Tech Strategies and the Effectiveness of Identity Providers

Tyler Podcast Episode 94, 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. Each episode highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give the podcast a listen today and subscribe.

Show Notes

On this episode of The Tyler Tech Podcast, Gina Erickson, Senior Software Development Manager, ERP Pro, at Tyler Technologies, explores the crucial role of modern solutions such as identity providers in safeguarding technology infrastructure, especially in smaller municipalities like Des Moines County, Iowa, where she spent time as an IT Director. Gina shares insights into the challenges and best practices of tech modernization from her extensive experience.

We also detail our latest white paper about the five main risks of legacy systems. You can download that here: Is Your Legacy Digital Infrastructure Putting You at Risk?

Learn more about the topics discussed in this episode with these resources:

• Identity Workforce Streamlines Sign-in Management
• Why Do You Need Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
• Issue Paper: The Case for Centralized Digital Identities
• Blog: 6 Key Dimensions to Enhance the Digital Resident Experience
• Blog: Future-Proofing Government Through Technology Modernization

And you can listen to other episodes of the podcast at this link: www.tylertech.com/resources/podcast

Let us know what you think about the Tyler Tech Podcast in this survey!

Transcript

Gina Erickson: Going back to what I mentioned about single sign on. For an employee, managing multiple usernames and passwords across multiple applications, it's going to be a time savings for them as well as just enhanced security to be able to login to each of their applications with one set of credentials. So, for the employee, that that really is beneficial for them.

Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, it's The Tyler Tech Podcast, your source for insightful conversations with thought leaders addressing the pressing issues in our communities. I'm Josh Henderson, and I'm on the corporate marketing team here at Tyler. Thanks for joining us.

In each episode, we dive into the essential topics shaping our society and shed light on the individuals, places, and technologies empowering the public sector.

If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review, subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and recommending the show to others. On today's episode, we're joined by Tyler's Senior Software Development Manager for ERP Pro, Gina Erickson.

Before joining the team here at Tyler, Gina spent 23 years working as a Network Administrator and then as an IT Director for Des Moines County in Iowa.

According to the latest census data, Des Moines County, Iowa has a population of just under 40,000 people.

And one area of the tech space Gina has been focusing on is the implementation of IdPs, or identity providers, as a best practice for security measures, especially in less populated counties. Additionally, Gina shares her thoughts on what smaller municipalities need to understand when it comes to tech modernization and how her time at Des Moines County has allowed her to better understand those unique needs and, of course, the challenges and obstacles along the way.

She has so much to share. So, without further ado, here's the conversation with Gina Erickson. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Alright, Gina. Thanks so much for joining me today on The Tyler Tech Podcast.

Gina Erickson: Thank you for having me, Josh.

Josh Henderson: Now you've had such an interesting career, you know, having spent over two decades with Des Moines County, and then moving into your role here at Tyler. Can you just walk us through your career journey up to and including what you're doing now and how your work at Des Moines County kind of allowed for a seamless transition into your role here at Tyler?

Gina Erickson: Sure. So, starting out, I worked for Des Moines County for close to 24 years as a Network Administrator and then an IT Director. During that 24 years, we went through multiple implementations with Tyler. We were a Tyler client throughout my entire career. So, we went through implementations going from Eden to ERP Pro 10 financials, multiple transitions, and we're also the beta site for property tax for ERP Pro 10. So, a lot of experience with Tyler applications.

I came to Tyler six years ago as a project manager, and it just so happened to be immediately following our ERP Pro 10 financials implementation.

So, I had actually just gone through an implementation working with a project manager and understanding the implementation itself. So, it gave me really good insight into the project manager space.

And since that time, I moved to an implementation manager role working with installed accounts and new logo clients, specifically for utility billing and property tax mainly for the new logos.

And in the last three years, I did move to development and became a development manager for the ERP Pro 10 products. So, that's where I've been for the last three years for the ERP Pro 10 cloud project.

