The city of Kent will spend $1.03 million of its federal CARES Act funds to buy 500 laptops for work-from-home employees and to make the organization more mobile by replacing many desktop computers.

City Information Technology staff made the recommendation to the City Council after setting up a system in March to allow about 300 employees to work from home because of COVID-19.

“During our initial planning, it was clear we did not have enough laptops to cover the entire staff that needed to work from home,” according to the IT staff request to the council. “We currently have a desktop heavy fleet totaling about 895 computers (603 desktops and 292 laptops).”

As a short-term solution IT installed a virtual private network (VPN) on about 300 desktop computers and allowed employees to take those computers home.

“This is normally prohibited, but extraordinary times required extraordinary measures,” according to the IT document. “Due to lack of mobility and increased security concerns, this is not a practical long-term solution.”

James Endicott, IT technical services manager, told the council in light of COVID-19 and the potential for similar disruptive events, it is staff’s recommendation to move to a laptop centric fleet. He said the benefits would include:

• Being better prepared and allowing quicker responses

• Flexibility to respond to changing work conditions

• Portability to easily move from place to place without having to pack extra gear

• Mobility to allow users to work from virtually anyplace with an internet connection

Kent received $3.8 million from the CARES Act funds approved by Congress in March. The council will spend $1.5 million of that to provide grants later this month to small businesses impacted by the outbreak. With the purchasing of the laptops, about $1.3 million will remain for the city to spend on coronavirus-related expenses.

At-home employees

About 101 city employees are working from home, said Derek Matheson, city chief administrative officer, in a July 31 email. The city employs 676 full-time employees and 223 temporary employees for a total of 899.

“We’re purchasing more laptops than the number of employees currently telecommuting because the CARES grant presents an opportunity to make our entire organization more mobile for COVID-19 and for the future,” Matheson said.

Dozens of city employees might end up working from home the rest of the year.

“We started a comprehensive telecommuting program for office employees in March in response to the governor’s directive that office employees who can work from home should work from home during COVID-19,” Matheson said. “The governor’s directive remains in place and therefore we’ll continue the program – probably until the end of the year. King County (government employees) and some large technology companies in our area have already announced they’ll continue their telecommuting programs until early next year.”

Nearly 200 city employees returned to the office.

“Some employees have returned to the office for business reasons (the permit center is a good example if we’re asked because the permit process requires extensive collaboration among employees) and some employees have returned because they found they prefer working in the office,” Matheson said.

With most school districts planning to continue remote learning, Matheson said the flexibility will help employees with children.

“Online school has and will continue to create childcare challenges for many city employees,” Matheson said. “Telecommuting is one tool to balance employees’ childcare needs with the city’s business needs.”

Matheson expects some employees might continue to work from home even after the pandemic.

“Our telecommuting program is going really well overall,” he said. “Employees and their supervisors have stepped up to ensure good communication and production. COVID-19 has been a good opportunity to test the concept and I expect we’ll continue telecommuting for at least some work groups and employees after COVID-19.”

Councilmember Bill Boyce agreed with the move to buy new laptops.

“When I read this, I was so ecstatic,” Boyce said. “I’m glad Derek and the mayor (Dana Ralph) had the foresight to do this. When you take a laptop, you can do so much. It’s good for the city. We don’t know how long the virus will be around, but we want to make it as easy as possible for employees to get work done even if from home. …Kudos to everybody, this will be a really big plus for the city.”

It surprised Councilmember Marli Larimer how few laptops the city had.

“When I first read the numbers and how many desktops we had, we are long overdue for mobility,” she said.

Purchase details

The city will buy 500 laptops, 500 docking stations, a three-year warranty, VPN licensing and additional wireless infrastructure for an estimated $1.01 million. IT also plans to spend about $36,000 to pay four outside contractors for approximately 800 hours of work to roll out the new laptops.

Kent will buy the laptops through an agreement with the state Department of Enterprise Services, which allows the city to purchase through contracts the state publicly bids and enters into with various vendors. The state also enters into an agreement with a national purchasing cooperative to help get best value pricing and superior contract terms than the city could do on its own, according to IT documents.

Under Kent City Code, purchases of computer equipment and software are exempt from competitive bid requirements as are purchases made through a purchasing cooperative. The state Department of Enterprise Services has a contract with Microsoft through July 31, 2021, so the city will be buying Microsoft computers.