Articles / White Papers Feed

Tips for Local Government Adoption of Social Media

Tim Verras, Director of Marketing and Communications — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:18:00 GMT

Government adoption of social media is a frequent topic of discussion at nearly every education session, conference, or convention of government professionals. Mayors, City Council members, city administrators, and IT professionals are all grappling with how government is going to use social media. Why the pressure? According to a Pew Internet study, 47% of adults and 74% of people under 18 use social media on a regular basis. As a result, the wide adoption of social media by the citizenry has created an expectation that the government will embrace it as well. Cities can no longer afford to ignore social medi

Should Cities Use Consumer-Grade Backup Solutions?

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:49:00 GMT

Over the last few years, internet-based data backup services geared toward the home user have grown in popularity. These services provide an adequate level of protection for home users at an affordable cost. When looking to back up your city’s data, these consumer-grade backup offerings are so cost effective that you may consider them over the more expensive services aimed at the business sector. However, these services might not meet the stringent data protection needs of municipal government.

5 Tips for a Successful City Website

Tim Verras, Director of Marketing — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:34:00 GMT

Government services and communications are moving online faster than at any point since the birth of the web. Services like 311, utility and ticket payments, and event registration are all becoming integrated with the web to provide an unprecedented level of government-to-citizen communication. With this in mind, it is ever more important for city governments to maintain a functional, well-designed website that is a critical source of community information. Unfortunately, a quick look at many city websites will turn up a wide collection of web faux pas, from 1990s-era design to impossible-to-find information.

A Primer on Local Government Mobile Apps

Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:24:00 GMT

If you take a look at current television commercials or tech blogs, you’ll quickly find a great deal of attention focused on smartphones and the mobile applications (apps for short) that are built on top of them. While traditionally focused on the Blackberry-dominated business user niche, smartphones made the shift to the mainstream after Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Since that time the industry has experienced intense competition and tremendous growth year over year. While hardware sales have been brisk, the truly interesting part is that there is an ever growing user base for the mobile apps that these phones run. You’ve seen the commercials for apps that can schedule dinner, buy movie tickets, or find your friends. While many of these apps are focused on personal use, there is a growing niche for apps that interface with local governments.

A Primer on Cloud Computing For Local Government

Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:54:00 GMT

Cloud Computing is a term you have probably heard quite a few times in connection with local government. Like any good buzzword, it begins to lose meaning after a while and it might not be clear exactly what it is. Is cloud computing a technology? A software product? A philosophy? Or is it just marketing speak? How can cities actually benefit from it? In this article we’ll take a brief, non-technical look at cloud computing and how it could transform the way local governments operate and provide services to their citizens.

3 Reasons Why Cities Should Consider Hosted Email

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:58:00 GMT

For the past twenty years, cities that desired business-class email and communications needed the expensive infrastructure to support the technology, leaving smaller cities with sub-par email solutions to conduct business. This dynamic has begun to rapidly change as advanced hosted email solutions gain traction in the market. While this may not be a perfect fit for every city at this time, these hosted solutions can strongly compete with the features offered from onsite email and do so at a cost point that makes it easier for some cities to afford

Networks: Your City's Other Infrastructure

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:47:00 GMT

We all know the importance of keeping a stable infrastructure - roads, bridges, utilities, and the equipment needed to maintain them all need to be in good working order to ensure a healthy city. However, there is another equally important yet often overlooked infrastructure: the network. As cities increasingly move from paper-based, labor intensive operations to automated electronic administration, having a stable and secure network infrastructure is crucial to keep operations running smoothly.

Making Technology a Part of Your City’s Vision

Allen Koronkowski, Practice Manager: Projects — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:01:00 GMT

Is technology a part of your city’s long term vision? If not, it should be. While most cities have long term plans for economic development or infrastructure improvement, the prevailing thinking is that IT planning only covers short-term immediate needs that don’t go beyond the next budget cycle. However, such planning is reactionary and misses the opportunity of using IT to strengthen the city’s overall vision and act as a catalyst for quickly bringing important city projects to completion. By discussing your future IT needs within the context of the larger vision of the city, projects involving a technology-related investment become much more compelling to city council and other decision makers who might otherwise get bogged down by only technical aspects. Here are a few tips for making IT planning an integral part of your overall vision for the city.

Two Tips for Presenting IT Projects to City Council

Allen Koronkowski, Practice Manager: Projects — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:15:00 GMT

Every new budget cycle brings a bevy of projects and ideas before city council for approval. While projects like sidewalk improvement or traffic decongestion are easy to explain in terms of benefits and return on investment, IT projects can be a thorny subject, especially if the council is largely made up of non-technical folks. Add to this the fact that it usually falls upon a non-technical city manager or administrator to present the project to city council. As a non-technical person myself, I’ve spent years presenting technical projects to other non-techie decision makers, and I’ve come up with a few key tips to increase your chances of a successful presentation by presenting the problem as a business solution instead of a technical one.

4 Best Practices for Fighting Phishing Attacks

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:33:00 GMT

Phishing is a form of fraud that masquerades as an official email or website which attempts to steal a victim’s username, password, and other information. Typically, a scammer will send an email that appears to be from a well-known bank, asking the user to log in to their account. When the victim clicks the link, it sends them to a website that looks and acts exactly like their bank’s website with one key difference: it’s actually a fake run by the scammer. Once the user logs in to this fake site, their user name and password are captured and saved. The user’s data is then used for theft, hacking, or other mischief. Due to its simplicity, phishing is prevalent and effective. How effective? Research firm Gartner estimates that in 2007, phishing attacks resulted in over $3.2 billion stolen in the United States.

