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Resilient Communities, Efcient Government


RESILIENT
COMMUNITIES,
EFFICIENT
GOVERNMENTS
Transformative Tools for Today and Tomorrow
I NDUSTRY PERSPECTI VE
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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 .
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Industry Perspective
1101 15th St NW, Suite 900
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 407-7421
Fax: (202) 407-7501

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