Division of Technology has new chief
Monday, July 27th, 2009
By: Tom MacDonald
tmacdonald@whyy.org
The city of Philadelphia has a new Chief Technology Officer. Mayor Michael Nutter continues to overhaul the Division of Technology he established last year, and now, it has a new mission.
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Allan Frank has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer and admits he has a big job ahead of him. The department is supposed to centralize the city's entire information tech system which includes 33 different city departments. Frank says he will have to consolidate computer servers and rework many incompatible systems.
Frank: Which means how do we start bringing those thousand servers under one roof, how do we become more efficient around how we service computers across the city how do we drive those costs down across the board. We have been working diligently on this really for a while.
As part of the consolidation, all of the city's IT works will now report to Frank's department. Frank says he is also working to revamp the city's website, and make paying bills and buying permits more customer friendly.