Modern Solutions for the Public’s Rising CX Demands MARKET TRENDS REPORT
Introduction President Joe Biden has outlined an ambitious term. Whether it is ending the COVID-19 pandemic in America or improving cybersecurity nationwide, Biden has many goals that might affect agencies’ missions and budgets. To ensure business continuity and meet everyone’s needs, agencies need agile processes capable of overcoming any challenge. Yet these agencies are fighting a three-way battle. Internally, government workforces are demanding quick, efficient and secure collaboration across any distance. Externally, agencies are under rising pressure from constituents to provide digital products and services. Finally, the regulatory burden of issues such as data protection grows for agencies daily. There’s a fourth front, too: The public sector is struggling to accomplish mission outcomes with traditional paper-based processes and legacy technologies. Once helpful, these tools are increasingly unable to handle information efficiently, effectively and securely. The old way of operating often slows agencies down and disappoints constituents. Enter the Content Cloud. Using cloud computing’s on-demand, decentralized capabilities, the Content Cloud enables agencies to create, govern and share their content digitally. This solution helps agencies increase citizen engagement through simple, accessible applications, and allows government employees to communicate and collaborate from any location. And, at a time when cyberattacks are increasing, it reduces agencies’ security risks. Most importantly, the Content Cloud gives agencies a grip on one of their most fluid assets: content. Agencies today contend with structured and unstructured content. Structured content covers information stored in predefined models such as spreadsheets. In contrast, unstructured content — say, pictures or videos — remains unorganized. With the Content Cloud, agencies govern whichever data their mission requires. To learn more about modernizing mission-critical information and processes, GovLoop partnered with Box, a cloud content management solution, and Carahsoft, an IT solutions provider, on this report. The following pages explore how the Content Cloud strengthens agencies’ resilience, interoffice collaboration and customer experience (CX). Lastly, we share best practices for adopting cloud content management platforms and optimizing their features for onsite and remote work.
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By The Numbers: A Summary of Cloud Across Government FEDE R A L
STAT E & LOCAL
$90.9 billion
43%
is the projected amount of federal IT spending governmentwide for fiscal 2021.
of state chief information officers (CIOs) said their organization offered cloud hosting and solutions to local governments as of October 2020.
~$88 billion was allocated for IT spending in the federal budget for fiscal 2020.
200
cloud products
were authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) as of September 2020. FedRAMP provides a standard for securing cloud products and services for federal use.
7 years passed between major updates to the federal cloud policy in June 2019. The Cloud Smart policy guides agencies on preparing their procurement, security and workforces for cloud.
29% of state CIOs said their state had no statewide cloud migration strategy as of October 2020, but agencies were encouraged to use cloud.
3 states Delaware, Minnesota and New Jersey — had cloud-first statues in 2020. Cloud-first statues prioritize cloud solutions over non-cloud tools
32 states including states with cloud-first statues — had cloud-related strategies in 2020.
MODERN SOLUTIONS FOR ADDTHE TITLE PUBLIC’S HERE RISING CX DEMANDS
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A Foundation for Improving Mission Outcomes The Challenge: Aging Processes and Tools Whether federal, state or local, agencies provide potentially life-changing services. But the older that processes and technologies get, the harder governments struggle to deliver vital benefits and services, such as driver’s licenses or health care. Consider agencies with paper-based workflows. Internally, these agencies struggle with coordination; moving paper documents among teams can be cumbersome. Externally, paper-based communications slow outreach to stakeholders. In both scenarios, loose papers containing sensitive information create security risks. During crises such as natural disasters, these outdated business practices even harm the public by slowing response time to critical content. “Fluidity is really important in today’s day and age,” said Chris Weatherup, Manager, Solutions Engineering at Box. “We need to make decisions faster. But speed and security are two hugely important vectors when we’re thinking about data.” Another problem: Legacy processes and tools cannot support secure collaboration between on-premise and remote workers. As more people work remotely, agencies need devices and networks that are reliable across large distances without jeopardizing data. Yet the problems do not stop there. Agencies need to comply with an increasingly wide range of federal, state, local and even global regulations. Consider FedRAMP. Agencies that do not meet FedRAMP standards can’t handle federal data, depriving them of a valuable resource. Over-the-hill practices could hurt constituents the most. They expect private-sector businesses to serve them continuously and digitally and, increasingly, they expect the same in the public sector. They have few alternatives when agencies do not provide them with a similar CX.
a pothole to local government or as serious as reporting a whistleblower complaint to a federal agency. They want to get those issues into the hands of people who can help with them as soon as possible.”
The Solution: Manage the Entire Content Journey in the Content Cloud The solution? Moving content management to the cloud. Cloud-based content addresses key concerns around information-sharing, collaboration and security. It makes it possible for agencies to extend content to employees quickly and securely, whether they are working onsite or remotely. It also improves internal and external collaboration for agencies. By storing all their data in the cloud, agencies make it instantly accessible to partners such as other agencies, regardless of location. Over time, this collaboration raises accuracy, transparency and information-sharing. Even better, the Content Cloud allows agencies to determine which internal and external partners can access assets such as data. This improves the control agencies have over some of their most valuable resources. Lastly, the Content Cloud provides a place for agencies to report and analyze data. This system helps agencies make decisions by funneling information to the right people. Whether agencies’ data is structured or unstructured, the Content Cloud helps monitor, share and understand it better. “People will always find the path of least resistance to collaborate and share information,” Weatherup said. “The Content Cloud gives people the best of all worlds: user experience, agility and security.”
