Interviews with Tribal Leaders
Erik Reed, Chief Information Technology Officer
IT Team
Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi
Can you give us a look at the areas of the tribe your IT team of six provides support to?
We have seven locations on-site to which we provide service, some with multiple divisions within. Our primary site is at the newly-built Pine Creek Government Center. This building houses various departments for membership services, tribal administration, finance, human resources, culture, education, information technology. We also support the Gaming Commission, however completely separate from the actual gaming operations IT support. We have also opened a facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is about 90 minutes from the Pine Creek location. We have opened a new facility there to provide a site for outlying members to visit for various membership services provided by the tribe. The Grand Rapids site also has a health clinic for membership as well. We also support Skasgè Power which specializes in Solar Power and is located in Athens, MI.
Your department has grown over the last couple of years, what are some of the key projects you have been working on with your team?
The IT Department has grown tremendously. A couple of years ago, there was one part time contracted IT Director and one IT Staff member. Since this time, we have grown to a total of six staff members, including two NHBP Tribal Members, Douglas Taylor, IT Manager who is also a Veteran and Greg DeGraff, our Systems Administrator. It was important to not only evaluate the positions that we needed but to also develop a roadmap outlining where we wanted to go from the infrastructure perspective. Two years ago, our infrastructure consisted of mainly a workgroup environment so we had the ability to build the infrastructure from the ground up. We focused on designing the infrastructure while keeping future growth in mind, which brought us into the Widoktadwen Project which consisted of the newly-built Government Center, Department of Public Works and some expansion with the Health Departments. In order for us to move forward, we also designed a backbone fiber optic network throughout the campus, which provides additional layers of redundancy and also allows for growth into the future. IT Manager Douglas Taylor has also been in the IT Industry for several years and commented on our progress and the continued support of our Tribal Council. “It has been a real honor to take a very basic workgroup network to a state-of-the-art network with a fiber optic backbone that is equal or better than most federal government computer networks. A good sound network upgrade plan was presented to the Tribal Council and approved. The Tribal Council understood the value and future requirements of Information Technology that the Tribal government would need to move to the next level of tribal government operations with a state-of-the-art network.”
Also included within the Widoktadwen Projects were various technologies that were installed within the Government Center, and Department of Public Works facility as well as both health clinics such as storage area network, server virtualization, access control, video conferencing, digital signage and much more. As we continue to move forward, we have also been focusing on developing policies, procedures and building a solid framework to work from to provide a solid foundation for years to come.
What’s coming up this year for your department?
We continue to evaluate software programs within each department to increase productivity. This may include a new software purchases, upgrading existing software or working with departments on redesigning the daily workflow with the applications to streamline productivity. In 2014, we are working on several projects with the Health department to streamline the process within the IHS applications. As we continue to move forward, we are also looking to implement some paperless solutions.
The Technology Department is also looking to host a few Lunch and Learn sessions with our Membership on technology items such as safe browsing on the internet and protecting against identity theft, among a few others. We are also looking into holding some workshops with our youth to encourage Tribal Members to consider a career in Information Technology.
In what ways would you say you’ve had to balance “leadership” vs “technical” in your role as CIO?
It is very important to focus on the direction of the Tribal Government for years to come but to also understand the technology changes and what will benefit the end user(s) and organization going forward. I’ve found it increasingly important and helpful to network with other Tribal IT directors with similarly structured organizations and continue to do research pertinent to the job. I always try to think outside of the box and always plan for the future growth, needs and expectations of the department. I also make it a point to work closely with other departments ensuring that we are providing good customer service to our end users and in doing so, have developed a great rapport with department heads. I’m fortunate to have a great IT staff and we all work really well together. I value and listen to their input regarding issues going on in the field and there are a lot of times we have to reevaluate a program or process to better suits the needs of a specific department. A comment from, Larysa Hill in our finance division shows our commitment to maintaining those positive relationships. “The finance department relies completely on a properly functioning computer system. Our IT department provides outstanding technical support in a timely manner. When we have any problems, we receive an immediate response.”
How important has the support from your tribal council been for your team’s progression?
It’s been extremely important. We wouldn’t be where we are today without our dedicated staff and ongoing support of our tribal council. In fact I’d like to share another quote, this one a collaborative comment from our Tribal Council, “Leaders strive to provide members with quality care. The IT staff stands for the common good of bridging relationships and its succession. The passion and dedication of this team is another step of the revitalization for the Pine Creek Indian Reservation.” Each year the tribe publishes an annual report and year in review- you can really see the support and cohesiveness we have as an organization. IT is proud to be a big part of that, helping us all grow and move forward.