Josh Henderson: That's wonderful. We're obviously so lucky to have you here at Tyler. So glad that you made your way here. But, you know, you're with Des Moines County as a technology implementation and government, as technology implementation in government really started to ramp up and change, what were the main challenges for you there? And on the flip side, successes or wins, that you experienced during your time at Des Moines County?

Gina Erickson: I'd probably have to say budget and resource constraints were the biggest challenges we had. Really fighting for those budgetary dollars to implement technology.

The biggest win, I would say, would be when we received an energy efficiency grant and were able to implement virtualization across our platform and really get to ramp up our technology.

Another challenge was convincing the board and department heads of the importance of technology and improvements in technology.

Josh Henderson: Yeah. I feel like you hear that quite often at a county level, especially with a smaller municipality like Des Moines. You know, you work with clients now that are in the same situations you were once in. What do you believe are the main benefits of having, you know, had that firsthand experience as it relates to your current role?

Gina Erickson: I think I probably have a different level of compassion and empathy for what they're going through, a real-world experience of what they're facing day to day and the challenges they face. So, I can really relate and have those conversations that maybe other individuals might not be able to.

Josh Henderson: That's really great. Really good point of view, obviously.

Now one of your main areas of focus lately has been identity providers.

Can you define for our audience, you know, what an IdP is and why they're so important? And I think especially, as it relates to smaller municipalities or what you've seen, in in the work that you've done.

Gina Erickson: Yeah. You bet.

So typically, in kind of the old-world way of handling credentials, either the IT staff or an individual responsible would go into each and every application and set up user credentials for each application individually.

For an identity provider, it provides the agency the ability to go to a single point for setting up credentials and managing those credentials.

So, I'd probably say the most important thing for municipalities is resource and time savings.

You can go to an identity provider, set up the credentials, and have those credentials be utilized across multiple applications.

For the user and the employee, themselves, it's the single sign on. Being able to utilize one set of credentials across multiple applications rather than having separate passwords or storing those passwords someplace where they really have to remember them.

Josh Henderson: Yeah. Sort of a one stop shop for residents. It's really important.

Gina Erickson: Absolutely. There's built-in security features that can be set up through identity providers that, again, is a one stop place for maintaining that security.

Josh Henderson: That's great. And let's dive into that a little bit further. I'm curious if you can provide, you know, some real-world examples on how a resident or an employee would interact with or utilize an identity provider on a day-to-day basis? And, you know, why should they want them to be implemented?

Gina Erickson: Right. So going back to what I mentioned about single sign on. For an employee, managing multiple usernames and passwords across multiple applications, it's going to be a time savings for them as well as just enhanced security to be able to login to each of their applications with one set of credentials. So, for the employee, that really is beneficial for them. For the agency as a whole, it's the security.

And being able to, when an employee leaves employment, being able to go to one location and disable and remove that employee from one location versus remembering what all applications that employee had access to before they left.

For residents, streamlining access to services, enhanced security, efficient data management, improved service delivery and interoperability would probably be the main benefits for residents when an agency utilizes an IdP.

Josh Henderson: That's wonderful.

So, obviously getting identity providers, the implementation and the timelines of those implementations it’s going to look a lot different case by case, county by county, state by state, whatever it might be. I'm curious you if you have any stories of implementation strategies that you've seen first-hand or can share as an example, feel free to dive into one or two of those.

Gina Erickson: A real world example for Des Moines County would be the migration from Exchange on premise to Office 365 and utilizing Microsoft Azure. It was a lot of planning involved with that. We had approximately, if I remember correctly, it's been six years ago, approximately about 200 users in our Exchange environment. So, migrating those users over from on prem Exchange to Azure was, and Office 365 was a big undertaking. It was not done all at once. It was done in groups of users, typically based by department.

So, really planning out a strategy.

