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Digital government: Answer the challenge to do more with less
How do you push citizen-centric improvements with limited resources? While public sector IT budgets have always been challenging, the pressure is even greater now with escalating demands and shrinking resources. Here’s how your government agency can answer the challenge to do more with less.
Take the long view: Scalable, sustainable ways forward
Managed services can help identify and eliminate waste and streamline workflows. By maximizing your resources, managed services allow you to modernize your infrastructure while maintaining essential operations, enhancing online citizen services and reducing expenses.
The key is to take the long view with your government IT decisions by focusing on scalable solutions rather than “one and done” tactics. When we hear stories of government agencies cutting budgets and deprioritizing redundancy for immediate cost savings, we recognize the intention but recommend a more sustainable approach.
While reducing resources saves money in the near-term, it can hinder growth and innovation long-term. But if cuts are unavoidable, you can extend the expertise, innovation and commitment of your government IT team by partnering with a managed service provider. With a team of network experts backing you up, you can emerge stronger, even with limited internal IT resources.
Similarly, doing away with redundancy for non-essential programs is a shortsighted approach to cost savings. If you reserve active-active configurations for mission-critical applications only, you won’t have the backup needed for disaster recovery and business continuity. This could be financially devastating if your agency fell victim to a ransomware attack or other cybersecurity breaches.;
Taking the long view, though, you could use your secured funding to migrate to Managed SD-WAN, which uses dual active-active links to maximize your bandwidth network-wide and strengthen your government cybersecurity posture. You should also consider using your citizen service funds to:
Automate
IT efficiency begins with automation: Using predefined processes to handle labor-intensive, repetitive, error-prone tasks. For example, state governments can streamline workflows for managing unemployment claims by automating application processing, screening, payment, text and email updates. Or reducing turnaround times on routine transactions like motor vehicle registrations, DBAs and marriage licenses.
From provisioning and deployment to maintenance and upgrades, automation through software-defined technology saves time and labor over manual processes, freeing your IT team to innovate ways to enhance citizen services through AI, IoT, chatbot and other emerging technologies.
Virtualize and centralize
Virtualization uses your IT assets more efficiently by distributing capabilities to other users and environments. For example, if you have separate devices at each location for firewalls, encryption and troubleshooting, you can combine and virtualize their functions with SD-WAN.
By centralizing your infrastructure, virtualization allows you to control your entire network from a remote location. So you can maintain, upgrade and deploy WAN-wide applications in minutes, without travel or hardware expenses. With less drain on your resources, you can redirect your focus to higher-level strategic initiatives.
Consolidate and share services
The rapidly changing news cycle created a critical need for real-time communication, expanded online services and additional channels for citizen engagement. To meet this demand, you will continue to need to:
• Reach your citizens wherever they are
• Serve your sector with higher-value digital capabilities
• Provide secure access to data and applications for your remote workforce;
A unified communications solution can answer the demands efficiently, converging your disparate applications under a single enterprise architecture to lower operational expenses and strengthen network-wide security. Think about integrating financial and administrative systems, migrating and backing up the combined data with a cloud-managed solution
Or rebuilding platforms to share services, consolidating all your government agencies into a single portal. This makes it easier for citizens to find information and access services quickly, eliminating the hassle of multiple entry points and logins.
Future-proof your strategy
Managed service solutions like Managed SD-WAN and Cloud Managed Solutions are especially valuable for government agencies. As turnkey services with no CapEx, they allow you to upgrade and deploy new technologies, locations, and applications quickly. Ultimately expanding citizen services network-wide with new conveniences and online capabilities.
Frontier’s managed services also include 24/7/365 performance and security monitoring along with expert guidance for your digital transformation. With a government IT partner optimizing your network and keeping you future ready for next-gen advances, you maximize your resources to achieve more with less.
Serve your sector with total network control.
Call 866.513.0194 to learn more about Frontier’s government IT solutions or request a live demo of Frontier Managed SD-WAN.