Your team was one of the recipients recognized for achievements this year at TribalNet, as recommended by your tribal council. What did this recommendation and recognition mean to you and your team?
We were honored to be the recipient of such a prestigious award. I’m fortunate to have the greatest IT Team that goes above and beyond each and every day. Their hard work, passion, dedication, technical expertise and personable approach has been the gateway to our success. We also would like to thank our Tribal Council for all of their continued support along with TribalNet for bringing Technology and Tribes together. This was our first time attending the conference and we will definitely be back this year. We attended some very valuable presentations and the networking with other Tribes was beneficial as well. We are looking forward to this year’s event.
Jamie Gliddon, IT Director
Jamie Gliddon
Wind Creek Casino & Hotel – Atmore
IT Director
What can you tell us about your IT department and the gaming properties owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians?
Our IT department of 10 provides service and support for the Wind Creek Casino & Hotel property in Atmore, AL, which is one of three Class II gaming facilities, operated by Wind Creek Hospitality- the Gaming Authority of the tribe. In total, we actually have four IT departments within the Tribe’s Gaming Authority. Each casino property has its own IT department of approximately 10 professionals that keep the property systems operating and a Corporate IT team that is focused on enterprise systems, business development and overall strategy. The Tribe has other IT departments in Creek Indian Enterprises (no- gaming commercial businesses), the Tribal Government and the Tribal Gaming Commission. The Wind Creek Casino & Hotel, which is my team’s main area of service has 1769 bingo gaming devices, a 236-room hotel, a full-service spa, an outdoor amphitheater and a newly built indoor entertainment center with non-gaming entertainment options available such as; movies, bowling and arcade games. We also provide remote tech support for the three pari-mutuel properties tracks owned by the Tribe. Two of these pari-mutuel properties have live poker rooms. We also support our corporate call center and print shop. I take great pride in the fact that the majority of my team is made up of Tribal members. They are bright, energetic people with tremendous passion for learning and IT. Through the work, experience and training the Company provides, they have become critical to the success of our IT department and the property.
With constant innovative ideas in tribal gaming- what are some of the technologies your team has worked on that have that “cool factor”?
Like many other tribal casinos, in the last couple years we shifted some of our focus to cost saving measures and infrastructure upgrades which set us up for future opportunities. Improving our infrastructure has put us in a great position to do some new things on the gaming floor, direct at the game, enhancing our customer’s experience. We are deploying Bally’s iView Display Manager product, which will give us a platform for improved service and marketing opportunities at the game. We are even taking things a step further with the beverage on-demand service. First at the Wetumpka site and now at Wind Creek Atmore, customers can order drinks right from their games with the added customer service feature of viewing bartender and server images. So, when a guest orders a drink it pops up a picture of the bartender and tells the guest, ‘Mike is making your drink’, then shortly after, a picture of the server will come up and say, ‘Stacy is on her way with your glass of Merlot’. It’s a great personal touch that our casino guests enjoy. Another “at-the-game” initiative is the installation of the Epicentral promotional ticketing system. This system allows us to market to the rated and unrated guest at the game and offer promotions through printed coupons on TITO paper. So instead of having to visit the players club or kiosk, we can send promotional tickets such as drawing entries, directly to the game’s printer. Internally it makes for more ticket refills but our customers love it. We are lucky to have a Company culture that encourages everyone to constantly look for new ways to engage our guests. We focus a lot of our energy on how to make our guests feel special and appreciated; a combination of guest service training for everyone and the appropriate use of technology makes this happen.
What can you tell us about some of the hospitality and non-gaming projects your team has been working on?
Although our company has four separate IT departments, we still work together on some initiatives and bigger projects. As an example, some of our Atmore and Corporate IT team recently assisted the Wetumpka IT department with the opening of their new property, a $250 million project which has all the latest technology in a highly integrated environment. We helped with everything from installing new systems and providing training to providing normal day-to-day IT support to users. It’s an advantage to have a deep bench and the ability to pool our resources and collaborate on larger projects. In November, we opened a new entertainment center here at the Atmore property which was unfamiliar territory for us when it came to the systems to put in place. A lot of research was done to select the right systems for the center. We decided on Brunswick for bowling, RTS for management of the movie theater and Sacao for the arcade. The arcade games are wirelessly networked, have a swipe card and kiosks for loading money to the card and loading credits at the game. We also took this opportunity to install the newest version of the Micros POS solution, Simphony. We are currently running the old Micros 9700 system and Simphony in tandem, but will be completely migrated to the new version by the end of the year. All this technology supports our visitors having many non-gaming entertainment options and we wanted to ensure the best technology is in place to offer a great experience for our guests utilizing however they wish to be entertained.
