Nine Tech Priorities for a Modern State and Local Government

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Tech Priorities for a Modern State & Local Government 9 Tech Priorities for a Modern State & Local Government

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Contents

3 Executive Summary

4 State & Local IT Today

7 Not all Clouds are Created Equal

8 9 Tech Priorities for State & Local Government

9 Cybersecurity

11 How to Prepare for the Next Generation of Cyberattacks

12 As-a-Service

13 Modernizing Legacy IT

15 How Your Agency Can Get the Most Out of Enterprise Resource Platforms

16 Workforce Spotlight: Stephen Elkins, CIO, Austin

19 How to Leverage Modern Workforce Management Tools

20 Internet of Things

21 Data Analytics

23 How Your Agency Can Better Track Employee-Initiated Spending

24 IT Workforce

25 IT Management Structure

27 Achieving Seamless Services at the State and Local Level

28 Priorities Spotlight: Phil Bertolini, CIO, Oakland County

31 How to Innovate With Cloud

32 Broadband & Connectivity

33 Consolidation of IT Services

34 Conclusion

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35 About & Acknowledgments A GovLoop Guide

Executive Summary With information technology, it seems there’s always a catch: Technology continuously evolves, making it tough to stay up to date and on the cutting edge.

That’s especially true for state and local governments, which often stare down small budgets for IT and staff.

Topping state and local Chief Information Officers’ top 10 priorities list for 2017 is cybersecurity – again.

It’s held that spot on the National Association of State CIOs’ (NASCIO) list for three years in a row. Despite its spot at center stage, however, cybersecurity is not the only technology issue that state and local governments are thinking about.

Cloud technology, modernization of legacy IT systems, data analytics workforce shortages, management and consolidation are also top of mind for CIOs at the state and local levels. There’s some good news: Total IT spending across state and local governments is projected at $101.3 billion for 2017, up 1.4 percent from 2016. Cities are expected to spend $30.9 billion on IT this year, while counties are expected to spend $22 billion. Five areas seeing increased spending are cybersecurity, governance, citizen engagement, network broadband and connectivity, and cloud.

What’s more, it’s getting easier to procure modern IT. For instance, the National Association of State Procurement Officers recently established a cloud contract through its ValuePoint Cooperative Purchasing Organization. NASPO announced the first master agreements of the multi-state cooperative procurement in November 2016.

As we’ll see in this guide, a modern IT department at the state and local government level is not without its challenges, but it’s becoming more accessible, thanks to outside-the-box thinking, partnerships and strategies.

In this guide, we will examine nine priorities for a modern state and local government landscape: ▶▶ Cybersecurity ▶▶ As-a-Service offerings ▶▶ Legacy IT modernization ▶▶ Internet of Things ▶▶ Data analytics ▶▶ IT workforce ▶▶ IT management structure ▶▶ Broadband and connectivity ▶▶ Consolidation of IT services Many municipalities and states are already innovating in these areas. We’ll look at case studies for each priority, and provide tips for how you can get started on your own efforts. Additionally, through exclusive interviews, we’ll learn how Stephen Elkins, CIO for Austin, Texas, is tackling workforce shortages, and where Phil Bertolini, CIO for Oakland County, Mich., is focusing his team’s efforts.

Before we get to all that, though, we need to understand the current state and local IT landscape.

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State & Local IT Today IT at the state and local levels represents the diversity of what budgets, skilled workers and innovation can allow. While officials in small towns might covet the big budgets of big cities, the big cities feel they get short shrift compared with what’s available to their federal counterparts. The bottom line is that better, cheaper technology is opening doors in municipalities and state capitals nationwide.

For example, a Chicago suburb of 146,000 people developed the PulsePoint Respond application, which tracks and alerts CPR-certified volunteers so they can assist in an emergency. In Utah, the state developed a driver’s license practice exam that people can take using the Amazon Alexa device. It took six weeks to develop at no cost to the state, and it provides a better study aid for wannabe drivers.

Take the role of the CIO as an example of this evolution. NASCIO was founded in 1969 as the National Association for State Information Systems, clearly putting the emphasis on technology, not people. In 1989, it changed its name to the National Association of State Information Resource Executives, getting closer to its current iteration but still too narrow. In 2001, it became NASCIO in recognition of the growing leadership of professionals in the state IT realm. Today, CIOs have helped raise awareness about the importance of IT in all departments of an organization, not just within the IT shop.

“Information technology is no longer simply the infrastructure on which state government runs, but is an integral and integrated component in how government imagines, plans and delivers services,” said Mark Raymond, NASCIO President and Connecticut’s CIO. “IT is the fabric of state government and very often the face of state government.”

“Information technology is no longer simply the infrastructure on which state government runs, but is an integral and integrated component in how government imagines, plans and delivers services.”

Mark Raymond, NASCIO President & CIO of Connecticut

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A GovLoop Guide

But despite this progress, state and local governments still face many challenges, including the two we mentioned at the beginning of this section: budget and workforce constraints. To overcome those, said Phil Bertolini, CIO for Oakland County, Mich., “organizations should make sure they have strong business cases for everything.

The ability to work closely with the finance people to make sure they understand exactly what you’re trying to accomplish is paramount to success.”

“Government sectors in the past have always looked for the biggest, most prominent, secure player in the house and then procured a multi-hundredmillion-dollar solution with them,” said Peter Pirnejad, Director of Development Services for Palo Alto, Calif., at the first State of GovTech event last year, according to Government Technology. “That’s all changed. Now we’re looking for the more agile, the more niche solution that’s able to come and solve a specific problem.”

“You need to make sure the finance people and the IT people are working in concert so they’re getting to the right solution and striving to be successful because if they don’t get it, they don’t fund it,” he said.

All of this makes now an interesting time for state and local governments’ IT departments. A dichotomy persists. On the one hand, technologies such as cloud are bringing about new opportunities with data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. On the other, those same technologies are presenting new challenges, particularly in terms of security. For instance, what does it mean for county networks when they start connecting to hundreds of sensors to monitor automobile traffic on roadways? The answer is better insight into alleviating congestion, but also potential new points of entry for cyberattackers.

Each year since 2006, NASCIO has released its top 10 list of CIO priorities based on votes from its membership. They illustrate how far IT has come, the new battles it’s taking on and how some issues are simply constant. For instance, in 2006, just as today, the top priority was security.

Even as challenges remain largely the same, solutions are evolving. For instance, state and local governments are becoming more open to public/ private partnerships and to not signing contracts with only the best-known brands.

In the coming pages, we’ll look at how state and local officials are handling – and overcoming – these difficulties.

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Fact: Not all clouds are created equal With nearly 6 million Microsoft Government Cloud users across more than 7,000 federal, state and local government entities, Microsoft is committed to supporting the needs of government agencies and to building the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for government. When reviewing your cloud options, consider the facts and what cloud service providers are actually delivering.

