Leverage the Cloud to Elevate Digital Resident Experience

Tyler Podcast Episode 73, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Corporate Marketing Manager Beth Amann – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Russell Gainford, Tyler’s Sr. Vice President of Cloud Strategy & Operations, joins host Beth Amann to discuss the evolution of digital government services and how cloud technology can not only provide seamless, integrated services but also significantly enhance the resident experience. The team discusses the shift to modern cloud-based services, how governments can assess their tech stacks, and why this shift is achievable– no matter where you are in your digital journey.

Transcript

Russell Gainford: And the first thing you do as an organization is don't just think about this as moving machines or moving ware that are running that's running some of your workloads.

 

Actually, moving to the cloud is really much more of a larger transformation. So always think about your staff first and your staff as well. What is the training that people need? What's the cultural change that needs to take place to move things to the cloud? Work will be done in different ways.

Beth Amann: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about spacing communities today and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm Beth Amann. I'm the corporate marketing manager here Tyler and I am thrilled to be back here with the Tyler Tech podcast. I'm excited to be one of many new and returning voices you'll be hearing on the podcast and we appreciate you joining today we're joined by Russell Gainford, Tyler's Senior Vice President of Cloud Strategy and Operations to discuss the evolution of digital services and how cloud technology can not only provide seamless integrated services but also significantly enhance the resident experience. Russell, Welcome to the podcast.

Russell Gainford: Thank you, Beth. Appreciate it. It's great to be here. Now you've been on the podcast before, most recently talking cloud adoption in April 2022, and you dug into both the personal and professional benefits of cloud adoption.

Beth Amann: You've spoken that episode about how the Internet and cloud services had impacted our personal lives, given us access to services and knowledge we couldn't have had I'm kind of even imagined beforehand. And you said something on that episode that really struck me and kind of grounded me in what I wanted to talk about today in this episode which was that cloud is a transformational shift in how we operate as human beings. And so that's a huge opportunity for governments. Especially regarding how they engage with residents in the cloud. So for folks who haven't listened to episode 51, and obviously, that's a play that they can go back and listen to episode fifty one to have the context. Can you remind us why the cloud is a critical part elevating digital resident engagement?

Russell Gainford: Yeah. So I I would say first, it was just a few years ago when we did that prior podcasts, and things have only moved faster since then. Things continue to change. I think the cloud has become a forefront for digital resident services and access because it provides the performance, the scalability, and the availability that citizens expect.

So citizens are expecting that when they go to Google, it's always available. They expect that when their government service is available online, that they're always able to access it. And they expect that self-service level of access, which the cloud can provide you. It can be running in one place and delivering some of the content to you and another, integrated with your county, state, and provide a lot of great access for digital services.

And customers expect that. They expect nowadays that they don't have to go in person for many of these services that are out there. They expect that they can system online, and the quickest way to do that is to run through the cloud because ultimately a key piece of that is that the cloud allows you to go faster. You don't have to do large upfront purchases of hardware, like governments did in the past, you can turn something on in minutes, plan it through, and continue to enhance.

Beth Amann: That's interesting that you call out the upfront purchases of hardware. We don't necessarily, as residents, think about the cost that it takes for our governments to set up these services where we go in person and file a form. But if you're doing this in the cloud, you're not having to deal with the cost associated with that. It makes for a more efficient government.

I mean, there's so many applications of this. It's much more of a predictable model. Right? You're not planning something that you're building and and providing more service to constituents, and you have to plan three years from now what that's gonna look like because you have buy the hardware upfront for it.

Russell Gainford: What you can do is you can build something starting small in a predictable pay as you go model, and you can gradually ramp it up as the need arises. So provide your citizens more service, rent a little bit more, you're essentially renting hardware.

Beth Amann: That scalability is key. And I mean, I have a feeling when I ask this question, the answer is going to be all of them, but what parts of government should be honing in on and assessing these digital service offerings that can be incredibly scalable, and improved performance, and allow for self-service in 24 hour access?

Russell Gainford: Ultimately, all of them. So maybe maybe taking a step back. Is there any service that's provided that shouldn't have some component of digital service access. There may be an person component always is, but is there ways that people can go on and accelerate that service, file information ahead of time, understand what they're going to need in person.

