RESILIENT COMMUNITIES, EFFICIENT GOVERNMENTS Transformative Tools for Today and Tomorrow I NDUSTRY PERSPECTI VE 1 Industry Perspective R E S I L I E N T C O M M U N I T I E S , E F F I C I E N T G O V E R N M E N T S N atural disasters. Budget crises. Signifcant technological failures. In todays intercon- nected world, a single disruptive event can have negative repercussions on a communi- ty long after the initial impact. This makes the imper- ative for a swift recovery a priority for state and local government. The ultimate goal is to make the com- munity resilient to such events; it should be able to nimbly respond to even the toughest circumstances. Unfortunately, planning for such events is not a pleasant activity for public sector professionals. The vastness of such an undertaking can be overwhelm- ing, which often results in the decision to focus solely on the challenges of day-to-day operations. B UT WHA T I F Y OU C OUL D DO B OT H? WHA T I F Y OU C OUL D US E T E C HNOL OGY T O P R E P A R E F OR T HE UNC OMMON WHI L E A L S O I MP R OV I NG T HE R OUT I NE ? In this industry perspective, GovLoop and Hyland pres- ent techniques for preparing your organization for signifcant, disruptive events using tools that are de- signed to improve service delivery and cost-efective- ness every other day of the year. In this way, planning and preparation becomes less about disaster recovery and more about delivering better services to the com- munity, no matter the conditions. The discussion then becomes about agility, speed of delivery, and collabo- ration. In this report you will learn: Four fundamental tools for building community re- siliency. How to integrate these tools into a platform for maximized responsiveness. The everyday application of these same tools by Ar- lington County, VA. Throughout our research, we discovered that technol- ogy now allows us to increase organizational efective- ness during the best of times, while simultaneously preparing ourselves for instances when things go wrong. For organizations looking to change the way they do business, but are limited by budget restric- tions, aging technology and processes or are simply overwhelmed by the task let this document serve at your starting point. I NDUS T R Y P E R S P E C T I V E R E S I L I E NC E ( n o u n ) T h e c a p a c i t y t o r e c o v e r q u i c k l y f r o m d i f f i c u l t i e s . 2 Resilient Communities, Efcient Government A R E S I L I E N C Y S T A R T I N G P O I N T : I N F O R M A T I O N T H R E E F O C U S A R E A S F O R T H E P R E S E R V A T I O N A N D A C C E S S T O I N F O R M A T I O N The concept of resilience, specifcally in the con- text of our local communities, encompasses a great many topics and events (see Figure 1). The potential avenues for preparedness are simi- larly vast. This is where the paralysis often sets in: there are so many directions one can go, where do you start? Figure 1 C OMMUNI T Y R E S I L I E NC Y : T HE A B I L I T Y T O R E C OV E R F R OM Economic hardship Natural disaster or extreme weather conditions Adverse events (Power outage, major criminal acts) Terri Jones, Industry Marketing Manager for Gov- ernment at Hyland, provided a useful starting point: information. Specifcally, Jones advises departments to begin any resiliency planning by examining their ability to preserve and readily access information necessary for decision-making. In a non-event situation, we tend to have access to that information, said Jones. We might have it on paper fles, and it might be scattered across an array of diferent people. The challenge becomes that during an event, this traditional method of storage and organizational structure can get in the way. The old way of doing business, which is often char- acterized by information silos, difcult to access ar- chived information and data, and paper processes simply isnt efective in todays environment. Public servants are expected to quickly deliver services and information 24 hours a day, regardless of the condi- tions. If we begin with the notion that information is key, we can now begin to focus on a few areas to make our access to information more resilient. These focus areas are: Redundancy R E DUNDA NC Y When the knowledge base for an entire community is housed in one location, the ability to respond to an event can be severely restricted. This difculty is compounded when docu- ments are stored in paper format or an aging legacy system, in which data cant be easily shared or du- plicated. Therefore, agencies need a mechanism to easily and cost-efectively create redundancies for the organizations institutional knowledge and data so that the community has access to information even when the frst, second, or even third avenue has been closed. F I E L D R E S P ONS E The second focus area is the ability to re- spond in the feld. Unfortunately, in some of the more highly-publicized moments in event response, weve fgured out that we cant always respond in the feld, said Jones. This is either due to poor commu- nication capabilities or an inability to access infor- mation when