North Shore IT Collaborative

In July 2021 the North Shore IT Collaborative was formed. Seven communities – Danvers, Middleton, Topsfield, Wenham, Hamilton, Essex, and Manchester-by-the-Sea – joined together with guidance from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) to address an array of common information technology challenges among local governments. The collaborative defines annual goals and works as a group towards their achievement each year. Member communities retain local control and voting rights in collaborative decision making. The group identifies shared information technology needs and designs a regional approach to address them, leveraging distributed expertise and economies of scale. Respective Town leadership meets monthly to discuss ongoing projects and define the strategic direction of the collaborative. Benefits have been realized in the form of grant receipts, and bulk purchase cost savings. The group has raised over $700K in grant funding to date and has developed into a target for regional and technical grant programs. Cost savings have been achieved through the bulk purchase of cybersecurity and IT support services. Development of relationships with trusted strategic partners in the areas of information technology and information security has resulted through the purchasing and reference power of our organized group of communities.