On Tuesday, Lt. Governor Karyn Polito came to Montgomery Town Hall to meet with Hilltown officials and present two grants – one for $42,000 to the Hilltown Collaborative for marketing and promotion of the region, and one for $150,000 to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) to help the towns with Internet Technology upgrades and management.
6-Town Municipal IT Assessment - Gateway Hilltown Collaborative
6-Town Municipal IT Assessment
District Local Technical Assistance (DLTA)
The Town's of Chester, Huntington, Montgomery, Middlefield, Russell, and Blandford - together recognized as the Hilltown Collaborative - have asked the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC) for District Local Technical Assistance (DLTA) to conduct an IT service analysis within each town, and to develop a cost and IT service sharing structure. The end result will include recommended options for implementation.
Goal: Assess potential partnership arrangement between towns for IT services and coordinate action steps to support longer-term vision of consolidating IT functions if feasible.
Project Status: The assessment has been complete and report is available under the documents section of this page. Most recently, the PVPC has been able to leverage a $150,000 Efficiency and Regionalization Grant from the Commonwealth's Community Compact program to create and implement a Municipal IT Program. The program will look forward to work on the recommended action steps that came out of assessment. Click on following link to learn more about the grant received: http://www.pvpc.org/content/westfield-news-lt-governor-karyn-polito-visits-montgomery-grant-money-hilltowns.
PVPC Staff:
Joshua A. Garcia, Project Manager
Molly Goren-Watts, Principal Planner / Manager of Regional Information & Policy Center
Jamie Duran, Senior Computer Specialist/Network Administrator
Documents
doc-6-town-municipal-it-assessment-gateway-hilltown-collaborative3321.pdf
Information Technology in the Hilltown Collaborative Communities of Massachusetts
A summary of current conditions, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for Municipal IT improvement - Conducted as DLTA project.
Final Report - Information Technology in the Hilltown Collaborative Communities of Massachusetts News and Articles
11 Apr
The Community Compact signed last year by the six Gateway hilltowns of Chester, Middlefield, Huntington, Blandford, Russell and Montgomery has produced a lot of forward momentum. The Hilltown Collaborative, the group formed to work on the compact’s goals of economic growth and shared services met on Thursday in Stanton Hall to work on specifics of several different projects.