If you're not really familiar with identity providers, making sure you have a really good resource available, either outsourced or networking with peers was a big benefit for me. There is a wonderful agency that we belong to, an affiliate we belong to while I was at the county. It was the Iowa County Information Technology Affiliate. And it what it is is it's a group of IT directors and GIS coordinators across the entire state, all 99 counties. And we really peer networked together, listened to other real world experience of other clients or other counties going through this type of implementation and taking feedback from them on what to do better for the processes.

Josh Henderson: That's really interesting. I'd like to dive a little bit deeper actually into that IT group and your work at Des Moines. Do you have any background on how that was started and how much did that kind of inform the decisions that you that were being made day-to-day in in the county?

Gina Erickson: I was actually at the county when that affiliate was organized.

In the state of Iowa, it's the Iowa State Association of Counties, so it's every department across the state at every agency. So, it could be the auditor, the treasurer's affiliate. There's several different affiliates based on the department.

At the time the IT organization or the affiliate was created, it was a smaller group of IT directors. Not every county was represented by a specific IT department. Some counties had outsources. They would utilize outsourced IT, or they would have just an individual in the county, whether it be from the auditor's office, be the person that was responsible for IT at that time. So, we began to notice a real need for representation in the technology arena, and a small group of us formed the affiliate under the Iowa State Association of Counties. I can't remember the exact year for that, but it's been several years ago, and it really promoted growth in technology across the state.

They, or we, as an affiliate actually created an organization called Paying It Forward or Paying IT Forward, where we would go from county to county. If a county needed additional resources, we would audit their network. We would do penetration testing. We would review their financial statements to see if they were paying for maintenance agreements that they didn't necessarily need to pay for, and we would provide the board of supervisors back a report.

Typically, this was done at no charge to the county.

IT directors would, again, pay it forward. They would give those resources to that county. And in most circumstances, the county saw the benefit of having those IT resources and then invested in their own IT staff and brought them on board, on premise. So, great organization, did a lot of good across the state, and from my understanding, they're still going strong and giving back to their communities.

Josh Henderson: That's wonderful. What a what a fantastic resource for an IT director or anybody in in IT, like, to just to get that the help in in terms of just, like, seeing what other folks are doing and implementing and helping get that buy in, you know, from leadership or whomever it may be.

Gina Erickson: I'm a firm believer that no matter what position you're in or what company you're with or what agency you're with, networking is key. If you can build those relationships with other individuals that are in the same position that you are or similar and get feedback from them, that's going to be your best resource.

Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more of The Tyler Tech Podcast.

I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of The Tyler Tech Podcast.

I'm here with my colleague Jade Champion to talk about the importance of tech modernization.

Are you struggling to maintain your legacy systems? It might be time for a change.

Jade Champion: That's right, Josh. We just released a white paper that outlines the five main risks of legacy systems and the benefits of modernizing your digital infrastructure.

Josh Henderson: From security weaknesses to inefficiencies and high maintenance costs, legacy systems can really hold back government agencies. So, what are some of the benefits of future proofing with an updated tech stack?

Jade Champion: Modern cloud-based solutions help to streamline processes, protect against cyber threats, improve the resident experience, meet compliance requirements, and provide more scalability.

Josh Henderson: Are you ready to leave your legacy systems behind and improve your digital services?

Check out our show notes for resources to help you get started and reach out to us at podcas@ttylertech.com to connect with a Tyler expert today. Now let's get back to The Tyler Tech Podcast.

Josh Henderson: I know we touched on this a little bit, but curious to dive a little deeper into this. What do you believe are some of the key obstacles or challenges for municipalities when it comes to modernizing their infrastructure with something specifically like an identity provider?

Gina Erickson: So, I would say probably convincing those who are in charge of approving budgets is going to be the biggest obstacle. One of the things that we did with this ICIT organization, the Iowa County Information Technology Affiliate, was there was a big push for cybersecurity training at agencies.

I was having a very difficult time convincing board members, not just myself, other agencies as well.