Start your journey to the cloud by:  Checking the facts on compliance, security, and flexibility  Trying Azure Government for free  Contacting us about the Microsoft Government Cloud

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Learn more at: http://aka.ms/checkthefacts A GovLoop Guide

SPOTLIGHT

Not all Clouds are Created Equal An interview with Stuart McKee, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. State and Local Government, Microsoft Today, many IT leaders at the state and local government level understand that cloud computing is crucial to their IT service delivery and future growth. With the high stakes of meeting mission needs and delivering critical services to citizens, assessing and selecting a cloud provider is more important than ever to government today.

But you can’t pick any cloud vendor out there. When selecting a cloud provider, it is critical for state and local government agencies to review the facts to better understand what is being delivered in areas such as trust, security, compliance, and resiliency.

To help government understand how they can better pick the right cloud provider for them, GovLoop sat down with Stuart McKee, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. State and Local Government, Microsoft, to discuss the topics and facts that government needs to take a critical look at.

“It’s more obvious than ever that all clouds are not created equally,” McKee said. “State and local governments have to select a provider they can trust. So the question becomes, how do you measure trust?”

According to McKee, one thing that sets Microsoft apart is their transparency pillar. “We have really embraced the idea that as we deliver cloud capabilities, we’re asking government to trust us with their most sensitive data. And if that’s the case, then we should be willing to trust government with our most sensitive data, which is the core principle underneath our transparency agenda.”

McKee emphasized that trust in cloud vendors comes from a variety of areas, but most importantly, in that a vendor can prove they can provide high levels of security, compliance, and resiliency in their cloud offerings.

In terms of security, everybody knows that cyberthreats are continuing to evolve. “This means you need a cloud security provider who understands the threat landscape, has a history of protecting against them, and proven experience responding to them to give you more confidence in the security of your data,” McKee said.

In terms of compliance, requirements are complicated: from HIPAA to the IRS to CJIS Security Policy to the Department of Defense and FedRAMP, cloud service providers need to not only understand compliance standards but prove to government they can meet them. Microsoft is the only cloud service provider that offers a cloud

that is DoD Impact Level 5 Provisional Authorization (PA)-ready for infrastructure, platform, and productivity services.

“In the case of compliance, we have a lot of customers that are challenged” McKee said. “Their cost of compliance is fairly significant.

Just the processes that they’re going through to try and prove compliance, or deal with auditors, or, the operational overhead can be significant. But at Microsoft, we build the ability to deal with compliance into our products.”

Finally, in terms of resilience, a vendor’s cloud policies should be flexible and should enable governments to select the most suitable cloud types for delivering their services in a secure and robust manner.

“Most government today ask, how do we move forward responsibly, and how do we take advantage of these capabilities in the most responsible way? And at Microsoft we’re trying to help customers see the incremental steps they can take and how they can do that resiliently.” McKee went on to explain that government agencies don’t need to rip and replace, and throw away everything they’ve got when it comes to implementing a new cloud vendor. “What we are telling you is that there’s new capabilities that you can take advantage of right now, and Microsoft is here to help you do that.”

In short, McKee added, you need to closely review and understand what your cloud vendor can provide you, and make sure their offerings were built to meet the compliance and security demands necessary to support the missions of government, public safety, and defense.

With nearly 6 million Microsoft Government Cloud users across more than 7,000 federal, state and local government entities in the U.S. alone, Microsoft is committed to supporting the needs of government agencies and to building the most trusted, comprehensive cloud for government.

“When you choose the right cloud vendor,” McKee said, “you can do so much more. And with limited resources, what a great thing it is to spend less time on paperwork, and more time on saving lives instead of worrying about technology.”

9 Tech Priorities for a Modern State & Local Government

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The 9 Tech Priorities for a Modern State & Local Government â–¶

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A GovLoop Guide

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Cybersecurity What it Means: The National Institute of Standards and Technology succinctly defines “cybersecurity” as “the ability to protect or defend the use of cyberspace from cyberattacks.” But carrying out cybersecurity isn’t quite as straightforward.

Michael Daniel, then-Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator, laid out the complexities in a 2014 speech. “Local governments present a complex landscape for cybersecurity: They vary widely in governance structure, technical connectivity and resources available for securing systems and information,” he said.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

To beef up cybersecurity in Washington state, officials have opted to consider it an emergency management strategy, rather than an IT one. The state Emergency Management Division houses the cybersecurity initiative, and its executive reports to the head of that division, who reports to the Adjutant General, who is also the state Homeland Security Adviser. They started instituting this bottom-up approach in 2012.

“The primary goals of the program are to fully integrate cybersecurity into statewide emergency planning, training, preparation, and response procedures to address the unique (and ever-increasing) risks and vulnerabilities that have surfaced as a result of society’s growing dependence on networked systems,” according to the division’s website.

Another aspect of Washington’s approach is that it’s holistic. The Public Regional Information Security Event Management (PRISEM) system, for example, is a shared regional cybersecurity monitoring system that aggregates and processes cyber event data and sends alerts about threat conditions. It serves seven cities and counties, six maritime ports and two energy utilities. PRISEM is integrated with the Washington State Fusion Center. In 2013, the FBI passed information on the Chinese APT1 military hacker group to the center, where an analyst found that universities, companies and ports had been compromised.

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Employees no longer work only from desktops in the office.

Cybersecurity officials must take into account home and remote networks.

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PRISEM’s data-sharing approach is a smart one.

Governments can’t fight cyber incidents in a vacuum.

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State leaders need to set examples and a high bar for cybersecurity in their states by getting involved and leaving politics out of it.

Source: State Tech Magazine

Half of state and local governments experienced a breach in a 24-month period, according to a 2015 Ponemon Institute study.

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SECURITY THREATS MAY CHANGE, BUT OUR ABILITY TO STOP THEM DOES NOT.

As more higher-education organizations move data and distance learning process online, users expect their web experience to be always available and secure.

Akamai helps you safeguard your websites and other Internet-facing applications from the risks of downtime and data theft offering protection against the largest and most sophisticated attacks.

For more information, visit www.akamai.com/publicsector

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A GovLoop Guide

SPOTLIGHT

How to Prepare for the Next Generation of Cyberattacks An interview with Tony Lauro, Senior Enterprise Security Architect, Akamai Technologies

Today, cyberattacks around the world are becoming more prevalent and more complex. 2016 saw seven of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in history, and three of those attacks occurred in Q4. Hackers use DDoS attacks to render IT systems inoperable, and they are extremely difficult to defend against.

The introduction of a massive amount of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices into IT environments further complicates cybersecurity protocols.

But there are ways to stay vigilant. For state and local agencies, identifying web traffic within an IT environment, staying aware of common attackers and methods, and focusing on protecting the enterprise as a whole can help prevent DDoS attacks. GovLoop recently sat down with Tony Lauro, Senior Enterprise Security Architect at Akamai Technologies, to discuss the changing cybersecurity landscape and how to prevent harmful DDoS attacks and more. Akamai Technologies is a content delivery and cloud services provider.

First, Lauro discussed how state and local agencies must be able to distinguish what web traffic within a system is good, bad, or just ugly.

If a user within an environment, like a tax information database, is searching for a singular data point and is using the system normally, then this is probably safe traffic. If, however, a user is attempting to access large swaths of data or personnel records, then the user account may be compromised or malicious.

