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Approve a contract with Carahsoft Technologies for $219,975 for the term of June 11, 2024, through December 20, 2024, to provide professional services to transition the County’s “.com” commercial email and website domain to a government-designated “.gov” email and website domain per Assembly Bill 1637; and Authorize the County Administrator to execute the contract and execute any amendments, with County Counsel concurrence, up to 10% of the contract amount
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Published Notice Required? Yes ____ No _X _
Public Hearing Required? Yes ____ No _X _
DEPARTMENTAL RECOMMENDATION:
The Department of Information Technology (DoIT) recommends that the Board of Supervisors to:
1. Approve a contract with Carahsoft Technologies for $219,975 for the term of June 11, 2024 through December 20, 2024 to provide professional services to transition the County’s “.com” commercial email and website domain to a government-designated “.gov” email and website domain per Assembly Bill 1637; and
2. Authorize the County Administrator to execute the contract and execute any amendments, with County Counsel concurrence, up to 10% of the contract amount.
SUMMARY/DISCUSSION:
Assembly Bill 1637 requires all cities and counties to transition all public-facing websites, employee websites, and employee email addresses to a “.gov” or “.ca.gov” domain. Currently, Solano County occupies a “.com” domain for all its public facing and employee websites and it must be transitioned to a “.gov” or “ca.gov” domain.
Benefits to transitioning from “.com” domain to “.gov” domain will make Solano County’s websites more secure and make them significantly more challenging for malicious actors to impersonate its websites. This transition is a step toward safeguarding public trust in government institutions allowing constituents to be confident that they are receiving official Solano County government information.
In addition to transition of the website and email addresses for all employees, a critical component of this transition will include approximately 300 enterprise applications currently using the solanocounty.com name for authentication. Software as a Service (SaaS) and departmental applications often rely on Active Directory services to find users and store user profile information, including roles in its systems. Applications potentially affected by name changes use just-in-time (JIT) provisioning to create a user profile when users initially sign-in to the application.
Carahsoft Technologies will provide project management services, organizational change management and technical support to facilitate identification, tracking, coordination, county-wide communications, and system modifications required to transition all enterprise applications and email addresses to “solanocounty.gov.”
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
The total cost of the Carahsoft contract is $219,975 which is funded from DoIT’s FY2023/24 Working Budget and FY2024/25 Requested Budget.
ALTERNATIVES:
The Board may choose not to approve this contract, however, that is not recommended. By approving this contract, it will allow Solano County to comply with Assembly Bill 1637, strengthen the County’s cybersecurity posture, and aid constituents in recognizing when they are accessing an official governmental resource.
OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT:
County Counsel and the County Administrator’s Office have been involved in the contract review.
CAO RECOMMENDATION:
APPROVE DEPARTMENTAL RECOMMENDATION