John Landers, a Senior Information Technology professional with experience in The retail and non-retail sectors of businesses. Senior level management experience includes budgeting, planning, forecasting, integration and resource development.

John’s industry experience includes 18 years with the IBM Corporation operating in various management capacities including being the Hardware/Software Engineering Manager responsible for large retail accounts in the Metropolitan Boston area. Most recently, John held the position of VP of Information Technology for Filenes Department Stores, a $3.5 billion dollar retailer, where he led several company mergers and integrations; network infrastructure upgrades and technological upgrades to legacy application systems.

John’s achievements and business acumen earned him a spot in the 1996/97 Strathmore’s Who’s Who Registry of Business Leaders.
 
John has been involved in community fund raising activities for the United Way and the Police Benevolent Society. He was not only actively involved in sponsoring and coaching local youth hockey programs but also as their President and Treasurer.

DoIT has worked with the Division of Purchasing to issue new master price agreements for desktop hardware. As of November 1, agreements will be in place with IBM, Dell and HP. DoIT staff will be working with this three vendors over the next few weeks to develop standard configurations. As this information becomes available it will be posted in the Purchasing section of the DoIT website.

The MIS Unit at DCYF has developed a series of Excel spreadsheets (called "The Dashboard") that provide management data to administrators and supervisors to support day-to-day decision-making. The data is updated daily and automatically loads into the spreadsheet when the user opens it. The spreadsheets contain pivot tables and graphs to provide various 'views' of the data. The pivot tables and graphs automatically 'refresh' each time new data is loaded into the spreadsheet. Administrators and supervisors can use this tool to ensure that all youth have case plans developed in a timely manner. (sample screen shots) [Leon Saunders, DCYF Business Partner]

Since January of 2003, businesses have been able to file and pay Withholding, Sale/Use and Meals & Beverage taxes online. As of this September, all 18 business tax types for 33 tax codes are now available online. An Employee wage tax system also went online this quarter. Payments are automatically made via electronic funds transfer on the date of the businesses choosing. Over three thousand businesses are currently registered to use the system.

Over 42,000 filings amounting to $130 million dollars have been processed since the program started. Those numbers are expected to grow substantially with the expanded system. The online Tax Filing and a related "Dial to File" application were created without taxpayer expense on the RI.gov web portal as part of a zero-dollar partnership between the State of Rhode Island and New England Interactive. [Alan Dias, DoIT Business Partner]