- Tools that Made the Difference for Hutto
- For more information on Hutto, visit Hutto’s Web site.
- Visit Hutto’s economic development corporation’s site.
- View Hutto’s Facebook page.
- Follow Hutto on Twitter.
Hutto Goes
High Tech
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of Texas Rising.
City beefs up technology infrastructure to meet growth.
The fastest-growing city in Central Texas might surprise you. It’s Hutto, located in Williamson County, about 25 miles from Austin. Hutto’s population has grown by an explosive 665 percent since 2000, from just more than 1,250 residents to more than 17,000 today.
With the growth came the need for expanded government services, a daunting task for a small municipality that had a 10-person staff in 2000 and employs about 80 today. The numbers are still small in information technology (IT), where Tim Howell has helped transform the city’s communications infrastructure and computer systems.
“We’re still a small operation,” says Howell, who serves as the city’s IT analyst. “Some of what we have done has actually helped keep Hutto from hiring a large IT staff.”
Hutto’s changes have helped with efficiency, energy and office space savings as the city’s staff has grown. The IT upgrades have also provided a communication tool for city residents.
A Centralized Solution
Hutto installed automatic water meter readers as one of its first IT improvements. The city’s utilization rate for the wireless readers is up to about 98 percent and eliminates the need for a person to physically read each meter. It also helps diagnose potential problems.
“It’s done every day so that, if a leak occurs, it alerts city personnel and they can then alert the resident,” says Howell.
Howell also discovered that critical information was stored on individual computer workstations and not backed up on a centralized server.
“In addition to security, a centralized infrastructure allows us to manage equipment from one central place, and saves on hardware issues as well,” says Howell.
The centralized servers have also increased efficiency. For example, they allow the city’s police department personnel to fill out reports, check e-mail and have access to information from remote locations, rather than having to return to city offices.
Individual workstations remain for city staff, but personnel gain access to centralized servers through another Hutto initiative — the Citywide Thin-Client Project. A thin client acts as an interface between terminal servers and is merely a trimmed-down computer that contains a limited operating system and no moving parts.
“We were one of the first cities to have a large percentage of staff using a thin client,” says Howell. “They’re 90 percent recyclable, and the electricity savings is about 300 percent.”
The Texas Association of Governmental Information Technology Managers awarded the project a Technology Excellence Award in 2007.
The city also redesigned its Web site in mid-2008, which provides Hutto residents with a feedback option through its “Hutto Listens” portal. A further redesign will still offer opportunities for comment, but will also place more emphasis on local business. Hutto’s IT staff will seek input from area commercial leaders in an effort to promote and retain local business.
“We want to make our site a little more business friendly,” says Howell. “We do see the importance of those business relationships and we’ll get it all put together.”
Tools that Made the Difference for Hutto
Hutto’s Web site redesign gives residents a chance to speak up through its “Hutto Listens” section. Site viewers can submit questions and comments 24 hours a day that are routed to city staff.
“We tried to focus on interaction,” says Tim Howell, IT analyst in Hutto. “We have four newsletters now that are available and there is also a mobile Web site for handheld devices.”
The Web site also contains crime-mapping data, which allows users to display crime statistics in different areas around the city. In the interest of interaction, social networking is gaining ground in Hutto. The city has a Facebook page and Howell says plans are in the works to add more community-based networking elements to the city’s Web site.
“Meetings and mailings all cost money,” he says. “Social networks don’t cost anything, just time. And the potential I see in those is creating good solid relationships with citizens. Government is seen as separate and the more people you get on there, the more human we become, and that’s good.”
Howell’s vision includes neighborhood watch groups, city boards and commissions and volunteer opportunities.