Yesterday, news broke that Prince died. With the tax season over and the IRS scams waning, you can count on Internet criminals to exploit this celebrity death in a number of ways, so be careful with anything related to Prince’s death: emails, attachments, any social media (especially Facebook), texts on your phone, anything.
There will be a number of scams related to this, so please Think Before You Click!
Happy Leap Day!
Everybody probably knows that leap year generally adds February 29th to the calendar to keep us in sync with our Earth’s rotation around the Sun. Under the Gregorian calendar, we normally get to do this every year that is divisible by four, but there’s another rule that will let us “skip” doing this in the year 2100. Mark your calendar if you think that’s needed. At unpredictable times, the Earth sometimes slows down a bit more than the leap year rules can handle, so the official atomic clock adds a leap second to the time stream. Last leap second was added June 30, 2015!
It’s Budget Season…
Ever wonder how the City is doing with its expenditures? Wonder no more. The City Dashboard can be found on the City website at this link http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/budget/#/ and you can dig down to your favorite fund or department to see how they are doing with your tax dollars. There’s even a new Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) gauge that will let you drill down to various capital projects. Speaking of website, our Webmaster, Weston Pay, and his committee are working on upgrading the website in the next few months to make it even more useful to the Citizens and to Staff as well. Stay tuned!
City Facility Access Control
For the last few months the City has been upgrading its access control system to a centralized, state of the art system that will allow key supervisors to set appropriate access for all employees into city facilities. Because it’s centralized, we also can add new facilitates that need such control for very little additional cost. This new system not only provides better efficiency for things like key control, but also improves security and safety for our staff.
If you watch out for these five tricks, you’ll have a happier holiday!
1. Black Friday/Cyber Monday Specials
This time of year, online scams use a variety of lures to get unsuspecting buyers to click on links or open attachments. Bad guys build complete copies of well-known sites, send emails promoting great deals, sell products and take credit card information – but never deliver the goods. Sites that seem to have incredible discounts should be a red flag. Remember that when a “special offer” is too good to be true, it usually is. For instance, never click on links in emails or popups with very deep discount offers for watches, phones or tablets. Go to the website yourself through your browser and check if that offer is legit.
2. Complimentary Vouchers or Gift Cards
A popular holiday scam is big discounts on gift cards. Don’t fall for offers from retailers or social media posts that offer phony vouchers or (Starbucks) gift cards paired with special promotions or contests. Some posts or emails even appear to be shared by a friend (who may have been hacked). Develop a healthy dose of skepticism and “Think Before You Click” on offers or attachments with any gift cards or vouchers!
3. Bogus Shipping Notices From UPS and FedEx
You are going to see emails supposedly from UPS and FedEx in your inbox that claim your package has a problem and/or could not be delivered. Many of these are phishing attacks that try to make you click on a link or open an attachment. However, what happens when you do that is that your computer gets infected with a virus or even ransomware which holds all your files hostage until you pay 500 dollars in ransom.
4. Holiday Refund Scams
These emails seem to come from retail chains or e-commerce companies such as Amazon or eBay claiming there’s a “wrong transaction” and prompt you to click the refund link. However, when you do that and are asked to fill out a form, the personal information you give out will be sold to cyber criminals who use it against you. Oh, and never, never, never pay online with a debit card, only use credit cards. Why? if the debit card gets compromised, the bad guys can empty your bank account quickly.
5. Phishing on the Dark Side
A new phishing email has begun circulating that tricks people into thinking they could win movie tickets for the highly-anticipated film, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” due out on Dec. 18. However, the email is a phishing attack. Leading up to the film’s release, and shortly after, you need to watch out for this social engineering attack and not fall for the scam. Stay safe online!
BONUS TIP: Never use an insecure public Wi-Fi to shop with your credit card. Only shop with a secure connection at home.
Making Public Records More Accessible
The City Manager’s Office, in coordination with the IT Department has implemented the first stage of its Laserfiche Electronic Records Repository which is now online for public records access. You can reach this new tool at www.lakeoswego.city/Weblink/ and you can now search through all approved Agenda & Minutes that exist for the Council, the Development Review Commission, the Planning Commission, and other advisory boards. You can find city ordinances, resolutions and recorded instruments there too. More document categories will be added to the archive on a continuous basis.
Curious about what went on at the first Council meeting on January 21, 1910? Reading the minutes would suggest that it was a simpler time! (The document is here: https://www.ci.oswego.or.us/weblink/0/doc/995/Page1.aspx)
Financial Dashboards
With our consulting contract with the City of West Linn expiring at the end of December, one of our major deliverables has been finished for them in the form of a financial dashboard for their City. It can be viewed at this link: http://dashboard.westlinnoregon.gov This dashboard was designed by the City of Lake Oswego Webmaster, Weston Pay, who has also designed the City of Lake Oswego’s dashboard that has been online for quite a while now. You can access it at this link: http://www.ci.oswego.or.us/budget
Changes in Technology aren’t always as glamourous as the latest Apple Watch…but their importance is usually unquestionable. Here are some of the things that have happened since the beginning of summer that might not have made the headlines:
• The City sold the West End Building (WEB) that required us to move most of the IT assets in that building to other locations, and to move the Parks & Recreation Network to Palisades with less than 25% of the normal lead time that is customary for these kinds of changes.