Wind Creek Hospitality has had a place in the social gaming space for a couple years now, what can you tell us about that?
We actually have two players clubs. There’s “The Club” and there’s “My Club”. Our guests have a choice of which players club they would prefer to be enrolled. The Club is what you may call the “normal or standard” player’s club for the casino and My Club is a players club for our guests that may be interested in the social aspect of gaming. We’ve been doing it for almost two years- it’s a different way for people to play and stay engaged and also a way for our marketing team to have the messaging and information reach a different category of gamers. People can craft their own marketing offers, play online versions of casino games, interact with other players via a posting wall, or interact with our Community Managers who operate the My Club site. We really look forward to what lies ahead for the Tribal gaming industry. We aim to stay at the forefront of innovation as the industry moves ahead.
We would like to thank Jamie for taking the time to do this interview with us.
He welcomes your questions and comments and can be reached at:
[email protected]
David Kavaljian, IT Director
David Kavaljian
Comanche Nation Gaming
IT Director
Can you give us a preview of your IT team’s portfolio?
Our team of 10 currently oversees all IT operations for two major casinos and two (soon to be three) small casinos or casino/travel plaza. The small casinos and casino/travel plaza each have roughly 100-150 machines, the Comanche Nation Casino located in Lawton has 750 machines and our flagship property Comanche Red River Casino has over 1100. We are also in the process of building a 200-room hotel at Red River. Once the hotel and new travel plaza projects are complete we will oversee IT for five gaming properties and one hotel, the tribe’s first.
What can you tell us about the infrastructure across so many sites?
I started in the position of IT Director two years ago and at that time our network was extremely fragmented. We knew in order to provide better service and move forward with other business goals that we had to make some infrastructure improvements across the entire enterprise. To achieve our objectives, we instituted a fiber network backbone and deployed virtualization technology to improve high availability and disaster recovery capability. We run IGT at our two larger properties and this fall will be pushing that out to our smaller sites virtually, another project that falls in line with our goal of having a coherent enterprise-wide network.
What can you tell us about IT’s involvement with the tribe’s expansion projects?
The tribe’s first hotel is in the process of being built and is slated for opening early 2014. I have had the opportunity to be involved in this project from the beginning. Communication amongst C-level executives and decision makers has been key. We are also opening a new gaming board of director’s office facility which will house the Board Members and C-level casino operations. We will be tying this building into our network and new phone system as well as installing meeting room equipment, software and set up for video conferencing.
With so many key projects in addition to day-to-day are you doing anything different to lead your team?
Our best practice standard for managing multiple projects is to assemble teams that include key members of our department, and Operations as well as relying on vendor partnerships. Setting clear goals and having this collaboration is extremely important and sets us up for successful project execution. We have a busy few months ahead!
Dennis Dyer – Director of IT & Health Representatives, Dustin Farris – IT Coordinator & Heather Westberg – Scanning Coordinator
Dennis Dyer, Dustin Farris & Heather Westberg
Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Director of IT & Health Representatives, IT Coordinator & Scanning Coordinator
What areas does your IT team provide services and support to?
We have a team of 30 dedicated individuals that oversee IT for the entire tribe, the non-gaming tribal enterprises owned by the tribe, the gaming commission as well as an expansive division of tribal health. We have over 2200 employees to support throughout multiple sites and divisions.
What can you tell us about your health division specifically?
Citizen Potawatomi Nation Health Services provides high quality, evidence-based, culturally-suitable medical and dental care, public health services, and behavioral health and substance abuse counseling, services are available to members of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and members of other federally recognized American Indian tribes and nations and Alaskan Natives. We operate two clinics where patients can receive high quality care as well as pharmacy and radiology services. In addition, our main campus provides dental services, public health and a community health outreach. We recently opened a new West Administration Building that houses contract health and business office departments. The tribe also operates a wellness center for tribal members and employees, which includes a new state-of-the-art fitness center, track and pool and has some great programs such as a youth after school program, healthy heart program and a diabetic initiative. We also provide a Title VI program which provides lunches to our tribal elders. All health services have been approved by the Accreditation Association of Ambulatory Health Care(AAAHC).
What are some of your key IT projects within the health division?
We run RPMS- electronic health records and are in the process of remodeling our dental clinic expanding from five rooms to 12. It’s currently our biggest project and main focus right now- we will be moving to electronic dental records with the expansion. Our pharmacy is all electronic with a mail order option that is great for tribal elders that need delivery services. We are running VISTA imaging to improve efficiency, security and provide better access to information between multiple sites. Results with that have been favorable.
