SKOWHEGAN — Skowhegan is set to upgrade its information technology system, replacing aging infrastructure that town officials said was putting municipal data at risk and, on at least one occasion, interrupting daily business.

The select board voted Tuesday to award a contract for the IT upgrade and ongoing services to the Norridgewock company IT4ME after considering four bids.

The bid awarded to IT4ME, which was not the lowest of four that the town received, has a one-time cost of $140,788 for a system upgrade and $7,792 monthly for service for one year with a possibility of renewal.

“We have to have this,” Town Manager Dawn DiBlasi said.

DiBlasi, who was hired in April 2024, said she was shocked at the town’s IT system and lack of IT staff when she started the job. DiBlasi had worked as Somerset County’s administrator from 2013-2023 and said the county, which has an in-house IT department with multiple employees, had much better, safer technology.

Some of the town’s problems are physical ones: The room that houses Skowhegan’s physical server is not secure and nothing is marked clearly, she said, and some employees’ computers are so old that they do not support anti-virus software.

Also concerning, DiBlasi said, is that the town is responsible for a large amount of data — regarding employees and residents — that could be vulnerable to breaches.

After one recent computer-related incident in recent months, Somerset County’s IT staff helped the town and installed a firewall as a temporary fix, DiBlasi said.

“We had people trying to get into our system, and that’s been very bad,” she said

Another computer-related issue meant only two employees at the town office could access their computers one day, DiBlasi said.

“Currently, our system is way below par,” DiBlasi said.

The server room in the municipal building is under a bathroom, police Chief David Bucknam said, and moving that is likely part of this project.

“One leak destroys the entire town’s infrastructure when it comes to daily operations here,” he said.

The request for proposals issued in March asked bidding companies for detailed information about several areas of their proposed upgrades. The town’s goals included improvements to the network, endpoint services, core computing, Microsoft Office software, and security and resilience measures, among others.

“At a high level, the project will achieve a new cloud-hosted domain and computing environment, modernizing outdated infrastructure and readying the Town’s IT for remote-servicing options,” the RFP said.

Other bids received were S.J. Rollins Technologies of Bangor at $132,250.42 for the upgrades and $5,643 monthly for service; Systems Engineering of Portland at $194,546.33 for the upgrades and $11,189.74 monthly for service; and Tech Kooks of Los Angeles, California, at $65,700 for the upgrades and $13,800 monthly for service.

The select board, which considered an analysis of the bids the town requested from a consultant, ruled out Systems Engineering due to the high cost. The board also ruled out Tech Kooks, although its upgrade cost was by far the lowest, as its bid was determined to be incomplete in some areas.

Though the S.J. Rollins bid was lower than IT4ME, the select board went with the Norridgewock business, in part, because it is in the Skowhegan area and it already has done work at the town’s new public safety building on East Madison Road.

Bucknam said he has been pleased with IT4ME’s work at the public safety building, which houses the police and fire departments. The company built out the entire IT system there and has been quick to respond to any problems, he said.

DiBlasi said the two bids ultimately considered for the contract generally satisfied the detailed specifications in the RFP, according to the consultant’s analysis.