Properly monitoring user traffic is only going to get harder for state and local government because of the increasing amount of IoT devices connected to the web, according to Lauro. He noted, “Unless you have a method for identifying what baseline user activity looks like and creating security controls around good traffic, you won’t be able to weed out bad traffic or misconfigured traffic.”

Next, Lauro stressed that for state and local agencies to properly prevent cyberattacks, they need to gather intelligence on common threats and hackers targeting public sector agencies. There are currently search engines and botnets helping hackers infiltrate critical infrastructure, and agencies are constantly being threatened by phishing scams that use innocuous emails to breach firewalls.

already have a criminal track record for users, so when they attempt to attack your systems, we’re going to apply your security model, based on that previous activity. That way you are not waiting for them to attack you with full force.”

Lauro added that updating software and preventing it from being breached is crucial for agencies because it’s where important data is stored. But software is also the most difficult component of an IT system to defend because legitimate system users are also interacting with platform interfaces.

Lastly, an agency cannot be fully protected if it doesn’t take into account threats that can emerge from within the enterprise system.

Lauro compared this to a house’s front door being locked and guarded, but a contractor, who legitimately enters, may still make the entire house more vulnerable to attack. For agencies, this is comparable to when an employee opens up an innocuous email that turns out to be malware or a phishing campaign. Once a hacker uses this method to breach a system, they can move laterally within an environment and access sensitive data.

Akamai created their enterprise solutions to defend against these types of attacks by scanning outbound requests for any malicious software. The system then flags the activity before a browser can download the malware, notifies the administrator of a potential cyberattack in progress, and automatically blocks the attack. This is then coupled with the intelligence that Akamai gathers about common web threats to efficiently root out cyberattacks before they even occur.

State and local agencies must properly identify their incoming and outgoing web traffic, anticipate common threats, and defend the entire enterprise system in order to prevent future cyber breaches.

Agencies can leverage new technologies, industry intelligence, and automated processes to conserve spending and manpower, and by saving resources on IT functions and maintenance, state and local government will have a larger bandwidth to devote to serving their constituents.

Although it’s difficult to keep up with the latest cyberthreats, Akamai’s software can help government stay on top of trends by monitoring malicious IP addresses and cyberattacks around the world. “We

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As-a-Service What it Means: “As-a-Service” (aaS) is the ending attached to something being made available online. There are three main categories: platform-as-a-service, software-as-aservice and infrastructure-as-a-service, but more offerings are becoming available, such as containers- and email-as-a-service. Enabled by cloud computing, aaS is appealing to state and local agencies because it speeds development and simplifies operations. The result is a more efficient agency without a bigger budget.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

The Rogue Valley Transportation District in Medford, Ore., is using a farecollection-as-a-service solution called TouchPass from Delerrok for its public transportation, according to a March 2017 Government Computer News article. TouchPass is a cloud-based electronic fare collection system that charges organizations a fee per transaction, and that fee scales with ridership. Currently, the district has 23 fixed-route vehicles serving 1.3 million riders in seven cities, according to Government Computer News.

Using TouchPass, riders can pay with a fare card or their smartphone, which they fund through a web-based interface, saving the district from installing fare vending machines. Bus stations already had wireless access points, so all the agency had to add was readers on buses, the article states.

Besides saving money, the new system also provides the agency with more ridership information than it could collect before, such as the location, route, time and date of transactions.

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Inventory your infrastructure to understand what your agency uses, operating costs and contractual obligations.

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Review your agency’s goals and technology’s role in achieving them.

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Set an as-a-Service strategy, which should determine what processes will go to the cloud, when and in what order.

Cloud services hold the No. 3 spot on NASCIO’s State CIO Top Ten Priorities for 2017 list.

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A GovLoop Guide

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Modernizing Legacy IT What it Means: Technology evolves at impressive speeds, and it can be tough for government agencies to keep up. With the regulations, budget and workforce constraints that governments face, updating and upgrading legacy systems become extra challenging. The result is an IT shop with a mishmash of off-the-shelf software, homegrown applications and terabytes of data.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

One of the main ways that IT shops are modernizing is by implementing cloud technologies. About half of state and local agencies have integrated cloud into their strategies so far, according to a MeriTalk report. One of those is the appropriately named Gig Harbor, Wash. With a population of about 7,000 the city on the Puget Sound moved the client-server version of its enterprise resource planning software to one in the cloud in 2014, according to a 2015 Center for Digital Government Annual Thought Leadership paper.

The reason for the move? Less to deal with, the city’s Finance Director, David Rodenbach, said in the report, because it had to store fewer servers.

Other benefits of the move include regular and undisruptive upgrades and service pack uploads, which boosts security. Additionally, the city’s financial programs are more mobile now that the application can be accessed from any device with a web browser.

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Make modernization part of your overall strategy, not a one-off event.

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Plan for change management and be prepared to support both the legacy and new systems during transition periods.

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Train current and new employees on how to use new IT, and hire expert help.

Sources: Govtech and Carolinas IT

About 80 percent of IT resources go toward maintenance of existing IT operations and systems.

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Inefficiencies. Errors. Noncompliance. These are the serious risks of manually tracking your employees’ time and leave. So why wait until a crisis to update your systems? An automated KronosŽ workforce solution can give your state or municipality real-time visibility into labor costs to help control overtime, leave liability, and compliance risk. Learn more at kronos.com/government today.

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Š 2017 Kronos Incorporated. Kronos and the Kronos logo are registered trademarks of Kronos Incorporated or a related company. All rights reserved.

A GovLoop Guide

SPOTLIGHT

How Your Agency Can Get the Most Out of Enterprise Resource Platforms An interview with Linda Misegadis, Public Sector Industry Expert, Kronos

It’s no secret that public sector human resources departments can be challenging to run. Unlike most of the private sector, government HR operates in a highly-regulated environment that can be difficult to introduce and implement new, efficient processes in.

But as the public sector continues to innovate IT, HR processes are moving increasingly towards modernization. One tool in almost every government HR department across state and local organizations is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. This is a process management software that allows HR to leverage a system of integrated applications to process and manage information across the organization. It is also important to note an ERP isn’t a single solution that meets all of government’s requirements, but instead is a platform of the right solutions that meet specific business needs.

However, rules and regulations that exist in government make implementing an ERP solution rather difficult. To learn how government HR departments can overcome some of these challenges, GovLoop sat down with Linda Misegadis, Public Sector Industry Expert at Kronos, a workforce management company.

Misegadis explained that government is unique because it functions like a single employer with multiple industries. “This creates a challenge from a workforce management standpoint because you need to look at all the different business requirements needed for the various agencies,” she said. “So we might see specific public safety scheduling requirements in a sheriff, police, or fire department, and you would need to have a unique solution that would meet that requirement.”

Government leaders and department heads need a complete view of their workforce that includes time and attendance, absence management, and schedules. Without this visibility, agencies are left vulnerable to labor law compliance risk and cost overruns. Still, one of the biggest challenges that state and local government agencies face is not having the right solution to collect the data they need to gain this enterprise view.

In a time when data is so important and leaders need a holistic view, many agencies are trying to customize their already existing ERPs. Large enterprise systems are very complex and have a heavy reliance on already strapped IT departments. Any customization to the platform is costly and adds additional complexity to an already complex solution.