So, our executive board for the ICIT group, came up with an idea to do a real-world experiment.

And I went to my county treasurer, I talked to my treasurer about this initiative that we were wanting to do, where we were going to look at social engineering.

And we, during one of our county conferences, we did a call to our county treasurer's office. Like I said, with my treasurer's approval, unbeknownst to the staff and actually portrayed that we were a Tyler representative, a support representative, and needed to gain access to the system and wanted to know if they would provide their username and password for us to be able to log in.

This wasn't to put any of our users in any type of light that they were doing something wrong. It was more to convince our board that this was something extremely important, that this was occurring or could occur very easily.

And during that call, it was a live conference. We had all of our affiliate members from the IT organization during that conference call, sitting in the room, listening to the conversation. And the user, not just one user, but multiple users, provided usernames and passwords to the fake Tyler support representative, over the call. With that, I was able to go back to my board, present our findings during this conference, and was immediately awarded budgetary funding for cybersecurity training across the county as a whole. It was an amazing experience.

We did talk to each one of the users, explained what happened, explained that they were not in trouble. This fell on our IT and our board as a whole for failing to provide that that training that was necessary for our users.

Josh Henderson: That's such an incredible story. You know, one good way to get a budget for an IT staff. Really, really interesting.

Gina Erickson: It was not just our organization that benefited that from that as well. Each one of the agencies that was fighting for those budgetary dollars for those counties actually went back and utilized that same conference experience and were able to also get the funding for their training.

Josh Henderson: That's fantastic. It's like you got to see it for yourself to kind of understand the implications of needing security measures in place.

Gina Erickson: Absolutely.

Josh Henderson: This is why we do all of our security and compliance training. Right? This this this type of thing.

Gina Erickson: Exactly.

Josh Henderson: Yeah. Well, Gina, this has been so great. So, you know, as we start to wrap up this conversation, I was hoping we could leave municipalities concerned help feeling overwhelmed or stressed or, you know, unsure about how to even start the process of modernizing or feeling like they just don't have the workforce they need to implement something like an IdP?

Gina Erickson: Always know that there's resources available. If you're not sure who to reach out to, your IT resource, whether it be outsourced or whether it be internal staff, or whether you need to reach out to Tyler and ask for recommendations for who they can talk to to get more information, make sure you're making the that networking and connecting with other people who have been in the in that experience and have already gone through the technology needs.

Just really making sure that you're doing your due diligence to research what's available out there. And if you're not sure, just finding those resources to be able to help you. You're not in it alone. Every county, every municipality, every city, every, tribal nation, they're all going through the same thing and just making sure that you're able to communicate and work through that together.

Josh Henderson: I think that's a brilliant piece of advice, and I think that's the perfect place to end. So, I really appreciate you taking the time here today, Gina. I know our listeners will get a lot out of this conversation. Thanks for joining me on the podcast, and I hope that you can come back soon for another conversation.

Gina Erickson: I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Josh.

Josh Henderson: I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Gina Erickson. If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of IdPs and other topics discussed throughout the episode, check out our show notes for more resources.

A modern digital infrastructure allows the public sector to adapt in the digital age. From operational agility to data management and analytics, as well as cost savings, security, compliance, and scalability, governments are poised to take advantage of innovative technology to create more efficiencies in their systems and better support and connect their communities.

Tyler creates solutions made exclusively for the public sector and has experts with government experience ready to support you on this journey.

I hope you're excited about what the future holds and will reach out to us at podcast@tylertech.com to connect with a subject matter expert if you'd like to learn more. And whether it's implementing an identity provider or modernizing your digital infrastructure or something else entirely, we want to hear from you about what you'd enjoy hearing more of and how we can make The Tyler Tech Podcast even better. Fill out our audience survey in the show notes today to let us know how you heard about the show and your ideas for future episodes.

And don't forget to subscribe to the show and rate and review the podcast.

For Tyler Technologies, I'm Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining The Tyler Tech Podcast.