Small cities and police departments carry the same audit and continuity obligations as large ones — with no IT director to meet them. We help you put a realistic IT plan and number into next year's budget, then deliver it.
What we hear
Small Panhandle cities and towns with no IT director, and police departments under 50 officers, tell us the same things.
No IT director — and no plan
IT decisions fall to a clerk, a vendor, or whoever's nearest. There's no roadmap and no one who owns the whole picture.
Audit findings to clear
An auditor flagged IT controls, access, or backups, and the finding is still open because no one knows how to close it.
Continuity of operations to prove
If a storm or ransomware hit tomorrow, could the city keep running — and could you show the plan to council afterward?
Budget pressure, hard deadlines
If it isn't in the budget by the workshop, it waits a full fiscal year. Timing is everything, and it's easy to miss.
CJIS and public-safety requirements
Police data carries rules most vendors don't understand — and getting it wrong has consequences beyond a fine.
Priced on what the free gap-check finds — open safeguards, sites, users. You approve the figure before any work begins, and it doesn't move.
Insurers can deny a claim when the controls you attested to — multi-factor login, tested backups, endpoint protection — aren't actually there. We make sure yours are.
What a city tells its insurer has to be true when it's checked — a former municipal IT director does the hands-on work with your staff to reach a defensible baseline before renewal, so the answers hold up, without a hire you can't budget. (Police/court/EMS systems scoped separately.)
Continuity of operations — including deployable comms — is an add-on tier, not the opener.
This service references the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, a free, public resource. Media78 is an independent provider and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST.
Implementing the baseline helps you answer insurer questionnaires accurately and can improve your odds of coverage and better terms. It is not a guarantee of a policy, approval, coverage, or claim payment; requirements vary by carrier.
Proof
Media78's founder was IT director for a Florida coastal town serving ~15M annual visitors — through every hurricane season, accountable to council, police, fire and utilities. Read the story →
Florida cities run an October 1–September 30 fiscal year, with budget prep typically starting in February and the proposed budget presented in late summer. Reach us between February and May, or the work waits a year. Each city must post its budget calendar by January 30 — send us yours and we'll time it.
The city manager, the finance director, or the police chief.
Assessments and proposals formatted for council packets and procurement. We register on the vendor and bid portals your city uses, bid only on what we can deliver as specified, and claim CJIS or other compliance only where it's documented.
Talk before budget seasonfree resource
The same checklist we run during a gap-check — use it yourself, whether or not we ever talk.
A small city can't justify a full-time IT director, so IT becomes whatever breaks next — an unplanned cost every year. A former municipal IT director hands you a costed, multi-year plan written for council, so IT goes into the budget as a number you chose, not a surprise. Budget prep starts in February — reach us between February and May and we'll time it to your workshop.