Most of these solutions were built for white collar employees who don’t have a lot of variance in the work management. Customization gets complicated for government agencies because not only does each department have a large population of hourly employees, they also have different workforce requirements that must be built into the ERP. Not only is creating custom code initially expensive, but agencies must make sure that with every upgrade or change to the system, each customization still works. “Many times what happens is rather than paying for costly customization, the various departments end up finding alternative solutions by buying their own technology or going back to using paper. But this doesn’t really allow them to accomplish what they want,” Misegadis explained.

In order to leverage ERP solutions while avoiding customization costs, Misegadis recommended agencies look to augment their current ERP platform with integration from a third-party solution. “When you look at a third-party solution, the vendor is really coming in and supplementing the ERP with a configurable solution that meets specific business requirements,” she said.

Kronos can meet with a government organization and identify the distinct workforce challenges that are being faced in the different departments. “What makes Kronos unique is that we do something called a business assessment where we bring our resources in at no cost to the customer, and we analyze all their business processes,” Misegadis explained. By doing a deep dive into each agency, Kronos is able to offer areas of operational improvement and an actual return on investment.

This enables governments to tighten up and automate their workforce management processes and allows employees to stop focusing on administrative tasks and be repurposed back into doing more substantive work.

Ultimately, that’s what makes Kronos unique in this space. They really understand the government workforce and how the public sector operates, and they are able to help organizations solve these nuanced problems they might be struggling with.

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Workforce Spotlight

Stephen Elkins CIO, Austin, Texas

Recruiting and retaining top talent is a top priority for many governments. In fact, 92 percent of state and local government human resources managers who responded to a 2016 survey by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence said those are their top priorities.

The city of Austin, Texas, is no different. â–ś 16

A GovLoop Guide

“I believe that the demand for IT workforce is exceeding the supply of IT workforce resources, and I think the gap is going to continue to increase [with] the baby boomers leaving the workforce and there not being a large supply coming behind those folks,” said Stephen Elkins, Austin’s CIO, in an interview with GovLoop.

What’s more, the type of workers coming into IT have different preferences and expectations. “We have the millennials, or the next generation, who like to work differently, who like open space, whereas if you walk through my office today, you’ll see that we have high cubes, we have the shower-glass doors, so it’s a little more private, whereas this next generation wants open space, wants more collaboration,” Elkins said.

“

In an effort to ensure that the city government continues to have the IT personnel it needs, he implemented a flexible sourcing approach about two years ago. This means that Elkins focuses more on talent than worker classification.

path that may be IT-related,” he said. “We try to come up with meaningful work, not just job shadowing.”

For example, he tasked 20 high school interns with developing a useful application and brought in a local entrepreneur to evaluate it, “Shark Tank”-style. The businessman was so impressed, he offered to host the applications in his environment so the interns could continue building them, Elkins said.

Ideally, Elkins would start bringing kids in from middle schools. “I think by the time you get to high school students, the majority of them may already have their college career determined,” he said. “To grow more IT people, you need to get to people sooner to help them with the decision.”

Then you do high school internships to get them exposure, then you do college internships to keep them interested and then you create a pipeline for interviewing for a job after graduation.

“We want to change the technology and if we’re not able to provide the support in-house, then that’s when we apply flexible sourcing to bring in the right resources to help us with the change in technology.”

“Let’s figure out the right mix of resources to get the job done, whether we look at full-time employees, we look at temps, contractors, we look at managed services,” Elkins said. “We want to change the technology and if we’re not able to provide the support in-house, then that’s when we apply flexible sourcing to bring in the right resources to help us with the change in technology.”

Three years ago, the city hired an Innovation Officer with whom Elkins has been working on a fellowship program.

Through that, he hires highly skilled workers for a short period to help see through a particular project that his shop can’t get to.

“The majority of the work we do is operational work, and so there may be some innovative things that need to get done so we have this fellows program,” said Elkins, who oversees 320 FTEs and about 15 fellows in addition to many contractors and temporary workers.

Another recent move Elkins made was to start a high school internship program. “The idea behind that was to get them exposed to technology, get them exposed to government IT and maybe help them to choose a career

Elkins is also looking to work with city veterans organizations to cultivate IT careers for returning service members, and he’s working with local colleges on a technology hiring initiative that would retool students to work in IT even if they chose another career path. “Those are things we’re doing to try to shape the workforce,” he said. “It’s a lot of partnering that has to happen. The workforce is not just the up-and-coming folks but there’s also opportunities to retool existing folks.”

Other initiatives he’s taken on include implementing teleworking and agile development processes to meet the preferred work processes of the younger generation.

He’s staring down a lot of change, but “I don’t think we have a choice. I think we have to change, and the government space has to match the private-sector space,” Elkins said. “We have a ton of technology companies in the Austin area, so we’re competing with the Apples, the Dells, the IBMs, all these companies that are here, plus all the cool startups, so we have to attract people because they want to perform a civic duty. They want to be part of the government, but the work environment has to be something that’s acceptable to them.”

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SPOTLIGHT

How to Leverage Modern Workforce Management Tools at Your Agency An interview with Sherry Amos, Director of Education and Government Market Development, Workday The role of human resources in state and local government has shifted from a strictly administrative entity to one that is more holistically involved in all aspects of government employment. As HR’s function in government agencies continues to evolve, the solutions and processes they use to get the job done must modernize as well.

To learn more about solutions that can help evolving state and local government HR departments succeed, GovLoop sat down with Sherry Amos, Director of Education and Government Market Development at Workday, a leader in strategic workforce planning and analytics.

Government HR started changing in the years after the most recent economic recession. “The recession brought significant layoffs in various areas of government, specifically at the state and local level,” Amos explained. “Budget cuts and staffing count reductions meant that during those years, HR was trying to manage a changing workforce that was difficult to recruit for and bring in new talent.”

It was during this time that government HR leaders started thinking about how they could bring modern workforce management practices and tools into the government sphere. Instead of focusing solely on the administrative components of government human resources, leaders were able to start practicing proactive recruitment efforts and ways they could improve the employment cycle in government.

However, in order to truly achieve a more proactive approach to HR, government still needs to improve the way they leverage modern technology solutions. Older systems in HR departments often use a core payroll system that can’t handle new add-ons like recruiting, performance management, or compensation management. “As a result, HR departments have begun looking at modern solutions to bring all of those capabilities into a unified environment, and more importantly, into a cloud environment,” Amos said.

Many agencies are starting to see the benefits of cloud technology and have moved various workloads to the cloud. “Leveraging cloud solutions allows HR leaders to build and sustain a government workforce for the future,” Amos said.

She also offered two main ways that cloud solutions improve efficiency and effectiveness in HR processes. First, it reduces the requirement and cost for the government to operate their own datacenters. “Early on, we saw the efficiencies of datacenter consolidation, reducing infrastructure and over time, the cost savings, benefits, and efficiencies of letting third parties manage that

infrastructure became quite clear to government,” she said. The cost savings offered by cloud-based workforce management solutions can provide relief for over-stretched budgets as many states are reporting general fund revenues below projections thus far for FY2017.

