CITY OF MEMPHIS
above all the users are all appreciating the benefits of a communications structure that is fit for purpose So, nothing had to stop because of Covid, though budgets were hit across all departments. “We had to save money,” Bailey admits, “but I think we have managed to find ways to scale back. I was glad not to let go of any of my staff as some departments may have had to: we just looked at how we were doing things and how we could do them differently. Remember that saving time always saves money.” Her readiness to listen to her team’s suggestions was demonstrated when her security team suggested an upgrade of the security platform. They brought a convincing business case for introducing an endpoint security platform that would give better antiviral performance than the legacy Symantec software – they also wanted to start compliance training for the staff to minimize the vulnerability of the system with so many people working from home. “They found a great program in CrowdStrike: it is trackable and user-friendly, it's a lot better for our purpose and we get to push it out to more endpoints in different divisions.” At their instigation, they started a monthly security newsletter to keep employees aware of issues, and started compliance training with the help of Infotech. Post-Covid, many efficiencies that have been introduced will continue to yield benefit. Nevertheless she looks forward to the day she can return to normal levels of spending allowing her to bring on more transformational ideas, “Innovation is always in my sights. We have a three-pronged approach, infrastructure, implementation, and innovation. We had to do so much infrastructure and implementation work in that first year, but now we can start to look at ways we can bring in automation, 254
March 2021
