Southwest Ohio Municipal Technology Group
Author: Krystal Kiser, Dayton Technology Group
April 2010
Meet Darren Davey, the Information Technology Manager for the City of Vandalia. Our relationship began with Darren a few years back when Dayton Technology Group (DTG) was the primary IT Services Provider for the City. Vandalia’s IT support needs grew to the point of where it would be more cost effective to hire internally verses outsourcing their needs. Darren was selected to be their IT Manager and has continued to drive Vandalia’s technology forward from day one.
Darren Davey started a collaboration initiative for cities and townships in our local area. The initiative promoted IT Managers of these local government entities to use their knowledge base as a source of consulting for one another. Darren Davey was the young man behind the scene of pulling these professionals together and finding out just how beneficial all of these local governments could be to one another.
It has taken Darren approximately 4 years to get to arrive where they are at today with a thriving group called ‘Southwest Ohio Municipal Technology Group’. Their meetings are held quarterly in a round table type atmosphere. Held during mid day, they experience a series of presentations from members covering topics from new products they are implementing to planning for large scale projects a municipality is getting ready to push forward with. At these junctures the members are looking to gain perspective on details that they could have overlooked or may need a little more expertise on.
Since they all have budgets, they discuss ways that they can be most cost effective by sharing ideas of what has or has not worked in the past or to see if someone knows of a product that could be more cost effective . This has created an atmosphere to where the trial and error time for new products or ideas has decreased , maximizing the groups time so as to focus on delivering for the desired end result. This of course being compared to all parties working separately to find out that it was not going to meet their needs.
Each municipality has the same headache with regulatory issues that must be met as well. Though providers such as ourselves (DTG) can certainly stay abreast on such regulations to best serve our clients, we do not live them day in and day out like these IT Managers do. The Southwest Ohio Municipal Technology Group round tables have proven to be extremely useful when reviewing new solutions since they can discuss them with someone who is walking in the same shoes.
When wondering if your local tax dollars are being spent wisely regarding technological advances in your community, the answer would be resoundingly “yes” to municipalities who have their IT Professionals involved with the ‘Southwest Ohio Municipal Technology Group’. This group is currently held privately for professionals who work within the local governments that they serve. There has been brief discussion about future involvement from outside technology vendors but only in terms of educational, not solicitation purposes, to aid in furthering the group members’ knowledge base.
Dayton Technology Group assisted in searching and interviewing for the right candidate to provide the City of Vandalia with the IT Manager (Darren Davey) that they have today. The City relied upon DTG’s expertise and knowledge of their network to find the right person to meet their needs. We knew in finding Darren that those needs would be met, but we were ecstatic to see that our intuition in selecting him as the candidate was right in that those expectations were exceeded. Krystal Kiser can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