“At the state, local and federal levels, they expect that type of citizen engagement,” Weatherup said of 24/7 online services for constituents. “It can be as simple as reporting
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Best Practices: Making Cloud Content Management Click 1. Refine Remote Work Going forward, most agencies will have in-person and remote workers. Connecting both groups will be crucial, so agencies need IT that shares data securely, quickly and cost-effectively across large distances. Cloud content management checks all these boxes while ensuring that agencies comply with relevant government regulations.
2. Empower Information Champions Information champions make sure content flows smoothly from creation to review, decision-making and collaboration. Cloud content management helps agencies determine who their information champions are and what abilities these individuals have for dealing with their organization’s data. Ultimately, the goal is giving people who understand the data more control and ownership over it.
3. Digitize Essential Content For many agencies, knowing where to start is the key obstacle to digital documentation. The best launching point is the most
urgently needed content. By digitizing the most critical content first, agencies avoid any negative impacts to their missions. Once online, this information is easier for agencies’ employees — and the constituents they serve — to find.
4. Communicate Virtually Contemporary people deserve contemporary solutions, and virtual channels give agencies’ customers exactly that. By making user-friendly digital portals and pointing people to them, agencies deliver a better CX. Generally, the more positive encounters constituents have with their agencies, the more they trust those institutions.
5. Shrink Shadow IT Shadow IT is hardware and software, such as home computers and cloud-based apps, that agencies have not authorized their workforces to use. Using cloud content management, agencies reduce the amount of shadow IT hiding within their ranks. The Content Cloud can reduce shadow IT by simplifying device and data detection, connection and sharing for agencies.
Here are two examples of what communities can accomplish when they embrace cloud content management that reflects the digital-first mentalities of their employees and residents.
Cary’s Single Source of Truth In Cary, North Carolina, the Content Cloud has benefited 1,200 city employees and 170,000 residents with one platform for managing about 2,000 projects and services citywide. For employees, Cary’s cloud is a single source of truth for data ranging from contracts to maps. For constituents, the platform delivers the same valuable city data across multiple platforms. All this information flows rapidly and securely, making Cary responsive and resilient.
MODERN SOLUTIONS FOR THE PUBLIC’S RISING CX DEMANDS
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D.C. Streamlines Criminal Trial Processes Washington, D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General (OAG), meanwhile, uses the Content Cloud to streamline its criminal trial processes. Presently, OAG’s cloud serves as a central hub for attorneys and city staff to analyze and trade evidence. The platform thus pays major dividends, with employee productivity growing while strain on the District’s IT infrastructure decreases. The icing on the cake? After recently integrating artificial intelligence into its cloud, OAG began automatically detecting duplicate charges in vendor invoices. Automating this workflow ensures that vendors can’t double-charge the office, and it saves employees hours of manual processing. Integration is the common thread between Cary’s and D.C.’s cloud platforms. In both cities, the Content Cloud empowers agencies to effortlessly enable access to the applications people and employees prefer. Each cloud collects its host city’s structured and unstructured data, creating one place for government data. The resulting data reservoir is a priceless asset for each city. “People can work unhindered,” Weatherup said. “And Box’s philosophy is to have content be as secure as possible and follow the regulatory compliance necessary to manage that content.”
HOW THE BOX CO N TE NT CLO UD CA N HE L P Designed with content at the center, Box is the Content Cloud: one secure platform for managing your content in the cloud. Box enables you to securely manage the entire content journey, from the moment someone creates or ingests a file, to when it’s shared, edited, published, approved, signed, classified and retained. Box was designed for Cloud Content management from the beginning, with: • An intelligent, cloud-native approach to security and compliance • Easy-to-use integrations and workflow automations that fuel real-time collaboration and increase productivity • An open, extensible platform that connects your content to the rest of your business processes “Box’s philosophy is to have content be as secure as possible and follow the necessary regulatory compliance
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needed to manage that content,” Weatherup said. “But it is also to provide an experience that is modern, fresh and easy to use, but gives the depth of functionality so folks can work unhindered.” The Content Cloud helps agencies erase the silos surrounding their data and reduce the amount of shadow IT they have by enabling people to use more personal devices such as laptops, tablets and phones without compromising on content security. Additionally, Box’s Consulting organization guides agencies through implementing and securing the tools that are integrated into their systems. “Box removes the barriers that cause people to go and seek out shadow IT,” Weatherup said. “Whether it’s a desktop, mobile or web application, Box can also be utilized as the singular content layer for all that information.”
Learn more at box.com/industries/government
MARKET TRENDS REPORT
Conclusion Every agency has a mission it is passionate about accomplishing. But before agencies can achieve success, their staff must feel empowered to work together and serve effectively. Internally, the Content Cloud enables collaboration among all of an agency’s teams. Externally, it flawlessly joins agencies and the communities they serve together. Additionally, the Content Cloud juggles these competing interests while keeping agencies compliant. When agencies are not worried about regulations, they focus on mission wins instead. No one expects agencies to serve people with prehistoric tools, and content management is no different. Used properly, the Content Cloud enables agencies to continuously improve their work and information access for decades to come.
A B O U T BOX
ABOUT GOVLOOP
Box (NYSE:BOX) is the Content Cloud, a single platform that empowers organizations to manage the entire content lifecycle, work securely from anywhere, and integrate across best-of-breed apps. Founded in 2005, Box is trusted by 69% of the Fortune 500, including AstraZeneca, General Electric, JLL, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia.
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 300,000 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.
Visit box.com to learn more.
For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.
MODERN SOLUTIONS FOR THE PUBLIC’S RISING CX DEMANDS
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