HOW THE PUBLIC SECTOR CAN LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY TO ACHIEVE SHORT- AND LONG-TERM OBJECTIVES
Using cloud computing and Google Workspace empowers local governments to provide better and more efficient services to constituents
Custom content for Cloudbakers by studioID victim of a ransomware attack that locked city employees out of Local governments are no their email accounts and prevented city residents from paying strangers to disruption. their property taxes, water bills and parking tickets — an attack that prompted the city to spend about $18 million to harden its Long before COVID-19 upended how the world lives, works and cyber defenses. learns, the public sector had plenty of experience with seismic events. From the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 to the What COVID-19, cyberattacks and other disruptions highlight Great Recession in 2008, public officials have had to navigate big, is the difficulty cities face in trying to balance immediate disruptive events — which usually come with a steep drop in tax challenges while still being able to pursue necessary goals to revenues — while still making progress toward ambitious smart improve the lives of all citizens. “There’s a long-term strategy city objectives designed to improve economic competitiveness, in the public sector to do things differently and better,” said environmental sustainability and overall quality of life. John Suffern, a strategic account executive at Cloudbakers, a Chicago-based Google Cloud Premier Partner. “Events like For example, one of the major challenges facing cities in recent COVID present an immediate problem in trying to achieve years has been the increasing frequency and sophistication of those long-term strategic goals. It’s hard to put up smart traffic cyberattacks. In May of 2019, for instance, Baltimore was the poles when you know your tax revenue base has just dropped.”
2 SMARTER USE OF TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE CITY LIFE
Technology plays an important role in how local governments new development encourages sustainability, walkability and manage and progress toward short- and long-term objectives. To economic development.” be sure, cities from New York to Los Angeles — and everywhere in between — have already aggressively implemented technology The potential benefits of a more robust use of technology in to do everything from provide self-service options for residents the public sector are many. At the same time, there are many and citizens seeking permits and unemployment benefits to potential risks, inefficiencies and costs associated with continuing improve management of parking and traffic to reduce congestion. to use existing technologies and processes. For instance, many municipal governments still rely on manual, paper-based systems “We’ve seen sensors installed in cities to help with a more to process and approve permits or to issue traffic tickets — an efficient traffic flow, and greater safety,” said Ray Gastil, director approach that generates reams of paper and makes it difficult of Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in to retrieve information quickly to share with constituents Pittsburgh. Gastil served as Pittsburgh’s city planning director and co-workers. In fact, the research firm IDC calculated that and also held similar positions in Seattle and New York. “In the average office worker spends 4.5 hours each week just city planning departments, you now see technology that searching for documents, time that could otherwise be spent helps with 3D envisioning of neighborhoods and ensures that serving constituents or pursuing more strategically valuable work.
3 THE RISKS OF THE STATUS QUO
Even those who have shifted from the analog world to digital tools face plenty of challenges and risks. Indeed, think of the last document on which you collaborated with multiple co-workers. Often, what seems like a straightforward task of incorporating all of a team’s insights and knowledge requires countless emails, phone calls, edits and document versions. Besides involving an inordinate amount of time-consuming communication, it’s a process that leaves plenty of opportunity for mistakes and misunderstanding — a recipe for inefficiency and an unnecessary hurdle to producing a team’s best work.
Lost time and productivity are real concerns — particularly as cities face declining revenues and budget cuts — but other inherent inadequacies of legacy technology solutions threaten even graver consequences. The aforementioned example of Baltimore’s victimization by cyber criminals demonstrates how legacy technologies leave many cities vulnerable to attacks.
4 COVID-19 has also illustrated other deficiencies of technology solutions commonly utilized by the public sector. For example, when COVID-19 forced a rapid shift to remote work, many public sector organizations were unable to adjust because of “The crux of why COVID their dependence on on-premise technologies. was such a big impact
“The crux of why COVID was such a big impact for a lot of for a lot of these these organizations is because they have old tools their teams have inherited over the years and they probably haven’t given organizations is because any thought to switching them out in a decade or more,” said they have old tools their Joe Romeo, a technical sales engineer at Cloudbakers. “And that transition from doing everything on-premise to doing teams have inherited everything remote is just not possible in a secure way with those tool sets.” over the years and they probably haven’t given any thought to switching them out in a decade or more.”
JOE ROMEO, TECHNICAL SALES ENGINEER AT CLOUDBAKERS
5 While there’s plenty of uncertainty about how COVID will affect A heavy reliance on legacy technology also saps the time and the ability of organizations to return to offices in the near and resources of public sector Information Technology (IT) leaders medium-term future, there’s plenty of evidence that remote and staff, particularly because they are forced to devote so much work is not just a temporary fix to get us through the pandemic. time to keeping their on-premise technology up and running. The research and consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics “What they’re living every day is maintenance and putting out forecasts that between 25 and 30 percent of the workforce will fires,” Romeo said. “They just don’t have the time to be proactive be working from home multiple days each week by the end and design process improvements or do the things they actually of 2021, up from the 3.6 percent of employees who worked want to do that are forward thinking.” half-time or more from home before the pandemic.
