County commissioners discussed issues with the county’s Web site Monday at a special called meeting in the Johnson County Courthouse.
After some discussion during the workshop portion of the meeting, commissioners tabled the only agenda item — “consideration of contract with National Direct Media concerning the Johnson County Web site creation and maintenance.”
Beeson asked that the item be tabled because Precinct 2 Commissioner John Matthews and Precinct 3 Commissioner Mark Carpenter were absent from the meeting.
All members at the meeting agreed the county would be best served if it had a formal contract with its Web provider.
Judge Roger Harmon said he called the meeting to address the lack of a contract between Johnson County and Sagentic Web Design, the company that has provided Web services to Johnson County for five years. Commissioners said the county needs a contract with its web provider, whether Sagentic, NDM or any other company.
Because the county and Sagentic do not have a contract, designs and software on the county Web site are not owned by the county but by the creator of the Web site, Sagentic, said Erica Haferkamp, who co-owns Sagentic, with her husband, Kenny, in an interview.
Should the county change Web providers, the new provider would not have access to proprietary software and programming created by Sagentic, said Kenny Haferkamp at the meeting
Any new provider would have to redesign the Web site from scratch, Kenny Haferkamp said.
Greg Potts, chief marketing officer for NDM, said a contract between the county and NDM would give the county 100 percent ownership of all Web site materials.
Kenny Haferkamp said the county owns rights to all the site’s content, but the county does not own rights to the programming software designed specifically by Sagentic.
With Harmon’s authorization, NDM contacted Sagentic Nov. 24 asking “to receive access to any and all of Johnson County Web site materials,” and “to include a complete back up of any/all Web sites and associated data/materials.”
Sagentic has said it will not give customized programming software to a business competitor.
On Nov. 17, Aaron Lett, a former employee of Sagentic who now works for NDM, received a call from a county ISS employee seeking help with the Web site. He then attempted to log onto the county Web site using an old password, Kenny Haferkamp said.
NDM was subsequently blocked from using the county Web site because of its attempt to log in five times with an incorrect password. Harmon then gave NDM written permission to contact Sagentic for its materials, he said.
The Haferkamps said they believe the former employee’s attempt to access Sagentic’s customized information was unauthorized. NDM was blocked because Sagentic’s brute force protection policy, they said, which covers multiple attempts to log in with an improper password.
Potts took exception to Haferkamp characterizing his employee’s attempt to access as unauthorized, calling the comment defamatory in a statement sent to the Times-Review on Monday.
He said Lett’s attempt to log in was authorized because “it was a request by the county to make changes on their behalf.”
He said Lett used information given to him by the county employee.
Erica Haferkamp said “everyone has a different way of doing business,” and Sagentic and NDM do business differently.
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