outside of the walls of the organiza- tion. One of the most critical pieces is having ability to adapt to situations we didnt know about when we left for the feld. This is vital to facilitating the kind of agile feld response necessary for rapidly-changing circumstances. L OC A T I ON A NA L Y S I S The fnal piece relates to the understand- ing of the geographical landscape of the community. So many of these events have impli- cations for the broader area around the immedi- ate zone where the event has taken place, whether Field Response Location Analysis 3 Industry Perspective this is an evacuation route, access to resources that are in danger or another impacted population, said Jones. Being able to perform a location analysis is vital to preparation, response and recovery. Now that weve established our focus areas, we can explore technology that will facilitate the preserva- tion and access to information. F O U R S T R A T E G I E S T O P R E S E R V E A N D A C C E S S I N F O R M A T I O N Jones describes the tools facilitating the transfor- mation of agencies into resilient custodians of com- munity information as a layer cake of technology. Each tool builds upon the next, with the ultimate goal the integration of the tools to better prepare the government agency for an adverse event. L A Y E R 1 : DI GI T I Z A T I ON The foundational step for resilient communities is to begin digitizing organizational documents. It has to start with the documents, because that is only way to efciently and cost efectively create copies that can be shared in both secure and open environ- ments, said Jones. Digitization supports the idea of unfettered access to information. This is vital to breaking down silos of information, thereby creat- ing new streams of information fowing across the organization, which can be readily accessed by those who need it, when they need it. L A Y E R 2 : C L OUD R E DUNDA NC Y Digitization is only marginally better than paper if it is housed in a localized server or even on an individ- uals computer. Cloud computing, then, is the ideal complement to the enterprise-wide storage and dis- tribution of data and documents. Cloud facilitates the access to information from virtually anywhere. It has the added beneft of providing redundancy so that if your central operations are impacted by an event in the immediate region, your data is stored somewhere else. D I G I T I Z A T I O N C L O U D R E D U N D A N C Y M O B I L E T E C H N O L O G I E S G E O S P A T I A L I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S ( G I S ) L A Y E R 3 : MOB I L E T E C HNOL OGI E S Mobile technology is the next logical piece in the technology layer cake. An efective feld response is powered by information. However, if responders are using paper, they arent as prepared to process new or unanticipated information. Digitization and cloud technologies allow feld responders to access information in a device-fexible environment, either through laptops, tablets, or smartphones. Most im- portantly, responders have access to information they may not have anticipated when they left for the feld, said Jones. L A Y E R 4 : GE OS P A T I A L I NF OR MA T I ON S Y S T E MS ( GI S ) The fnal layer is geospatial analysis. Access to digital information, in a redundant and cloud-based envi- ronment, which can also be processed in a device- fexible format, lays the foundation for responsive geospatial analysis in the feld. The key is that so much of our information is geographically-based. 4 Resilient Communities, Efcient Government For example, if a feld agent is responding to an event, and she is able to display on her GIS mobile application key data about the surrounding environ- ment, she will have greater situational awareness based on the geography and the data the organiza- tion has collected over time. These four pieces come together to build an inte- grated platform for greater preservation and access to information. The platform facilitates greater situ- ational awareness, communication and the ability to process new information on the fy. It also provides the foundation on which any resiliency plan should be formulated, since it places information, and our ability to use it when we need it most, at the center of everything we do. T E C H N O L O G Y I N N O V A T I O N S I N A R L I N G T O N C O U N T Y , V A R E S I L I E NC Y , Y E S - B UT A L S O E F F I C I E NC Y Perhaps the most exciting feature of this approach to resiliency is that it has the added beneft of trans- forming your organizations day-to-day operations. Each and every one of the aforementioned tools has direct relevance to mission and support service de- livery, cost efectiveness and organizational agility. Arlington County provides an illustrative case of a government agency that has made itself more resil- ient by adopting technologies that it employed for reasons that have very little to do with event pre- paredness. The driving force behind the changes currently taking place in Arlington County ofces is the openness to new technologies and approaches. We want to take