6 A BETTER WAY IN THE CLOUD
The productivity, security and flexibility challenges associated with existing technology solutions are very real. But they also don’t have to be the final word. The reality is that — just as is the case in the private sector — municipal governments can leverage technology in new and innovative ways to better serve constituents, be good stewards of tax dollars and achieve the kind of smart city goals that make localities more economically competitive and better places to live.
For many municipal governments, the foundation for fully leveraging technology to achieve their near and long-term objectives is moving from on-premise solutions to the cloud-computing services of Google Cloud.
This is a process that has been underway for years. In fact, in 2010 the federal government issued a Federal Cloud Computing Strategy that recommended the evaluation of cloud solutions as part of any new technology investment. More recently, that strategy was updated as part of the Cloud Smart initiative, which outlines specific requirements government agencies should consider as they seek to implement the benefits of cloud computing.
7 At the local level, a significant obstacle preventing a more target. “Google catches most of those emails before they ever robust embrace of cloud computing’s benefits is the perception reach the intended domain by using machine learning and that cloud collaboration tools are more susceptible to AI (artificial intelligence) processes,” Suffern said. “And once security breaches than on-premise solutions. There is an they’re caught, the entire Google ecosystem is alerted and understandable logic to this belief: because on-premise prevents them from reaching the domain in the first place. Even infrastructure is physically close, it’s easy to believe that if they do, the security features of Google Workspace keep proximity translates into greater control and security. But that them from reaching the end user because they quarantine perception underestimates the massive investment in talent emails for the IT administrators to look at.” and dollars that Google makes to secure its cloud solutions.
“Unless the county or city government or public institution has very sophisticated talent around networking and operations and server maintenance and security, there is no reasonable “Google catches most expectation that their on-premise infrastructure is going to of those emails before be anywhere near as secure as what Google has built out worldwide,” Romeo said. “Even if they do have that kind of they ever reach the talent, the question is whether you want them spending all of their time on maintenance and security rather than staying intended domain by focused on more valuable process improvements.” using machine learning As just one example, Suffern notes that successful ransomware and AI processes.” attacks almost always are the result of an end user opening up an email attachment from an unknown sender. While IT staff JOHN SUFFERN, STRATEGIC ACCOUNT work hard to educate their colleagues to avoid that trap, it’s far EXECUTIVE AT CLOUDBAKERS better when those emails never actually reach their intended
8 BETTER SECURITY, COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY WITH GOOGLE WORKSPACE
“When COVID hit, [the Not long ago, John Suffern was speaking with a public sector customer that Cloudbakers helped transition to Google customer] said to me Workspace. The government made the move to cloud computing before COVID-19, a fact that Suffern’s customer was that choosing Google particularly delighted about in retrospect. “When COVID hit, [the customer] said to me that choosing Google Workspace Workspace made them made them look like a genius because they were able to start look like a genius working remotely from the first day everybody worked from home,” Suffern said. because they were able With or without COVID, Google Workspace provides real to start working remotely value in terms of scalability, security, future innovation .” and collaboration — benefits that ultimately improve the from the first day lives of constituents. Indeed, earlier this year Forrester
JOHN SUFFERN, STRATEGIC ACCOUNT Consulting conducted an economic analysis of the impact EXECUTIVE AT CLOUDBAKERS of Google Workspace (then known as G Suite) on midmarket businesses, which serve as a pretty good proxy for many municipal governments.
9 At a high level, Forrester found that implementing Google Workspace delivered IT security efficiency gains of over $250,000, due largely to the built-in security features of Gmail, including malware, spam and phishing filters. Taken together, the security improvements allowed IT departments to deploy one full-time staffer to more valuable projects. Forrester found even more significant gains for IT productivity and efficiency as well as a reduced risk of data breaches. Productivity and efficiency gains totaled over $575,000, thanks to automated patching and reduced maintenance, while the value of the reduced risk of a data breach was over $330,000.
At $3.3 million, the value of the productivity tools provided by Google Workspace was also significant. While acutely obvious during COVID, the benefits of these tools are just as important to public sector workers during normal operations. For example, consider the collaboration capabilities that come from not having to email different versions of one document between colleagues. With Google Workspace, it’s possible to collectively edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other files simultaneously and in real-time and have all of the changes automatically saved.