Meet the Beefalo: A Hybrid Approach to Outsourced IT Services

Dave Mims, President — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:28:00 GMT

Outsourcing doesn't need to be an all or nothing approach. Find out how a hybrid of in-house IT knowledge and outsourced services offers strong benefits that enable cities to meet the increasing demands of civic service.

Network Consolidation: A Simple Solution to Cutting IT Costs

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:10:00 GMT

The great jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus once said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.” When it comes to IT administration, there are plenty of opportunities to make things unnecessarily complex, especially with the sheer number of different services, products, and vendors out there. Luckily, for city decision makers looking to get creative with their budget, there are also a growing number of ways to combat complexity through consolidation, presenting an attractive opportunity to reduce costs and do more with less.

Managing the "Graying" of Municipal IT Staff

Dave Mims, President — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:00:00 GMT

The looming retirement of the Baby Boomer Generation is a concern on the horizon for municipal IT managers. Staff with decades of experience in the technologies and processes crucial to the municipality’s operations will be handing over positions to middle or entry level employees. The question for IT managers becomes: How do I manage the transition? Choosing the right path can mean the difference between a well-educated staff that benefits from the learning of its elders versus one that is forever reinventing the wheel. Before this problem can be addressed, it would be beneficial to understand the generational dynamics at play as Boomers leave the workplace to coming generations.

3 Ways to Save Money on Municipal IT Energy Costs

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:43:00 GMT

When a municipality is tasked with reducing operating costs, one often overlooked area is energy use in the IT infrastructure. With energy prices on the rise, an increasingly taxed power grid and growing public concern over efficiency, new technologies and approaches to the way IT operates can lead to a dramatic reduction in monthly utility bills. While energy efficiency can be realized through high-tech means like solar panels or super-efficient air conditioning, such efforts are out of reach for many cities. However, there are three changes to network infrastructure that a municipality of almost any size can implement now to save money.

RSS: A Really Simple Option for Communicating with Citizens

Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:36:00 GMT

While many cities have embraced the web as a way to communicate with their citizens, many are still trying to figure out the best way to leverage the vast number of tools and programs available to them. Most have websites up, but other technologies such as RSS, Twitter, and Blogs, are just now starting to come into play at the local government level. Since no one channel is usually good enough for every “listener” in the audience, a multi-pronged approach is the best way to effectively get information out into the world. Here, we’ll focus on one of the easiest methods of disseminating information – RSS.

Guidelines For Creating the Perfect City IT Budget

Allen Koronkowski, Practice Manager: Projects — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:06:00 GMT

Cutting a city’s budget is never easy and it is even harder when it comes to IT spending. While cuts in other departments might mean living without a few things, cutting out the wrong technology risks a service interruption or security breach.

How Cities Can Increase Data Security and Save Money (Hint: Ditch the Tape Drive)

Clint Nelms, Practice Manager: Network Infrastructure — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:16:00 GMT

At the end of April 2009, a computer hacker managed to steal over 8.2 million personal records from the State of Virginia’s Prescription Monitoring Program, containing information such as social security and driver’s license numbers. Along with the stolen data, the hacker reportedly erased all of the State’s database backups, leaving no way to get the records back. The hacker then put the only copy of the information up for a $10 million ransom and threatened to sell to it the highest bidder if the State refused to pay. This incident, along with many others, has shed light on a serious data security and recovery problem at government agencies of all levels, including cities.

How the Changing Face of Information Technology Is Reducing City Budgets

Dave Mims, President — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:28:00 GMT

Many cities have over-spent, under-spent, risked data loss, slowed employee productivity, and jeopardized the completion of major projects during the last few decades while wrestling with information technology. As IT has evolved through mainframes, desktop computers, the 1980s software explosion, and the 1990s Internet explosion, the last decade found nearly all organizations having to harness information technology in some form. Like everyone else, cities have had no choice but to learn and wrap their minds around information technology’s revolutions and evolutions.

5 Ways to Increase Parks and Rec Traffic With the Web

Tim Verras, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:50:00 GMT

The internet can be a powerful tool for aiding your Parks and Recreation department in its mission to provide relaxation and education for citizens. By leveraging your city’s web site in combination with other resources on the web, your city can see an increase in event attendance, sports registrations, and organizational efficiency. Learn How...

3 Ways to Use the Web to Drive City Economic Growth

Tim Verras, Director of Marketing and Customer Experience — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:41:00 GMT

Driving the economic development of a city or county is one of the primary goals of any local official. A healthy economy means active, affluent residents and increased income for the city itself. Officials have mastered a number of tools to help their organization prosper but an often overlooked avenue for driving economic development is perhaps one of the easiest: a great website.

Most local governments have functioning websites, but these are often merely e-brochures – small informational sites with no real content value beyond what someone could get from a quick web search. But there are a number of ways that an official can utilize a city’s website to do so much more than provide simple contact information. Here are three great ways to leverage a city’s web presence to drive economic growth within the community.

A Software Requirements Analysis Primer

Jeramie Mercker, Director of Technology — Sat, 05 May 2007 19:31:00 GMT

Depending on the maturity of the software development processes within an organization, activities such as requirements analysis and design are treated as wasted time. The logic seems to follow that programmers should be writing code, not talking about writing code. For anything but the most insignificant of solutions, this focus is short sighted as it’s trained on the single activity of writing lines of code rather than the overall goal which is to best solve the business problem within a given set of constraints.

Jumping in feet first without knowing what you’re jumping into is a surefire way to fail. Know where you’re going.