Second, cloud providers can invest much more into security infrastructure than government agencies can by themselves. “For governments, it’s difficult to keep up with security when they have such a wide array of system types, so it is critical that they start getting comfortable with the paradigm of cloud security.” With security topping NASCIO’s State CIO Top 10 Priorities for 2017 state and local HR teams can leverage third party security practices to protect workforce data without compromising functionality.

Additionally, shared services across the government enterprise are helping HR departments, and government as a whole, implement cloud solutions more effectively. Leveraging shared services and horizontal functions across the government allows agencies to utilize one solution that is serving the entire enterprise. This is particularly important in state and local governments because it allows agencies to cohesively embrace modern workforce management programs and tools in a seemingly disjointed enterprise.

Workday can help government achieve modern workforce management practices through its unique approach to workforce management. “What makes Workday stand out is that we start with a clean sheet of paper in our design solution,” Amos explained.

Workday operates as a unified model that compiles all the data and security into one archetype that is delivered with a common set of business processes across state and local agencies.

Additionally, Workday’s solution is mobile at the core. “This is another key differentiator for us because we build our solutions to be mobile first so agencies don’t have to acquire additional technology to generate mobile capabilities for their workforce,” Amos explained.

This enables increased productivity by allowing employees to perform traditionally paper-based task like submitting expense reports, reviewing their paycheck, or signing up for enrollment benefits from their phone or mobile device.

Looking forward, state and local governments have to be ready to embrace these new technologies in order to drive efficiency.

Concluded Amos, “Once government gets comfortable with cloud and their major administrative systems being in the cloud, and once they start to see what the shared service environment can deliver, they can clearly see the benefits gained and innovation that will keep them modernized into the future.”

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4

Internet of Things What it Means: In its simplest form, the Internet of Things (IoT) involves the connection of just about anything to the internet. This could be as obvious as a smartphone or as unexpected as the drill of an oil rig. By 2020, IoT devices, excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones, will number 26 billion and IoT will be a $267 billon industry. State and local governments are using this technology to become smarter, greener and more efficient.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

Chicago is using hundreds of sensors on streetlight poles to tackle common city problems such as traffic, air pollution and flooding. The city’s Array of Things initiative will involve interactive, modular sensor boxes that can collect data in real time on Chicago’s environment, infrastructure and activity. For instance, they will monitor temperature, humidity, wind noise, air quality and traffic from automobiles, pedestrians and bikes, according to StateTech magazine.

The data from the sensors will transmit over the cellular network to Argonne National Laboratory’s central database. The city will use the information to help the local business alliance understand traffic patterns around the clock and year-round so business owners can adjust their hours accordingly. Additionally, the city will use the data to fine-tune traffic signals and relieve congestion and air quality downtown. Some formerly industrial and increasingly residential neighborhoods will get granular information on the effects of weather on the movement of air pollution from industrial plants and local highways on different days, according to StateTech.

Argonne will use the data to study climate change in an urban environment with lakes and highways, while a third partner, the University of Chicago, plans to study the relationship between air quality and cardiovascular health, according to the magazine.

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53 percent of state CIOs are in informal discussions about implementing IoT, according to NASCIO. A GovLoop Guide

▶

Strategize. Clearly state a problem to address with IoT and the steps, devices and expertise you need to carry the project through.

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Define how sensors will communicate with legacy and other devices and what data format you’ll use.

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Implement security, governance and policy across each layer.

Source: Forbes

5

Data Analytics What it Means: Data analytics holds the seventh spot on NASCIO’s top 10 list of priorities for CIOs in 2017. Techopedia defines “data analytics” as “qualitative and quantitative techniques and processes used to enhance productivity and business gain.”

In plain language, it means studying datasets to gain insight and actionable knowledge about the information. Several areas where data and analytics are likely to draw value at the state and local levels are data transparency, tax fraud and transportation logistics.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

In 2016, the Massachusetts Office of the State Auditor received a NASCIO State IT Recognition Award for its Rules-Based Risk Engine (RBRE) analytics tool for audits. “The RBRE provides a collaborative workspace that leverages the traditional skills of our auditors and investigators with the power of data analytics to dramatically increase our ability to gather, deploy, and preserve information,” according to a NASCIO paper.

RBRE connects to individual source databases using a standardized transactional method, allowing disparate data sources to be combined, according to the paper. “The tool identifies risky transactions in those source databases using queries that express a range of business rules, calculates the weight of each transaction’s risk, assigns a share of that risk weight to entities associated with the transaction, and aggregates the results to identify the entities with the most risk,” the paper says.

One success story came out of the commonwealth’s MassHealth program, which combines Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the state. Following an audit with RBRE, MassHealth began recouping $233 million in questioned payments, and the state was able to reduce annual funding to MassHealth by approximately $11 million per year. The result is an annual cost savings of about $50 million because of a single audit.

▶

Use the open source Analytics.usa.gov dashboard as a jumping-off point for data analytics projects.

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Partner with a university that has analytics expertise and tools.

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Build an analytics approach with three elements at its foundation: process, people and technology.

52 percent of respondents to NASCIO’s 2016 State CIO Survey said their state has deployed some data analytics capabilities.

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Transform the way your agency tackles travel and spend management.

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Beyond Automation | Completely Connected | Powerful Insights

SPOTLIGHT

How Your Agency Can Better Track Employee-Initiated Spending An interview with Matt Gibbons, Senior Director of Sales for Public Sector, Concur Legacy systems and processes affect almost every facet of government. While you probably know the negative ramifications legacy systems can have on security and efficiency, you may be less aware of how old processes are having a direct negative impact on government spend management.

In particular, processes surrounding employee-initiated spending are in need of an update to have more efficient and holistic spend management. Essentially, employee-initiated spending is anything an employee is empowered to spend money on that their employer is responsible to pay. This spending could be for office supplies not requiring a purchase order, an employee’s local mileage costs, or any costs associated with international business trips. This kind of spending is inherent to all sectors, but as state and local governments face decreases in funding, it becomes increasingly important for them to understand and control employee-initiated spending, which impacts the overall financial health of their agency.

To better understand these challenges and how state and local governments can overcome them, GovLoop sat down with Matt Gibbons, Senior Director of Sales for Public Sector at Concur, a company that provides cloud-based travel and expense management solutions.

Today, a large number of state and local governments have outdated systems and processes, and many are still using paperbased processes to capture information around employee-initiated spending. “This creates a series of challenges for state and local governments because these systems rely heavily on manual processes that typically take longer to complete and cost more when you start adding human capital into it,” Gibbons explained.

In addition to the burden of manual processes, outdated systems also make it difficult for agencies to meet compliance requirements regarding how they spend taxpayer dollars. “If you don’t have the granularity on what’s being spent, you can’t report on it, and this creates voids in reporting that are problematic,” said Gibbons.

Capturing the data involved in employee-initiated spending is particularly important to state and local agencies because it is one of the largest transactional aspects of government spend. Through travel and procurement cards, government has empowered employees to go out and spend a certain amount. However, agencies still need to know the details of what is being spent for compliance and reporting requirements, which is historically a challenge for state and local governments because of the wide range of government mandates with which they must comply.