advantage of anything and everything we can to im- prove our efciencies, as well as constituent-facing initiatives, said Kristanne Littlefeld, Applications and Architecture Division Chief at Arlington County. This approach includes deploying the following tech- nological solutions: Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Cloud Computing Mobile Technology Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) E NT E R P R I S E C ONT E NT MA NA GE ME NT ( E C M) According to Paul Carter, IT Manager at Arlington County, the primary drivers behind the digitization and enterprise management of county documents included the consolidation of disparate platforms, cost and budget savings consideration, and im- proved service delivery. Our staf is still delivering the same services, but now in a much more efcient, timely and cost-efective manner, said Carter. 5 Industry Perspective C L OUD C OMP UT I NG Similarly, the drivers behind the adoption of cloud had a lot to do with maximizing the efciency of the organization by focusing on mission critical services. The motivation was discovering our core competen- cies, and then looking elsewhere where others may have a stronger competency, said Littlefeld. The county is currently operating its public-facing web- site through an open source platform and hosting it in a public cloud, which frees up staf to focus on tasks more closely tied to service delivery. MOB I L E T E C HNOL OGY Arlington Countys mobile strategy came as a re- sponse to current trends in mobile use. But it also had the added beneft of maximizing the efciency of county workers, many of whom operate in the feld, are constantly on the go, or participate in telework programs. In order for users to be able to work col- laboratively and communicate, its important for us to be able to support a [device-fexible] approach to productivity, said Littlefeld. GE OS P A T I A L I NF OR MA T I ON S Y S T E MS ( GI S ) GIS is a major component of the countys open data initiatives. The countys GIS website includes demo- graphic data on county residents, economic data for local businesses, housing information, and school information a number of which are available in map or other geography-based formats. T H E R E S U L T : A N I N T E G R A T E D A P P R O A C H T O S E R V I C E D E L I V E R Y Just as our resiliency platform rested on layers of integrated technological solutions, the countys so- lutions are similarly integrated. For example, the countys content was originally organized by de- partment, which required a fair amount of organi- zational knowledge to locate relevant information. To respond, ECM, powered by cloud and mobile, has the potential to drive a subject-matter approach to content management, rather than one driven by organizational silos. The county discovered that ac- cessibility to information was vitally important to its workers, so it is currently employing integrated solu- tions to meet that demand. D I G I T I Z A T I O N R E D U N D A N C Y F I E L D R E S P O N S E L O C A T I O N A N A L Y S I S E N T E R P R I S E C O N T E N T M A N A G E M E N T ( E C M ) C L O U D C O M P U T I N G M O B I L E T E C H N O L O G I E S G E O S P A T I A L I N F O R M A T I O N S Y S T E M S ( G I S ) S T R A T E G I E S F O R T O M O R R O W . . . A N D T O D A Y 6 Resilient Communities, Efcient Government AB O U T G OVL O O P GovLoops mission is to connect government to im- prove government. We aim to inspire public sector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 100,000 members, fostering cross-government col- laboration, solving common problems and advanc- ing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington D.C. with a team of dedicated profes- sionals who share a commitment to connect and im- prove government. For more information about this report, please reach out to Adrian Pavila, Research Analyst, GovLoop, at adrian@govloop.com. AB O U T H Y L AND OnBase, by Hyland is a proven enterprise content management solution for each level of government, helping each meet todays challenges of smaller budgets and stafs while laying the foundation for simplifed, efcient and mobile government infor- mation technology. Faster, afordable government is possible with OnBase document management. Learn more at http://www.onbase.com/en/solutions/government C O N C L U S I O N : A N E C E S S I T Y A N D A N O P P O R T U N I T Y The need for community resiliency is greater than ever. For public sector professionals service delivery cant stop in the event of a server crash or natural di- saster. The task may seem overwhelming, but if you focus on information preservation and access, you are putting yourself in a prime position to prepare and recover during times of adversity. The best part about this approach to resiliency plan- ning is that the tools youll use will also help you be more efcient and efective in your day-to-day op- erations, which brings a new meaning to the term resilient. 7 Industry Perspective 1101 15th St NW, Suite 900 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 407-7421 Fax: (202) 407-7501