Most state and local governments struggle with limited resources. When considering digital transformation, they must weigh both service improvement and cost savings.
“Digital transformation is really about being able to automate processes to make things work for the community,” said Scott Pross, Vice President of Monalytic at SolarWinds, whose flagship product is a unified monitoring, observability and service management platform. “It can make everybody’s lives easier, [from] the engineering team [to] the residents of that community.”
Getting Started
Even small steps can be significant.
For example, “it could be something as simple as being able to contact somebody in an agency through a website or having a chat function where somebody could handle multiple calls at the same time,” Pross said. Such measures can reduce the pressure on staff while providing better customer service. “The less human intervention we need, the better off we’re going to be.”
Also, organizations should get to know the tools they already have. Frequently, agencies don’t use all the functions of their software, or they have products with overlapping capabilities.
Security
State and local agencies have become a frequent target for ransomware attacks. That has them scrambling to secure systems at multiple levels. “Local agencies are holding on to a tremendous amount of citizen information, and just because you’re small doesn’t mean that data is any less important,” Pross said.
Automating processes to reduce points of entry to the system and taking advantage of cloud platform security provisions are relatively simple ways to enhance protections for your data.
Behind the Scenes
For IT staff, improved monitoring of systems and applications helps head off intrusions and other service interruptions. “One of the great things about monitoring is you’re always collecting data,” Pross said. “So, you can use AI to observe what a particular system does on a daily basis.” If the AI sees something amiss, it can alert a person or even act on its own to shut down access.
Cloud’s built-in redundancy helps keep things working when problems with an application arise, letting you bring a version elsewhere in the cloud online. If a bad actor deletes your data, you can bring it back seamlessly.
Networks and infrastructure are getting more complex, and a local government may have thousands of devices that need to be patched, secured and configured. Plus, they need to stay compliant with ever-changing regulations.
Using a platform such as the one from SolarWinds means those functions can be pushed out across the system immediately rather than waiting for a team of engineers to install them on each device.
How SolarWinds Can Help
SolarWinds’ products are built to address all these challenges, whether moving digital operations to the cloud, improving monitoring and observability, or finding ways to make more efficient use of staff while providing better service. “It sounds complex, but companies such as SolarWinds are allowing smaller communities to be able to implement this amazing technology,” Pross said.
This article appeared in our guide, “State and Local: Making an Impact.” For more insights into state and local innovations that are changing communities, download it here:
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