“Capturing information and having the employee go through a manual process to input the data into a system is cumbersome, time consuming and prone to errors,” Gibbons explained. Conversely, leveraging an automated system which allows data to flow seamlessly back into the ERP system offers significant advantages to organizations.

Concur offers an automated solution that allows state and local entities of all sizes to manage employee-initiated spend through a single platform where agencies’ existing ERP, human resources, and accounting systems connect, forming a complete view of agency spend. Bringing all the data together is just part of managing employee-initiated spending. For a spend management solution to truly work for an agency, it should be flexible, scalable and tied to policy to assure compliance and ultimately a successful solution implementation.

As a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, there’s no need to invest in additional infrastructure for an agency to utilize Concur Travel and Expense. “It only takes a few months for organizations to stand up our solution,” Gibbons said. “As a result, agencies don’t have large upfront expenses associated with new software and hardware environments.” This allows agencies employing the solution to quickly recognize value.

To get the most out of the platform, Gibbons recommended really understanding the pain points at your agency. “Once you understand what parts of your processes are outdated, you can start mapping out where you want to go.” From there, agencies can configure the system and roll it out in a way that gives the agency the most value.

Looking forward, Gibbons explained that state and local governments have to embrace these systems that are designed to meet the needs of their organizations and offer continuous benefits. Manual systems no longer have to hinder agencies’ efficiency. “It’s time that agencies start embracing the change that will benefit the organization and the people they serve, whether it be state, city, county, or local municipalities,” he concluded.

A connected, automated spend management solution allows agencies complete visibility into employee-initiated spending and their overall financial health. When state and local agencies have a holistic picture, they can assure compliance with government mandates, provide total transparency into spending, maximize spending for taxpayer value and redirect more resources into citizen services.

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6

IT Workforce What it Means: As nearly half of public servants approach retirement age, governments are scrambling to find new talent. Yet as agencies compete for new hires, they often find that recruitment time, pay and benefits fall short of private-sector equivalents. What’s more, today’s IT workforce has expectations for mobility and innovation, changing the landscape of how IT shops look and function.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

CIOs are beginning to look for employees outside the traditional IT box.

For instance, in Minnesota, although the state will continue to run large, mission-critical systems, it will also adopt more hosted platforms, and that means workers can create solutions without having to write code or set up servers, according to Government Technology.

“We’re looking for folks who may not have been trained in a technical space, but they have a real passion for the work they’re doing and they find themselves drawn into technology,” Minnesota CIO Tom Baden told Government Technology. “That’s an area where I’m seeing a positive inflow into IT.” In fact, recruiting IT outsiders can drive innovation. That’s because the workers can focus less on building systems and more on creating solutions.

Additionally, these “unconventional employees” bring new perspectives and understandings of the end user – the citizens.

54 percent of respondents to the State & Local Government Workforce: 2016 Trends say from the Center for State and Local Government Excellence report that retirements were higher in 2015 than in 2014.

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A GovLoop Guide

▶

Consider taking advantage of more contractors and temporary workers to offset full-time employees.

▶

Revamp the pay scale and benefits packages to better align with those of the private sector, or entice workers with flexible work hours, telework opportunities and training opportunities.

▶

Make the office an inviting place to be by knocking down cubicle walls and making a more open floor plan – something many employees prefer and seek out in a work environment.

7

IT Management Structure What it Means: Without the right IT management structure, accountability and communication suffer. An effective, efficient management process emphasizes the importance of thorough planning, competent risk management, strict accountability for meeting business and program goals, and cost-effective lifecycle management. When you improve IT management, you improve delivery of services to the public, employees and other governments.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

IT service management (ITSM) is part of the broader North Carolina Statewide Architecture Framework. It’s “a shared service that provides a cost-effective, reliable, scalable, secure, feature-rich software tool that can be used by state agencies to manage Incidents, Service Requests, Problems, and Changes in support of customers and lines of business,” according to a state website.

The service uses the BMC Remedy ITSM suite of tools, which is compliant with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, a set of practices for aligning IT service with business needs. Features include incident management, which is designed to restore service to customers as quickly as possible; problem management, including investigations from detection to eradication; change management, which tracks scheduled and planned infrastructure changes and has a built-in approval process; and service-level management, which tracks commitments with customers and vendors in order to quickly correct any weaknesses.

Ten service desks and five state agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services and Public Instruction, are ITSM customers.

▶

Ensure that the IT you’re using aligns with business and mission goals – and be willing to change it if it doesn’t.

▶

Create a governance framework that offers transparency into what IT is being used.

▶

Be willing to work with third parties to get the resources you need.

Source: Governing

IT and technology management ranked third in Route Fifty’s study of the 2016 Top Management Challenges for State and Local Government.

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Technology for people who are changing our world.

3,000 public sector agencies use Granicus to connect with citizens.

Granicus helps turn government missions into quantifiable realities. Granicus products connect more than 150 million people, creating a powerful network to enhance government transparency and citizen engagement. By optimizing decision-making processes, Granicus strives to help government realize better outcomes and have a greater impact for the citizens they serve.

Learn more at granicus.com.

SPOTLIGHT

Achieving Seamless Services at the State and Local Level An interview with Natalie Fedie, Vice President of Customer Success, Granicus For state and local government, engaging constituents is about creating an experience that meets constituent needs while also allowing agencies to do more with less. As constituent demands increase, state and local agencies should explore customer experience strategies and options to achieve this critical balance.

In an interview with GovLoop, Natalie Fedie, Vice President of Customer Success at Granicus, a leader in government cloud solutions, discussed how state and local governments use customer experience-centered solutions to both deliver better services to constituents while making the jobs of agency staff much easier.

One major challenge for state and local agencies is delivering seamless and integrated services. Often, constituent requests or inquiries are processed through several departments, with multiple employees handling different facets of the same request.

This process makes it especially difficult to track who’s working on the request and ensure consistent responses from the agency to the constituent. “Constituents are served by multiple agencies throughout the state,” Fedie said. “If they had more of a customercentric view, however, they would be able to deliver better services.”

That’s why Fedie emphasized the importance of streamlined approaches rather than siloes to improve the process for both agency staff and the constituents. In this case, streamlining means more efficient methods to enable employees to deliver quicker and better services. “You can have the best systems in place to provide the best service, because those technologies are available today,” Fedie said. “But, those systems have to connect to provide a streamlined approach to the customer experience so that the customer can access multiple departments, easily, at the same time.”

The City of North Richland Hills, Texas, faced this same predicament in 2015. Like many of its counterparts across the country, the city did many processes, like meetings, manually. Agency staff would place copies of agenda items on a long table in the order in which they were meant to go, spending more time making sure documents were in the correct order.

So in 2015, the city decided to invest in a new strategy to receive and review agendas. Using Granicus’s Meeting and Agenda solutions, the city went from worrying about paper documents for meetings and agendas to enabling every staff member to receive their agenda on their iPads and electronic devices.

Ultimately, the city saved about 12,000 paper sheets per month and saved 18 trees per year by not printing agendas. Additionally, the city saves one full day per meeting in preparation and assembly time.