What initiatives are you working on that affect other tribal organizations and communities?
We are active in solidifying our tribe as well as other tribal Nation’s role in FirstNet, a nationwide initiative providing emergency responders with the first nationwide, high-speed network dedicated to public safety. It’s setup to increase collaboration to help emergency responders save more lives, solve more crimes and keep our communities safer. I am a part of the Oklahoma Native American Technology Council, a group of tribal representatives forming a unified voice for tribes to State and Federal governments on topics such as FirstNet. Our tribe has already invested in equipment and secured grant funding for projects such as installing cell towers and new equipment in our public safety vehicles in preparation for our part in FirstNet. In addition to being a part of the Oklahoma council, we are always looking for more ways to connect with other tribal organizations within the State and across the U.S.
Matt Clay, IT Director
Matt Clay
Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians
IT Director
Can you give us a look inside your department’s structure and areas you provide IT support to?
We currently have seven team members including myself and provide IT support for all areas of the tribal government which provides services to over 4700 enrolled tribal members. We have a fairly typical structure that includes: two service desk techs, a network administrator, a systems administrator, a CRM administrator and a database administrator. We also have two college interns working on staff with us right now, which is great! Some of the key divisions of the tribal government our department provides support and services to include; administration, finance, human resources, tribal court/ judicial, education, health services, social services, housing, communications, police, enrollment, language and culture. Based on the growth and needs of our organization we made some changes to the IT department’s organizational chart beginning in April of 2012 when I started in the position of IT Director.
Can you tell us about some of the key projects your team has been working on this year?
Health:
Prior to my arrival in the Spring of 2012 the Electronic Health Records project kicked off at our health clinic. It was a fairly big undertaking for our tribe to roll out and was primarily led by our Director of Health with the goal of improving patient care. We currently are in the process of building a new health facility that will house both our health clinic and behavioral health. With the needs of support for the health division increasing we are aiming to have a dedicated IT staff contact at the new site when complete.
Prior to my arrival in the Spring of 2012 the Electronic Health Records project kicked off at our health clinic. It was a fairly big undertaking for our tribe to roll out and was primarily led by our Director of Health with the goal of improving patient care. We currently are in the process of building a new health facility that will house both our health clinic and behavioral health. With the needs of support for the health division increasing we are aiming to have a dedicated IT staff contact at the new site when complete.
Tribal-wide:
After an assessment of our entire infrastructure we made several improvements to our network. Our major goals were to increase bandwidth and improve our storage replace several aging servers, and disaster recovery methods. To achieve this, we installed 50 Megs of fiber, upgraded all of our SANS storage units, replaced equipment to have full redundancy, lightened our server load by deploying virtualization and installing new cooling units. We upgraded MS System Center, our management tool for the entire network. This improvement gives us the ability to push out updates, upgrades and better perform remote monitoring. Other projects that helped with remote access and improved communications were; the installation of MS Office 365, the switch to Cisco VOIP and installation of MS Lync utilizing CuciLync. I believe we are one of the first tribes to do O365. With several of the improvements we’ve made this past year, the upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to 2011 is one of our biggest moving forward. We utilize the system to manage enrollment and have begun integrating into a few divisions to cut down on waste and improve efficiency by going paperless. We do hope to spread this to as many departments as we can in the upcoming year allowing us to gather citizen data for all the departments in one location.
What else is on the agenda for you and your team coming up?
With so many changes made this past year, we will be focusing on maintaining sustainable levels and providing the best support possible. We are providing training to my staff allowing them to better understand all the upgraded systems we have in place, it’s critical in our industry with the constant rate of change. I am trying to work with wireless carriers to improve cellular service in our area by building a tower on our properties. We are on track to get fiber to our remote sites connecting them back to our main campus.
What can you tell us about how you implemented positive changes for the organization through technology?
When I started as IT Director I set up a 30, 60, and 90 day plan for the department. I wanted to assess, then restructure as needed, in order to better serve the tribe as well as ensure that we were up to date with all the latest IT hardware and programs, utilizing best practices. All of my IT staff attended ITIL training in order to streamline our internal communications and basically put everyone on the same page with terminology and processes. I also stress the importance in having my staff the best trained in the targeted areas they need to be. They continue to attend trainings on a regular basis to stay at the top of the field. They have been outstanding in the process of driving positive changes internally. Of course without funding none of this would have been possible. We were fortunate with a budget increase of over 200% based on a sound strategic IT plan. With so many efforts for change it was extremely important we have support from our Tribal Council. Without that we would not have been able to execute and make the improvements we have.
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