There’s no question that the last few years have presented a number of challenges for organizations across the nation – including state and local governments. So, it’s not surprising that a recent survey from GovTech found that the pandemic has accelerated cities’ efforts to serve their citizens digitally while using limited resources and aging technology. For most, the pandemic has re-shaped the digital transformation roadmap and new priorities are emerging.
According to the survey, CIOs with state and local governments list the following as their top priorities moving into the years ahead:
- Cybersecurity
- Budget and cost control
- Citizen engagement/experience
- Disaster recovery/continuity of operations
- Business process automation
One way to address several of these priorities is an emerging automation and integration technology referred to as Integration Platform as a Service or iPaaS. iPaaS is a cloud-based platform that connects different systems, technologies and applications; and enables organizations to deploy and maintain integration flows without needing to use middleware or specialized hardware between a company and third-party software.
In other words, iPaaS allows for seamless, secure integrations and process automations that can save both time and money – two of the most valuable resources.
Where Cities Need Help
In the GovTech survey, participants highlighted 5 key areas where they felt they had gaps. These areas are:
- Cybersecurity (75%)
- Application building, integration and modernization (57%)
- Data analytics/business intelligence (55%)
- Process improvement and modernization (50%)
- IT support and help desk (45%)
It’s clear cybersecurity, budget constraints and process automation are top of mind for most state and local governments. iPaaS can be a great tool to fill these gaps without needing to hire more staff.
What to Look for in an iPaaS Solution
There are many options out there, but for maximum ROI you should focus on platforms that have the following features or functionalities:
- Codeless, drag-and-drop flow builder so anyone can build new workflows and applications.
- Out-of-the-box connectors to the systems you use every day.
- API Management
- The ability to transform and harmonize data across connectors.
By partnering with the right vendor, you can fast-track your digital transformation and address key priorities – all on one easy-to-use platform.
Pima County Supercharging ITSM with iPaaS
With more than 1 million residents living in Pima County, AZ, top-notch service delivery is essential for the Pima County government, and that means investing in the right tools and retaining employees as the county moves through its digital transformation.
For Mark Hayes, information technology leader at Pima County, much of the digital transformation work starts in IT, “TeamDynamix is a place where we are really trying to kickstart and accelerate the ideology that automation with the right tools can bring value not just to IT, but to other departments within our organization. We’re starting in IT, so that they can see the possibilities as we move forward with our digital transformation and expand outside of IT.”
Pima County made the switch to TeamDynamix for IT service management (ITSM) after using a different system for the last 10 years. Hayes said the county is looking at ways to combat both resource drain and employee burnout with their TeamDynamix now in place.
“Prior to TeamDynamix, we didn’t have the ability to automate things and build workflows to do things that eliminate toil and redundancy for our employees,” Hayes said. With TeamDynamix now in place, Pima County is looking to automate and integrate as much of the manual ITSM processes into workflows as they can.
“That’s something the organization is really just starting to comprehend as a vision that we want to get to overall,” Hayes said referring to automation. “My goal and hope is to make sure people understand the possibilities of workflow beyond just getting approvals routed because that’s all that we really do today.”
Beyond automating ITSM tasks and processes, Pima County is also investing in TeamDynamix iPaaS – integration platform as a service. With iPaaS, the county is looking to integrate systems beyond just IT to automate processes like onboarding and offboarding employees.
“We are starting small, hoping to use automation to take tickets and automatically deploy software to endpoints, to onboard and offboard users with Active Directory and distribution groups,” Hayes said.
When it comes to onboarding new hires, the county’s goal is to have new employees arrive on day one with everything they need to get to work, “You don’t need to waste so much time when it comes to onboarding,” Hayes said. “It really is such a sour experience for a new hire to come in, in this day and age, and sit around for three days waiting on their computer to show up. We need to get out of that mode and iPaaS is going to help us do that.”
In addition, using iPaaS to automate offboarding will save countless hours for a process that is normally very manual and heavily audited as Pima County is a government entity.
“As a government organization we get audited by the state every year and they want to know what these stale accounts are doing sitting here,” Hayes said. “Offboarding is currently a very manual process – having to review the list from HR of people who are no longer employed with us and manually revoking their privileges from all the different systems and software and disabling their accounts. There’s absolutely no reason for that to not be automated. iPaaS is going to help us a lot with this and save us time.”
Interested in learning more about iPaaS from TeamDynamix? Head over to our iPaaS page and sign up for our upcoming webinar.
This post was originally published in March 2021 and has been updated with new information.