Solutions like Granicus’ Meeting and Agenda Suite help clerks, board secretaries, agenda coordinators and other government staffers complete their pre and post-meeting process tasks faster and more easily. The software can streamline workflows, promote cross-departmental communication and collaboration and establish meaningful connections with constituents.

With customer experience cloud solutions to support agency personnel in providing quality constituent services, your agency can better: manage your entire legislative process from end-to-end; digitally assemble legislation and agenda packets for upcoming meetings; reduce the time spent producing minutes, while livecapturing actions, votes and notes; live-stream public meetings; and save on printing costs and time by digitally delivering public meeting packets instead of manually.

Customer experience solutions are empowering state and local agencies to turn tedious, cumbersome processes into seamless interactions with constituents. Take processes like setting meeting agendas, for example. Constituents attend meetings with their state and local government representatives to understand issues in their area and voice their most pressing concerns.

Additionally, Granicus can help your agency walk through your customer service journey to identify areas that need improvement.

“When we walk through the customer experiences and their touch points with the agencies, we can actually make the user experience better and then in turn make better operational decisions to streamline the process behind the scenes,” Fedie said.

But internal waste, like time on manual processes and paper can be inefficient. The tedious processes to print the documents, manage them and help all employees keep track of the documents as well as events in the meeting agendas can take crucial time away from engaging with the constituents. Not to mention so much paper is a waste of the precious few resources state and local agencies have.

State and local government needs solutions that enable them to meet constituent needs while allowing staff to do more with less.

Customer experience software like Granicus’s Meeting and Agenda Suite can help turn a wasteful, tedious paper process into a seamless, digital interaction with constituents. Ultimately, this results in more informed decision making, a more informed public and a process that produces a happier and more efficient agency.

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Priorities Spotlight

Phil Bertolini

CIO, Oakland County, Michigan Using our list of priorities, we asked Phil Bertolini, CIO for Oakland County, Mich., to rank them. â–ś 28

A GovLoop Guide

Unsurprisingly, Bertolini put cybersecurity at the top. “It is the No. 1 issue we’re dealing with. We are constantly being attacked. Just because we’re local government doesn’t mean we get any less attacked than state or feds,” Bertolini said. “As a matter of fact, I think the cyberattackers out there are going after local government because they believe we’re probably the least protected.”

He’d like to get the federal government to work more closely with local governments, rather than providing funds that trickle down through state governments. “I think we could work better if we were actually in a direct relationship with the federal government,” Bertolini said.

No. 2 on his list is recruitment and retention of quality IT workers. “The competition for technology people is so steep today, especially from the private sector,” Bertolini said.

“We’re struggling to find the right IT people and whether they understand that government is an innovative place.”

The recession of the late 2000s hit Michigan hard, and forced Bertolini to get creative. During the downturn, his department was down 30 people.

“We continued to invest in technology during the recession because we knew that was one way we were going to be able to deliver services even with a shrinking human resource base,” he said.

Today, investment in technology has grown and the IT department has significant capital projects under way, Bertolini said. For example, “we are overhauling our entire communications infrastructure so we’re going to do more of a universal communications and collaboration where we’re going to tie all of our communications together – wireless, wired, cell, you name it – it’s all going to be unified,” he said.

Staffing has increased, and Bertolini now oversees 168 full-time workers and about 50 contractors. He’s attracting workers by offering flexible work hours, fourby-10 workweeks and teleworking, and by redesigning the physical environment to foster collaboration.

Coming in third are shared services and cloud, which he said are things he expects to see more of in the next few years. “What you’re going to see … is much greater use of cost-effective solutions like the cloud,” Bertolini said.

“We’re going to rely on our peers to maybe do disaster recovery together instead of doing it alone. We’re not necessarily going to have to build everything. We’re

going to share more. There’s going to be much more of a collaborative nature.”

Fourth is data analytics, which helps Bertolini’s team drive decision-making. “We’ve been doing data warehousing since the mid-’90s, so using large amounts of data to drive decisions is not new,” he said. “The technologies that are available that could put more or disparate types of data are much more robust today, but big data has always been used to make decisions. We have portals and dashboards and all the things that go along with that to help us.”

Next up is IoT, which is an area that gives him pause. “I struggle with the Internet of Things because when you talk about attaching so many devices to the internet – so many whatevers to the internet – it’s going to become a capacity issue before it’s over with, but it’s also a security issue,” Bertolini said. For example, what if someone hacks smart signage during an evacuation of the county, changing the direction of the arrows pointing people to safety, he said.

“I do believe that we will have more and more devices connected to the internet. I think the Internet of Things will play an important role,” Bertolini said. “We still need to be cautious about how fast we move into that arena.”

IT management structure comes in sixth, even though it’s something that needs to be in place in order to make the other priorities happen. “It should be something that’s more strategic to the organization, not just ‘I put PCs on desks and make email work,’” Bertolini said. “It’s much more strategic, and there’s a significant value to the organization to have a highly functioning IT department that builds technologies that enable the ability for county employees, or government employees, to deliver services to the citizens because that’s really why we exist – to deliver services.”

Modernization takes the last slot. “It’s a battle we’re never going to win,” he said. “You can’t modernize them all at once. Think about it: In one year I modernize every technology I have, so that means three, four, five years from now, I’m going to have to do that again. What you do is you strategically modernize and you strategically upgrade technologies over time so it doesn’t all hit you at one time. Modernization is important for older technologies, but it isn’t necessarily a shotgun approach and it will be something that will always be on the list.”

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A GovLoop Guide

SPOTLIGHT

How to Innovate with Cloud An interview with Kim Majerus, Leader of State and Local Government Business at Amazon Web Services Constrained budgets, increasing workloads, and rising citizen expectations. It’s no secret that state and local governments have to do more with less in today’s environment. To accomplish that task, many agencies are turning to their data to understand how to increase efficiencies and better understand their landscape. But when they use traditional data processes and rely on legacy tools, those agencies often find themselves increasing their workloads as they try to maintain the ever-increasing volume of data.

In a recent interview, Kim Majerus, Leader of State and Local Government Business at Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading commercial cloud provider, impressed that agencies have to move beyond data collection and start analyzing their data to truly understand their environment. “Instead of doing, they have to be solving,” Majerus said.

In other words, city and state governments can no longer dedicate constrained resources to managing physical servers, provisioning additional services, providing patch updates, and other maintenance tasks. That’s where cloud can help. Organizations and governments worldwide are repurposing infrastructure budgets to invest in innovation. “It allows agencies to move to the next generation to collect, analyze, and derive insights from their data,” Majerus said. “It lets them solve citizens’ problems.”

Cloud computing automates and simplifies many of the maintenance tasks associated with traditional infrastructure and data management solutions. This allows IT administrators to focus on more strategic issues, while simultaneously streamlining workflows and increasing collaboration among staff.

Majerus offered an example to showcase how cloud helps state and local governments move beyond data collection to analytics:

“Before, they were very siloed in nature,” Majerus said. “Now they can make real-time decisions based not only on historical data, but realtime data that they’re collecting through sensors.”