So, there's various levels of digital services and engagement. But ultimately, you want to look across the board and say, how can you provide that access to your residents and your constituents in a way that is digital first. And so there's the thought process always that people sometimes aren't able to go in person. Or they can't go for that long, or they have a child at home, or they're taken care of a parent or a loved one.

So make it as seamless as possible, focus on the digital services first, and then follow-up with in person if required.

Beth Amann: It's interesting. I think I get so into the idea of thinking about what can be digital that the way you just turn that question around of but should it be digital? How do we still maintain those connections person to person or just as important to be thinking about I mean, the things that are coming up for me is just the idea of when you have something that allows for a digital connection for self-service, it allows our government workers and our residents to focus on the bigger things that they do need that human connection for.

I don't have to worry about, do I need a babysitter so I can go and pay a parking ticket in person, they can think about, oh, I I did this online, and so now I can think about how can I spend my time doing other things that are more important to me or learn more about my government in a different way?

Russell Gainford: Absolutely. So there's this quote that I really like, and it's from Aaron Wren who wrote this book about urbanist and an author, and he wrote this book about the urban state of mind and meditations on a city. And he essentially says that the mark of a great city or government entities is not just what you do in your best places, in your prettiest places.

Everybody does that in your most visible areas. Of a city. It's what you do for all the other areas. Right?

What kind of services are you providing across the board? And there's actually an organization I really like and it's the smart city observatory and it's part of the Institute of Management and Development. And across the world, they've been doing this city living index since like two thousand nineteen. I'm a fan of it, but they look at it really in two areas.

They look at it in infrastructure, and also technology within that city. And you see as you look at the cities that rank the highest from a living index and this is where they interview residents and see what the quality of life is in the city. Technology has become a big part of that. So when you start talking about these digital services, People feel they get better service and live a better quality of life when their interactions with government can be technology focused first.

And provides them ease of access and use. So it really makes a difference. And the reason I like that city living index is you can actually see it down on paper. People's responses focus on the technology aspect influencing their perception of the government and the entity that they work with.

Beth Amann: Yeah. Just thinking personally, I would have a much better view of a government I was interfacing with if I had a very smooth, very wonderful digital experience and then got to talk to someone super helpful on a customer service line than I would if I was digging and struggling to find the answer I needed and then gotten pushed from one phone call to another phone call. It certainly would change my own personal perception and then allow me to be a more engaged resident.

Russell Gainford: Absolutely. Counter to counter, multiple phone calls, the callbacks, different experience, different times. And, you know, we've really moved on to the next stage of this resident experience engagement, which is now it's about personalizing and it's about making what was the initial things we put online for resident service access now making them better and making them more personalized to the constituent.

Beth Amann: Yeah. And so, I mean, we know, and obviously, we're here to talk about how that is the most achievable in the cloud. And we're now here in summer 2023. And like you said, cloud migration is not slowing down. And actually in April, Gartner predicted in one of their briefings that over seventy five percent of governments will operate more than half of their workloads using hyperscale cloud service providers by 2025, which sounds like a very faraway date but is actually a year and a half away. So I mean, how do governments start? How do they start assessing their tech stack and their capabilities if they haven't begun this work or if they're in the midst of it?

Russell Gainford: Yes. So I would say that's a great statistic because that is how fast it is moving. And the first thing you do as an organization is don't just think about this as moving machines or moving hardware that are running that's running some of your your workloads.

Actually moving to the cloud is really much more of a larger transformation. So always think about your staff first and your staff as well. What is the training that people need? What's the cultural change that needs to take place to move things to the cloud?

Work will be done in different ways. But then when you essentially look at these systems, you can actually categorize them. So one way you do so is you may have hardware that you've purchased upfront like we talked about earlier, that's gonna go end of life. Right?

You're going to have to buy more of it, and you're gonna have to make a large upfront purchase. Those might be workloads, and those might be solutions that you're able to move at a faster pace to kind of get you on that journey to the cloud. Another thing that that is commonly done is do you have a solution or a business service you're providing right now where you're looking to maybe change it. You might be changing the vendor.

You might be providing a new solution and taking one that was on paper. We'll look for a vendor that's already providing cloud service. So if you're going to be using a third party, you run one that's in the cloud. That helps accelerate stuff that you would have to move on your own.