• We also had to get the WEB ready for the new owner plus rework the network infrastructure to accommodate the Lake Oswego-Tigard Water partnership and its associated contractors as tenants to the new landlord.
• At Palisades, brand new internal wiring for all of the staff moving there had to be put on a fast track, while at the same time setting up a temporary feed of the city network to that building by beaming it there from the Golf Center while we worked with Comcast to get the Public Cable Network (PCN) established at Palisades for their permanent network solution.
• We have been fielding LaserFiche archiving and workflow capability into the City infrastructure. That will enable several “paperless” processes to take over inefficient paper trails for many administrative and staffing functions.
• In concert with LaserFiche, we’ve also fielded electronic signature capability to the city’s Purchasing and Contracting Officers so that we can finally leave the “make a copy, sign it, scan it back into the computer” aspects of city contracting.
• Looking forward, IT will also be supporting the new Campus being planned for Operations and the new initiatives that the Police Department are reviewing that will require IT infrastructure changes while continuing to deliver 30 minute response for day-to-day support requests to all members of the staff.
• With the West End Building Sale announced, the Department will get into high gear to prepare the building for sale. We had a preliminary walk-through with the potential buyer and oriented them to the technology assets and infrastructure in the building. We’ll be helping the Parks Department with their move-out and reconfiguring the remaining members of the Water Project for what is expected to be a two year tenancy.
• With backup requirements growing, driven by police video and the LaserFiche transition, we will be increasing our capacity by 25%. Backup assets are being moved from the West End Building to the Main Fire Station as an interim measure, and will move to the new Water Treatment Plant when that facility is ready for occupancy.
• The new access control card key system contract for City Hall is in place and the new wiring for some of the stairwell doors is being installed to improve security for the employees and the visiting public as well. This project which includes integration into the Water Treatment Plant server should be completed by September 1st.
• Our Fiber to the Premises initiative continues to progress. The RFP was released on June 1st by the City Manager and proposals are due back to the City by July 31st.
• We’re in the preplanning stages for the possible sale of the West End Building and the moves for Operations Campus construction. Ensuring that the city network follows the employees is critical to ensure that we minimize disruption to service delivery.
• Convergint Technologies is the vendor selected to upgrade the access control at City Hall which controls and monitors door and elevator access. We will be adding on this capability to the centralized system that was acquired for the new Water Treatment Plant and River Intake Pump Station which saves the city thousands of dollars by avoiding redundant software costs.
The single largest efficiency improvement project undertaken by the City of Lake Oswego Parks & Recreation Department was completed this month being implemented on time and under budget. The project changed and improved most aspects of operations in the department including cash management, activity registrations, facility reservations, membership management, instructor interface, donations and scholarships, and sports league registrations and scheduling. An additional add-on project was also completed that ties in the Tennis Center main door entry system to the Active Network membership database, paving the way for future application in a recreation center type environment.
The project began with a staff survey conducted May 2013 identifying the gaps in the then existing system and obtaining information about desired features. The results were compiled into a list of user requirements shared with four potential vendors. Active Network was chosen as the vendor of choice due to minimal capital costs (under $30,000) and a wide variety of capabilities including cell phone and tablet access to online registration. A contract with Active Network was created in November 2014 with a cutover date planned for August 10, 2014 (the first day of registration for fall 2014 activities.) The cutover was fairly flawless with only a few complaints regarding the online service charges (how the system is paid for) shared by the users.
The system was installed in phases with WEB and ACC facility reservations going live first, followed by activity registration, field permitting, sports league management, and online picnic shelter reservations. Documentation was created by the team to integrate system and operations processes.
Special thanks to the Finance Department, the IT Department, and to the project team of Kelliegh Bradley, Kim Stott and Dina Balogh without whom none of the success would have been possible.
• Our Fiber to the Premises effort has been initiated. We’ve received interest from five significant corporations and we’ll be meeting with each of them to see what direction such a project might migrate into.
• We’ve begun implementing Laserfiche in the City Manager’s Office and in Planning. We’re solving a few technical issues with some of our data migration but generally, progress is happening at an acceptable pace. We’re also incorporating an initiative from Human Resources that will automate a workflow for them that would enable a near paperless system for routine personnel actions.
• We’ve received 3 bids for upgrading the access control for City Hall. Those bids will be reviewed in a few days with vendor selection and contract signing happening before the end of May.
• The franchise agreement with Comcast that provides the City network is hopefully in final negotiation stages with the Metropolitan Area Communications Commission (MACC) which regulates this agreement for its members. We’re hopeful that this new agreement that is expected to run for ten years will result in at least a 25% decrease in connection charges, saving the City over $150K over the term of the contract.
The City recently purchased Laserfiche, a new software system that will improve records management and retention efficiency and allow departments to create workflows that should improve processes and eliminate lots of paper bottlenecks. City Manager and City Attorney offices are piloting the program and are shown in here in initial training. Other departments will be added soon! Thanks to Erika Roberts and Cate Schneider for their implementation assistance!