10 Plenty of other Google Workspace features help public sector employees both collaborate more effectively within their own departments and communicate with outside partners and constituents. Internally, team calendars allow co-workers to quickly see when everyone is available for meetings; team mailing lists and project rooms within Google Chat and Gmail provide venues for collaboration when employees are working remotely or in different locations.
Google Meet gives government employees a tool for showing slides and documents to citizen groups via video while Google Forms provides an opportunity to collect feedback and opinions from an audience.
While these and other features deliver value to public sector organizations immediately, the move to Google Cloud is exceptionally important as a way to benefit from ongoing innovation. For example, one struggle that many municipalities have is to make sense of all of the data they collect in order to make impactful decisions for their constituents. With parking management, for instance, different city departments are often responsible for maintaining meters, collecting revenue and enforcing violations. The Google Cloud platform allows data collected in silos to be centralized in one place.
11 “Moving to Google Workspace as a Just as important, the platform also allows data to be analyzed with AI and machine learning so that city officials can make foundational move into decisions about issues like parking management that can lower congestion and improve economic activity. Those capabilities the cloud is the best will only get more robust as Google continues to innovate. The platform also positions public sector institutions to benefit from thing an organization innovations driven by other technology companies. can do to position “I think moving to Google Workspace as a foundational move into themselves to be the cloud is the best thing an organization can do to position themselves to be flexible in the future because it has so many flexible in the future.” connections into every important SaaS (software-as-a-service) and platform-as-a-service that’s available,” Romeo said. “The JOE ROMEO, TECHNICAL SALES ENGINEER AT CLOUDBAKERS opportunities to really change your infrastructure and modernize it on Google Cloud after you’re on Google Workspace is a huge win for everybody.”
12 WHY SUCCESSFUL CHANGE REQUIRES FOCUSED CHANGE MANAGEMENT
While it’s true that the implementation of Google Workspace can deliver significant benefits to public sector institutions and the constituents they serve, the reality is that a move to the cloud requires changes in both technology and employee behavior — and change is hard. While there is debate about the accuracy of the often-cited statistic that 70 percent of change initiatives fail, there is no controversy that getting any group of people to do something new and different is a big challenge.
But it’s a challenge that is also worthwhile. In fact, the research firm Prosci found that projects with superior change management produce as much as six-times better outcomes than those that have poor change management.
The difference between excellent and poor change management often comes down to defined processes and experience. Cloudbakers has extensive experience helping public and private organizations both transition to the cloud and get the most out of the implementation.
13 “[Cloudbakers change “Understanding what has taken place in the private sector — and management team we’ve done this hundreds of times — has allowed us to develop a transferable process we can bring to the public sector that understands] the is seamless,” Suffern said. “A lot of Google Cloud partners, or just big technology partners, are more intent on giving you the unique nuances of each tools and less intent on showing you how they work or why you project and who they’re would want to use them in the first place.” working with, so change To ensure that public sector clients get the most out of their move to Google Workspace, the Cloudbakers’ change and management is about adoption practice team is involved at the very beginning of implementation. Having a role from the start allows the relationship building.” Cloudbakers change management team to understand each
JOHN SUFFERN, STRATEGIC ACCOUNT client’s specific objectives and what they need to get out of EXECUTIVE AT CLOUDBAKERS their deployment of Google Workspace. “They get to learn the customer and understand the project. They’re not just brought in at the end with a cookie cutter approach to adoption,” Romeo said. “They understand the unique nuances of each project and who they’re working with, so change management is about relationship building.”
14 While there is no monolithic approach to implementation, collaborate with their Cloudbakers account manager and a Care Cloudbakers is able to draw upon a deep reservoir of training Desk to answer questions, provide resources and brainstorm and communication resources to help employees at all levels future objectives that can be achieved with Google Cloud. of technical aptitude. “We have communications and training plans that can be tweaked on a daily basis,” Suffern said. “It’s In many ways, it’s a balanced approach similar to the short- and all the way from Gmail 101 and Google Calendar 101 to really long-term objectives all public sector clients have as they work in-depth workshops that look at processes they’ve got in to be more responsive to their constituents. By collaborating place right now and brainstorming what a Google equivalent with Cloudbakers to leverage the capabilities of Google Cloud, might be.” municipalities can put themselves in position to navigate the inevitable short-term disruptions, challenges and opportunities Weekly status meetings ensure progress toward specific project while always moving toward the bigger goals that make cities milestones and even after a project is live, clients can still and towns great places to live.
15 Cloudbakers is a Google Cloud Premier Partner that has been helping organizations successfully migrate to cloud technologies for nearly a decade. Being one of only a few Google Cloud Premier Partners, their mix of 50% tech skills and 50% people skills means they bring together custom solutions and side-by-side support. Adopting and adapting to changing technology is a difference maker for any business — that’s what Cloudbakers is here to help with. They bring the cloud down to earth.
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