And then also look at cost models of what you're moving to the cloud. There are certain workloads as you go to the cloud that will work much better for you, and that will run at a much cheaper cost model if you're an organization that's moving. So think of workloads that maybe run at the end of financial years. Right, solutions that are doing mass reporting or publishing information to your residents and constituents.

Well, in the prior world, you'd have to buy as much hardware as needed for that last month of the year when everything was running. Whereas where you're in the cloud, you might be running 5% of that for ten months, and then you scale up for the one month that's needed. So not only do you get a lot better performance for that end of year reporting, but you also save a lot your resident's constituents in your budget during those other ten months of the year? Those are really key things to think about, and I think could probably be comforting in some ways.

Beth Amann: You don't have to change right now. The cloud is where we are going, but you don't have to stop everything you're doing right now, drop it, and then completely change it. You need to assess what works for your team for the equipment that you've already invested in, for the cost model that you're looking at. I mean, that feels really comforting, I think, for a government person to think about.

We'll be right back with more from my conversation with Russell Gainford.

Jade Champion: What's up, Tyler Community? It's so crazy how quick the summer flew by. But we are so excited that August is almost here because that means we are one day closer to city hall's selfie day, which happens to be on Tuesday, August 15th this year. City Hall's Selfie Day celebrates public service, and it elevates its importance by asking community members to take a creative photo in front of their local government building.

City hall Selfie Day is organized by ELGL, short for Engaging Local Government Leaders, which is a professional association for people who work in and with local government. At Tyler, we're all about empowering people who serve the public. So we wanted to make sure you knew about this special day. We might be biased, but City House Selfie Day is one of the best days of the year because we get to see all your smiling faces in a cool selfie that showcase your love for your local government.

All you need to do is take a creative picture of yourself or of your crew in front of a local government building like City Hall, a library or a courthouse and then posted to social media. Creativity is highly encouraged, so use costumes, fun angles, and have fun with it because ELGL post a People's Choice Award. And if you win for the most creative photo, you get bragging rights for the entire year. Use the hashtag #CityHallSelfie to enter, and if you are a Tyler Tech client or partner, use the hashtag #TylerTechSelfie so we can find your photos too.

Don't forget to tag ELGL and Tyler Technologies in your social posts. We can't wait to see your selfies have so much fun.

Beth Amann: And now back to our conversation.

So those are some really great tips to start kind of assessing your your tech stack. And you also just contributed to a really lovely ebook on modernizing the resident experience. And in that piece, you'd go in detail about elements related, and you call out these six elements I think are really interesting key dimensions for improving resident engagement Can you tell us a little bit about those? Yeah.

Russell Gainford: So I think I'd start by saying a lot of these key dimensions or these building blocks that are talking about is really that next generation of resident service access and experience. And so if you actually think about how government started providing services online, and we go into this in that ebook as well. And the publication is that it really started by taking a form of that existed on paper and putting it on a webpage. And that was as far as it went.

And it was great because now constituents had the ability to fill out these forms that they'd have to wait for in person. But as time has gone on, there are more forms to fill out. There's more regulation to go through. And so now somebody is going through and trying to fill out forms 15 times and getting a different experience on each form and they're not connected.

And at the same time, in the private sector, you're seeing much more personalized solutions.

For constituents and residents. Right? They're on social media where everything's leaking together with their family and friends. They're creating personal profiles on their phone that carry over to the shopping that they're doing and the prime notification and everything else that's taking place. So as that has accelerated, in the commercial world and private sector, constituents and residents are looking at these forms that were digitized in the past and saying, we want more, right? We want more of that personalized experience. So you really need to take that broader view as you move forward into the next generation of these resident services and online digital experiences.

And so some of those building blocks, one, is centralizing kind of the identity management so centralizing the access control and the view of a citizen or a resident.

If it's an anonymous interaction where somebody is typing in their information every time, you really can't tailor that solution for them. So having those digital identities and the access control associated with those really gives you that view the resident or the constituent that you're interacting with. Another one that is personalizing those web and mobile experiences, once you know and have a profile, of an individual that you're providing service to, you can now tailor your next interaction to those folks and you can actually craft what they're seeing based on what they went through in the service they required before, showing them a status on it, providing them the mobile phone access that pings them or provides them the notification of information specific to who they are.

