County officials on Monday approved more than $250,000 in software maintenance renewal agreements for various products used by the county.
The Bartholomew County commissioners gave approval to sign and enter into six different agreements for the county’s IT department.
Scott Mayes, Bartholomew County IT Director, said the transactions relate to active, ongoing contracts and cover annual billing for software usage licenses, maintenance and support.
“I always watch them closely that they don’t grow too rapidly, or try to keep them from growing at all,” Mayes told commissioners. “With today’s world that’s a challenge, but we’re pretty balanced with the renewals so far this year.”
There were six agreements in all and Mayes walked commissioners through what the county uses each software for:
- AdvancedMD: $8,131.20
- Government Utilities Technology Service, Inc.: $30,957.88
- Low Associaties: $12,359.70 (reflecting charges for uses from July to December 2024)
- Schneider Geospatial: $22,739
- SHI International: $156,138.02
- Software Solutions Inc.: $34,721.50
Advanced MD is a software service used exclusively by the county health department, enabling patient management, appointment scheduling and notifications. The cost had traditionally been in the IT budget, but will be paid for this year with state health department funds. Mayes said IT opted to use the state funds after becoming aware that was an option from Pia O’Connor, county auditor.
“Pia helps me find better places to fund things when there’s buckets of money available outside of (the) county general (fund),” Mayes said.
The agreement with Government Utilities Technology Service, Inc. (GUTS) is for software used by the county auditor and treasurer’s office primarily for tax billing and payment collection, along with property records.
Low Associates provides advance time billing software, used for the time keeping portion of the payroll financial software suite used by almost all county employees. County law enforcement are the exception to that, according to Mayes.
Software from Schneider Geospatial is used to integrate various data sources into the county’s Geographic Information System (GIS), Mayes said.
“This particular item here is drawn from all of these other softwares as a central repository for public access,” Mayes said. “Jeff’s (Bergman, planning director) department, the county surveyors office— they do an incredible job of managing these maps and these layers.”
Commissioner Larry Kleinhenz, R-District 1, said there are other counties in the state that require users to pay a fee for certain access to GIS information, whereas Bartholomew County’s is free to use for all.
“We have always looked at it as: this information is owned by the taxpayers, so we’re pretty free with who can access it now,” Kleinhenz said. “If you want to look at it as a negative, businesses can use it for their business. Realtors probably use it more heavily than most other entities, but we look at it as that’s taxpayers’ info.”
Mayes said that the GIS expense is shared between Columbus City Utilities (CCU), the planning department, city engineering and the Bartholomew County Assessor’s office.
The most costly expense in county IT’s budget is for their various Microsoft licenses. SHI International is the county’s Microsoft Partner reseller and point of contact that they’ve used for “many years,” Mayes told commissioners.
The $156,138.02 includes licenses for county laptops and desktops, Windows operating system, Microsoft Office Suite, remote desktop services, the email system and more.
The final maintenance renewal agreement with Software Solutions is for access to the prior financial and payroll system used by the county. Mayes said they are required to pay a license fee in order to access historical information that the State Board of Accounts requires for audits.
