By ROBIN SHANNON
Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – The St. John Parish Council unanimously approved a renewal of the parish’s technology services contract with ACT Technologies of Reserve. In 2008, the council approved the first general maintenance technology service contract for the parish with ACT Technology.

St. John Public Information Officer Buddy Boe said the contract provides for annual preventative maintenance to be performed on all parish technology equipment. The company also performs all technology-related service work at all parish government facilities and for all departments.

Boe said the initial contract in 2008 helped the parish realize an hourly savings of $20 compared to what the parish had paid per hour in 2007.

“The maintenance of all parish equipment is now performed by one vendor instead of the previous practice of using two different vendors to service the same equipment,” Boe said. “This consolidation allows the vendor to have a more complete picture of the parish’s data network and provide seamless support to all parish employees.”

In addition to annual preventative maintenance on all parish equipment, Boe said ACT Technologies also managed the installation of a new network server for the entire parish’s data. The old server was nine years old and was beginning to experience capacity and reliability issues. The installation of the new server along with better back-up practices has allowed the parish’s data to be stored in a much more proper manner.

The parish has also installed an electronic document management system that ACT will manage and maintain. Boe said the system allows the entire parish government to slowly move into the direction of a paperless workplace.

“We are eventually going to have a management database that will allow us to enter one specific key word and get access to every document, work order or ordinance pertaining to that one word or phrase,” said Boe. “It is going to save us an immense amount of time and money.”

Boe said the Finance, Billing, Purchasing and Council departments have begun to use the document system.