And then you can connect those digital services and forms by making it easier for them submit the next service that they need. You can repopulate information from last time. You can have a centralized payments type system that already keep the payment methodology that they used before, so they're not going in and filling it out every time they need a very similar service from your agency or government jurisdiction.

And then also you can do cross agency information where you know they had one service that they purchased, whether it's a hunting or fishing license or filing a taxing type form, and you can actually cross reference those to actually provide them additional information they may get by providing a service. So think about going on and requesting something for a license, and then also recommending that, oh, your fishing license is expiring in a month. Right? So rather than finding that out later and having to go back and renew and go to that same site, you could fill it out all in one transaction. So At the highest level there, it's really about maintaining information about a resident constituent that provides them best experience and value and thinking about how they can get as much accomplished in a digital fashion as possible.

Beth Amann: Yeah. That's also exciting, and I think it goes back to the idea of if a resident is having a positive experience they will engage more. If I am able to, like you said, get my license for one thing and then realize that my other license is going to expire and I get a reminder I'm gonna wanna renew that license. I'm not going to wait until three years later, I decide, oh, I should go on this fishing trip and then realize, oh, that aspired two and a half years ago. It makes it a lot easier.

Russell Gainford: Yes. Or finding when you're already up.

Beth Amann: So Is that a personal experience?

Russell Gainford: No. No. Not this stuff.

Beth Amann: Oh my goodness. Well, hopefully, if governments can take up this type of service engagement. This will happen less and less frequently of folks ending up at the campsite and realizing, oh, that expired.

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I mean, all of this, it sounds to me like it really maps towards this vision that we have a Tyler, which is the connected community's vision, and obviously that is hugely influenced by a move to the cloud. There's an excerpt on our website that I think captures this really well. And so for our listeners, I wanna make sure that they know what we mean when we talk about connect communities, which is truly connected communities are achieved when residents and governments are active participants of making a community work and thrive. Technology, interactivity is only a piece of this puzzle when people actually feel as though they are a partner in driving community safety, participation, and openness, sense of ownership, confidence, and peace of mind is achieved.

So as so much of what you described in this last example of the key dimensions of resident engagement, they're really only possible when powered by the cloud, or they can reach their most full version when they are in the cloud. So how do we go there? How do we get from disparate paper services to a truly connected community where residents are engaged with their governments?

Russell Gainford: So I would say another reason that it it provides that value. It's not that you have to be in the cloud in all scenarios, but it also allows you to go faster. So as you put this strategy together, you can naturally implement today at a quicker rate and change on the fly as you need to.

So as you are looking at what you have today, if you are deciding it is time for you are mapping out to the cloud. Start with your employees, start with your culture of transformation, procure new solutions in the cloud. Map out what you have afterwards. As we talked about earlier, you can pick certain areas that will get the most benefit of moving towards the cloud.

So now you're opening yourself up to be able to provide services at a better scale, ones that you can rely on more and your staff and your environment is making that transformation of thinking about that every time you put a new service going forward. I would say the next thing to do is how do you map out every service that you're providing today and which ones can move forward in a digital fashion for residents?

So do you have a roadmap? Here are the services we are providing, these are the ones that are in person, these are the ones that we're providing partial digital for that we think we could do better. And you can really get kind of an ROI for your teams on what will provide the most benefit for your residents and your constituents putting online, and then which ones will actually provide also benefit for your individual staff. So it's important to think about not just putting a service online as is, but how can you do it in a way and collect the information that really makes it seamless for your employees inside your jurisdiction as well.

So, it's no secret that there's a there's a large retirement that's coming the baby boomer generation inside the public sector agencies. We have some local jurisdictions that told us that that may impact them up cords of fifty percent of their employees over the next ten plus years. And they say that since February of 2020, till April of 2023. That even though private sector after COVID added in that time frame over 600,000 jobs, that the public sector is still down close to 600,000 jobs from February of 2022.

So you're dealing with less people that are available, you want to make the service that you're providing as stress free and as seamless as you can for your staff so they can continue to provide better resident access. So that's another reason you want to provide more digital services, but you also want to do it and look at it in a way on your roadmap for your agency. That you can provide as much information as possible to to make it seamless for your own team members. So you go through that process, and I would say, finally, Now that you're actually got a road map, and now that you're moving stuff to the cloud, you also then want to look at data.