With AWS Cloud collecting and analyzing complex data from across Los Angeles, the five cybersecurity teams that support the city can more effectively manage their security operations and process security events across departments faster, resulting in faster response times.

Other state and local agencies are starting to reap similar rewards through cloud adoption. However, Majerus cautioned against simply equating cloud adoption with innovation. To truly gain the benefits of cloud, agencies will need to partner with a cloud provider that can offer services and support tailored to agency’s specific needs.

That’s why AWS offers more than 90 services within its cloud portfolio.

“We’re customer-obsessed,” said Majerus. “We’re constantly iterating on the services we offer to our customers, in fact 90 percent of our product roadmap comes from customer feedback.”

For many state and local agencies, security and compliance are also top concerns. They need cloud providers like AWS who can meet a range of security regulations and standards, including HIPAA and FedRAMP certifications, in order to ensure government data remains secure.

Finally, given the increased reliance on the Internet of Things to monitor government networks and the infrastructures they maintain, agencies need a cloud solution that can integrate a variety of data formats from across myriad sensors and tools. Plus, they’ll need a scalable cloud environment that can quickly expand as these connected devices proliferate, without dramatically increasing costs.

The city of Los Angeles is one of the largest targets for cyberattacks in the nation. Due to the size of the city’s operations — 35,000 employees distributed across 37 different departments — on an average day, the city records more than 130 million security messages from more than 120,000 connected devices.

But for those just beginning their cloud journey, the environment can be daunting. The everchanging landscape of cloud options, attributes, and providers can make it challenging for those building a customized, prescriptive cloud infrastructure because there is no offthe-shelf solution. To make sure you’re getting the most out of cloud, Majerus ultimately recommended seeking a provider that acts as a partner in addressing your agency’s unique needs.

The city needed a better way to ingest this data, process it, and identify security events to better monitor potential security incidents and coordinate their incident response teams. To do this, the city of Los Angeles leveraged the AWS Cloud to provide storage and compute power for its custom-developed security information and event management (SIEM) system, which supports their integrated Security Operations Center (SOC).

“It actually comes down to having a partnership in the field to sit down and work with agencies to solve problems,” she concluded.

Cloud solutions can empower agencies to move beyond day-to-day maintenance to truly innovate the way government serves citizens, but it takes a responsive partner provider to truly reap the rewards that cloud can offer.

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8

Broadband & Connectivity What it Means: The need for speed is alive and well in the digital age, but so is the need for reliable network connectivity. To this end, many municipalities are looking to broadband, which promises speeds that are 50 to 100 times faster than is typical. For governments, faster internet connections mean a greater ability to deliver services, and some are starting to look at that as another utility municipalities should provide, much like electricity, gas and water.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

Chattanooga, Tenn., Mayor Andy Berke says broadband is at the heart of the city’s economic renewal. The city became the first in the country to be wired by a municipality for a 1 gigabit-per-second fiber-optic internet service. That went to 10 gigabits per second five years later, attracting technology firms like OpenTable and Whiteboard.

All this came about in 2007, when Electric Power Board (EPB), the city’s electric power provider, decided to modernize the power grid and lay every customer’s home for fiber-optic cable, according to The Nation. EPB now serves about 82,000 people, more than half of the area’s internet market, the story states.

EPB spent $220 million on the fiber-optic system, which has returned $865 million in economic growth, according to the article. Chattanooga’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent from 7.8 percent as wage rates increased in the past three years, and the downtown area has doubled its residents, Berke told the Tennessean.

▶

Want broadband in your city? Get support from the community and market it as an essential utility.

▶

Seek unconventional funding, such as revenue bonds, partnerships with local utility services and grants.

▶

Write a formal resolution in support of broadband. Here are a few examples.

450+

Source: Community Matters

Communities in the United States offer a form of publicly owned internet service, according to The Nation.

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A GovLoop Guide

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Consolidation of IT Services What it Means: Taking cues from the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, state and local governments are looking for ways to merge governmentwide IT functions into a single cloud platform. This allows agencies to improve service processes, increase data reliability and make better use of data to deliver services, manage projects and improve financial and budget-making decisions.

How it Works:

Takeaways:

In less than three years, Utah has consolidated many statewide IT functions into one platform, enabling its Department of Technology Services (DTS) to provide more and better service and saving the state government almost $3 million in onetime costs and more than $1.2 million each year, according to a NASCIO paper.

DTS moved its ITSM processes to ServiceNow in 2013, putting enterprisewide IT service desk functions in the cloud within six weeks.

Since then, the state has also migrated configuration, portfolio and asset management, hardware and software procurement and IT knowledge management functions to the cloud.

“By moving its entire IT service management platform to the cloud, DTS was able to focus its resources on actually improving service to the customer, rather than developing and implementing a new software system,” according to the paper. “Furthermore, the state has been able to add new functionality and workflow processes to the platform that were sometimes performed manually, if at all. The results are clearly demonstrated in decreased cost to the state AND improved service.”

▶

Create a roadmap and pilot test each step, understanding that consolidation will be a yearslong journey.

▶

Get support from employees and have stakeholders lead initiatives to push adoption.

▶

Centralize procurement.

Source: McKinsey

Consolidation and shared services initiatives can reduce IT spending by 20 percent, according to McKinsey.

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Conclusion Modern state and local governments are as varied as the states and municipalities they serve. Each one implements the technology that best serves its needs and budget. At the same time, they face many of the same challenges across the board, including finding more resources, updating and upgrading IT, and finding ways to innovate despite governmental red tape.

IT’s and CIOs’ elevated and well-earned status at the table is helping overcome these problems. IT and finance departments work closely to determine how IT can help agencies meet missions and business goals, not just keep desktops on and email flowing.

Help is also coming in the form of collaboration, such as NASPO’s cloud contract, which shows the power of numbers in procuring one of today’s hottest technologies, and NASCIO’s recently issued action plan for navigating IT purchasing. “Technology procurement is truly unique given the rapid changes in technology offerings,” Raymond said. “NASCIO is proud of the state IT procurement modernization efforts that have already been accomplished by working together, and state chief information officers stand ready to continue collaboration with state procurement officials.”

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We can see the results of these efforts in the use cases we examined in this guide. Whether it’s sharing information like Washington’s PRISEM, consolidating IT services into one cloud platform like Utah, partnering with the local utility service on broadband as Chattanooga did or saving millions of dollars through more thorough data analytics like Massachusetts, examples of modern IT abound and inspire. They prove that the problems are not insurmountable.

By applying inventive strategies and hiring employees from unconventional backgrounds, IT professionals can prevail over budget and skillset obstacles to produce a more modern workplace. And when that happens, employees and the citizens they serve stand to benefit.

A GovLoop Guide

About & Acknowledgments About GovLoop GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.”

We aim to inspire public-sector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 250,000 members, fostering cross-government collaboration, solving common problems and advancing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government.

For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com. govloop.com | @govloop

Thank You Thank you to Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Concur, Granicus, Kronos, Microsoft and Workday for their support of this valuable resource for public sector professionals.

Author Stephanie Kanowitz

Designer Kaitlyn Baker, Lead Graphic Designer

9 Tech Priorities for a Modern State & Local Government

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A GovLoop Guide