Waltham's IT department was awarded an $185,110 grant — one of the largest in the commonwealth — as part of Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito's Community Compact Information Technology grant program.
The money will be used to implement wireless infrastructure for internal and public use.
"It's been a priority of ours for a while," said Donald Aucoin, director of information technology for Waltham. "It's just that priorities are such that it just didn't work out."
The program awarded $3 million in technology grants to 44 cities and towns across the Commonwealth this year, and Waltham's grant was one of the largest share of funds.
"The Community Compact Cabinet continues to engage in important work to strengthen our role as a reliable partner for the Commonwealth's cities and towns," said Governor Baker in a statement. "Technology is a necessary but costly investment for our communities, and these grants enable them to take on critical projects that improve efficiency and help them deliver better service to the public."
A longtime need
The City's IT department has been eying Wi-Fi for a while, applying for grants and not receiving funds but there was a perfect mix of factors that helped secure the funds for Fiscal 2019.Because a city can only receive a grant every two years from this program, the time was right for Waltham to go for the grant as many other cities—which would be competition—received grants last year. There is also a focus on community for the grant, and public Wi-Fi and Wi-Fifor city employees serves that need clearly.
Another reason was the good economy, Aucoin says. It was a good time to roll the dice, he says.
"The good news was we checked into how many communities had received the grant the year before and then played the numbers and said, 'wait a minute, there's only 309 communities,'" he said. "Also it's a good economy so we were hedging our bets, saying, 'there might be some money in this so let's go for as much as we can and we'll see what the appetite is.'"
The implementation of Wi-Fi in Waltham falls into two categories: Wi-Fi for city employees so they do not have to be at their desk to have access to city documents, and Wi-Fi in some 20 or so public buildings including regular meeting places like City Hall, Government Center, the Council on Aging, and the Ice Skating Arena.
"Those are pockets that we're familiar with within this city where many people get together," Aucoin said. "When many people get together they want to visit their Twitter accounts, they want to be on Facebook, [and] they want to know what's going on immediately. That's not an easy thing to deliver to folks."
Looking to Bentley
By the end of 2019, the infrastructure will be implemented. For now, Aucoin is looking towards Bentley University to learn more about implementing such a system in Waltham."Bentley (University) for example is a perfect microcosm of our city," he said. "They have lots of bright individuals that want Wi-Fi connections whether it's their laptop whether it's their phone [or] handheld devices. They're looking to do work online and get consistent, safe access [of] wireless to the Internet and so our citizens are no different."
Because Wi-Ficapability is now over two decades old, one good aspect to waiting to have it in Waltham is that now the city will have state-of-the-art equipment.
"What's to our advantage right now in 2018-2019 is the fact that we're going to have the latest and greatest," says Patrick Montjoie, management information systems director for Waltham Schools and an employee in the City's IT department. "Right now we are fortunate to be at the edge."
Also other cities and communities have gone through trial and error for Waltham, allowing the city's IT department to learn from afar at the choices other departments have made.
"We're certainly hitting it at the right time," Aucoin said. "Some of it is accidental offense—not having it for a long time getting that first shiny toy we're benefiting from what others have learned and enhanced upon."
Internet traffic
Once the infrastructure is in place, there is a need to make sure Wi-Fi access does not get bogged down. Bandwidth is critical, says Montjoie who installed the Wi-Fi programs at Waltham Schools. He has been surveying Waltham's public buildings this summer to prepare for the new infrastructure."We're going to have heavy traffic inside the wireless network but ultimately it goes outside," he said. "And if it's a straw it's going to be traffic jammed and that alone is going to diminish the value of what's being implemented."
The next step is to get a bid for the work that needs to be done and then the access points can be installed.
"People are constantly looking for it because it's becoming one of those things that people are expecting," Aucoin said. "It won't be like turning on a light switch to every citizen but it will be providing the infrastructure [and] making more efficient the bandwidth of that access so we don't have traffic jams."
©2018 Wicked Local Metro, Needham, Mass. Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
