By Laura Crosio
Imagine 60 piles of paper stacked as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Multiply that by 50 and you’d get the amount of information and data housed by Johnston County’s Technology Services department.
Director Dennis Cooper highlighted his department duties and achievements at the May 4th Johnston County Commissioners meeting. It’s a new segment incorporated into the commissioner’s regular agenda as a way to spotlight the county’s various departments.
Cooper said over 1,346 computers are in use by over 2,000 county employees, including government workers, fire and police departments. Over 5.2 million emails are processed each year at the 30 county buildings his division supports.
There are 927 phones lines that processed over two million calls in 2014. Cooper said 1.5 million of those were incoming calls from the public.
“There’s a lot of business coming in through Johnston County,” he said.
The Technology Services department also runs a pc help desk, maintains 100 servers and has a seven member staff on a 24-hour support rotation to handle emergency issues. They have developed 28 in-house software applications, including ones to record attendance and payroll activities.
Servers connect to 6,000 drops throughout the county that end to end would stretch 170 miles of copper from Smithfield to Statesville.
Cooper said his department has an eye trained toward the future with making the county’s website more accessible and user-friendly. Public input has indicated many customers are interested in paying utility bills and taxes on-line.
“Many people today want to do things on-line,” said Cooper. “These are the things we need to be aware of and have attention drawn to them. It is all about the people we serve.”