You wanna be able to measure. You wanna be able to measure the user you want to be able to measure the services you're providing. So all of your data is not in one place. I mean, it's never like that.

When in a government jurisdiction, there's solutions, some are homegrown, some are vendor specific, some are integrating with your county or your state. And so as you look at that, you wanna have a data and analytics strategy and the public cloud is great for that, it will allow you to scale up. Because once you get that in place, now you can measure how you're doing with these services. And not only that, you can then connect your communities because some of the patterns you're seeing will be very similar to the state next door, the county next door, and the city next store, and they'll find that information valuable, and also that data that you're aggregating can then be used for your residents and constituents for some open data platform and providing them information about their city, which goes back to their perception of the city and local government, and the county, and the state, and the type of information they're able taxes?

Beth Amann: I love so much of what you just said. There were so many nuggets where I just thought, oh my gosh, I can't wait to comment on this. I mean, the idea of it being a step by step process that you tailor to be right for your organization, and instead of thinking about moving to the cloud or digital services as, oh my goodness, we're about to lose 50% of our workforce. You can think about what can the 50% of my workforce that's left do really well.

What are they incredibly good at? We want them to focus their time on and then figure out what can we use digital services make sure they can focus their time on, that they can serve our residents well. And I love that you brought up data and analytics before I was working with our corporate marketing team, I was working with our data and insights team, and so I have seen so many wonderful examples of governments taking their data, visualizing it, understanding it better, and then improving performance based on the findings that they got from that data. And then also sharing it across jurisdictions, which I think is so cool about government that it's not a matter of, okay, what did Travis County do versus what did Franklin County do, they can actually look at what each other did and learn from their experiences and their digital services and how they've moved to the cloud, I think it's just such an exciting time to be able to innovate within government and to really partner across county city, state lines?

Russell Gainford: Yeah. I totally agree. And I think there's no one size fits all for the clouds or on the first comment you're mentioning there, I totally agree that you want to tailor because what you've done in your history of the services and technology provided will be different to the neighboring county or what the state's doing. So you really want to look at your business, and it's also related to people.

It's all people process and technology. All of that has to be considered in the way that you approach it. And also, the data and insights in the sharing. From what we've found, and as we've gone through it, as you mentioned, with the examples, people and constituents, as well as the actual jurisdictions themselves, they want to see that information.

They want to share and collaborate in see that data. And in the past, they haven't been able to do so. And so that is a really great side effect of this public cloud type transformation that we're seeing, is that these agencies are able pull in data from their neighboring jurisdictions, states are able to aggregate data, and constituents are able to benefit from that in whole new ways that they weren't able to for.

Beth Amann: So I think you just wrapped it up perfectly.

I also feel like we should maybe consider getting people, process, and technology written on my hand, or tattooed somewhere so we remember that. But I think this was so great to talk with you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I wanna make sure that our listeners know where to get that ebook that we talked about, where can they find that?

Russell Gainford: Yeah. On our Tyler Technologies website under resources, we provide a link to that ebook. You can go get it at any time.

Beth Amann: Awesome.

Thank you. And where can folks stay up to date with the latest in cloud technology? What are you reading? And how are you keeping up to date?

Russell Gainford: You can use social media. You wouldn't believe how much stuff is posted about technology changes in the cloud and people that you can follow whether they're on Twitter and stuff that you on the sites like LinkedIn, but articles are coming out all the time. You can craft what you're doing anywhere from on your iPhone to stuff that you're looking on your computer when you're on a break at work. So cloud and the new technologies coming out is everywhere.

And we're publishing more than we can certainly absorb at this stage of human evolution.

Beth Amann: That is very true. There is always a news article to read and it seems the simple go to the cloud to learn about the cloud.

Russell Gainford: Exactly.

Beth Amann: Russell, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you and thank you for having me today. The cloud provides governments with a significant opportunity to improve resident engagement and experience. Tyler is here to partner with you as you create a more effective, efficient and resident centric government.

The vision of a digitally connected public sector and a truly connected community is possible. And we are excited to be on this journey with our government partners. I hope you'll download our ebook that Russell mentioned which is linked in the show notes and subscribe because we have a lot in store for the second half of the year on the podcast. For Tyler Technologies, I'm Beth Amann.

Thank you for joining us.