There are two basic elements of technology that every municipality must have. Most places already do this, but it doesn’t hurt to highlight them.

The first is an expert to advise you and your governing body on technology issues. As with other experts you hire—a police chief to advise you on law enforcement concerns or an engineer to advise you on infrastructure issues—you must be able to trust the expert you hire in this case to give you their best advice based on a clear understanding of your municipality and its use of technology.

The second is data and system backups: to have sound and regularly tested procedures for data and system recovery. It is critical that you establish and execute policies that fit your organization’s level of technological complexity; not doing so is gross mismanagement.

You must routinely test your backup procedures to make sure they are working properly. That will give you confidence they will work when you experience a cybersecurity breach, ransomware, or a disaster incident. Your expert should decide what your backup regimen should be.