every month. The city also owns more than 280 miles of fiber optics, and it is migrating to a Voice over Internet Protocol phone system. Find more information on the City of Lakeland’s Web site.