The High Cost of Fractured Technology: Part Two

Tyler Podcast Episode 16, 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 content marketing director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

We complete the two-part series, diving into the challenges of a GovTech Stack that does not stack up. Tyler internal expert Mike Teeters helps us understand who and how the Government Tech Stack gets implemented, and addresses the questions of whether or not there is a certain order to implementation.

Transcript

Mike Teeters: I think you want to start with, what are we trying to achieve as an organization? What are those goals and outcomes that we've laid out in a lot of cases have really been publicly committed to by leaders in public sector org or agency? What is it that they've really talked about as goals or outcomes over the next few years? I think the other part of this might be alternately to think about what are changes or challenges that we anticipate in that same period? Those two things in terms of what we want to do and what we need to fend off I think are really going to then set a set of expectations and a vision for where we want to go.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places, and technology making a difference. I'm your host Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies, and I am so glad that you have joined us. The issue we are addressing today is the high cost of fractured technology. This is actually part two of a conversation we started last episode with Mike Teeters. Mike is a manager of corporate development products and has great insight into the components of the government technology stack and the challenges that face communities, when the stack just does not stack up. Today, Mike is going to talk about how and who, as communities consider moving toward a more complete GovTech Stack. Without further ado, here is part two of my conversation with Mike Teeters. Mike, I'm so glad you are back with us.

Jeff Harrell: Last time we talked, we talked a lot about the elements of a GovTech Stack. And so today I'd like to know how does a jurisdiction get to a mature complete GovTech Stack? Does it happen all at once or over time? And is there a roadmap for what comes first or a particular order to follow?

Mike Teeters: Yeah, yeah. And I think it certainly extends on what we just talked about in framing out what is the GovTech Stack? I'm sure hearing all that is a lot to digest and someone might step back and go, "Okay, so how do I get there? Does that happen all at once? Is this where that roadmap comes into play? Is there a particular order or sequence I would follow?" I do think the roadmap analogy, I use blueprint, but I love the roadmap analogy because I think that really plays well. You've got a framework with the GovTech Stack, you know what the elements are. And if you think in the future, you're really laying out, what's my vision? What is it that my constituents are expecting or that my policy makers have really laid out as a set of expectations? And that starts to drive this idea of laying out a roadmap. Nearly every organization is going to have a mix of what I'll call legacy technology and modern solutions. They'll have invested in some. When you think about how each of those fit into the different tech stack components, it should start to suss out this roadmap for you. And it's going to vary by organization. There isn't just a roadmap that anybody would follow, rather there is going to be a roadmap for your organization that's going to reflect your policy priorities, the targeted outcomes that your decision makers have laid out.

Mike Teeters: With that roadmap in place, the organization now is in a position to start making investments over time. Not realistic that you're just going to snap your fingers with an earlier question that talked about this off the shelf. There isn't an off the shelf solution and certainly that covers all of those different components, rather again, looking at that framework and then thinking of the components that really fit into each part. Now we have the ability to start thinking, okay, what are the priorities? What are priorities in terms of where I might be able to make the biggest impact, outside challenges or influences that might drive one thing to get prioritized over another? COVID-19 is a great example of this. I guarantee you there wasn't anybody at the beginning of the year was thinking of that as something that was going to drive technology investments or decisions that they made.

Mike Teeters: I think many agencies now recognize that some of the changes that have occurred over the last six months due to COVID, remote working, really the rise of different models for service delivery and different models for interactions between public agencies and constituents, those aren't going to just go away. If anything, now probably people feel a lot more confident about those models or it might have taken us several years to really see a mass move to those models. Now it's been pretty quickly proven. I would say then thinking about what might drive how you might make investments, what would be the order, I'd really consider a couple of factors. One is going to be your technology infrastructure. How does your current technology infrastructure support your goals? And this is where as we discussed, I think a lot of organizations are going to rethink their service delivery model. They've realized, "Hey, this new model that allows for different channels of service delivery works well." And so that for example might be where they'd say, "Oh, I'm going to make an investment now in cloud services that really lend themselves to supporting that new service delivery model." That might be a great example where we would accelerate something. So first thing to really assess would be this tech infrastructure that we have. I think the second part, which goes hand in hand in that is really going to be around security and compliance. And so again, this changing service delivery model is now going to put more emphasis on web remote interactions, technology dependent tools.

Mike Teeters: And I think that raises concerns that any decision maker needs to be considering when it comes to security, privacy, compliance. That in my mind also then drives probably near term investments in cybersecurity where solutions there can really play a key role in ensuring that as you make successive investments and you kind of blow out that tech infrastructure, you're going to feel confident that, "Hey, I'm doing it in a way and I'm doing it in an environment that I feel really confident is going to be low risk in terms of network intrusions and security risks and those kinds of things."

Jeff Harrell: I'd love to shift our attention a little bit to who... So in local government, who owns this approach, who owns kind of driving this roadmap?

Mike Teeters: Yeah. I think there's collective ownership in the sense that there's a bunch of different stakeholders that play a role here between elected leaders, the CIO, or the folks that really are the tech leadership and providing a vision for that, professional staff that are really responsible for executing these business processes. Having said that, I think the CIO role in an organization, whatever you might call that in your agency really plays a key role in championing this approach and championing the roadmap. That's the person that most people are going to look to in terms of how do I take the service delivery vision, if you will, and then realize that through technology investments? And I think the CIO can really be the person that drives that alignment between vision and the technology components really then provides, I think, a very clear path in terms of, hey, in order to realize these policy goals or targeted outcomes, here are the different components that we have today that allow for that, or here are the investments that we can make in order to make those things a reality. Professional staff clearly is going to play a role in helping to flesh that out in terms of providing color, if you will, to the roadmap, making recommendations or offering alternatives. And then of course, those folks are also going to be the ones that are really implementing the new tech, right? And taking overall ownership once the investments been made. So it's a continuum there, but I definitely see the CIO or that tech leader in the organization as being critical to really kind of championing this approach and the roadmap itself.

Guidance on Implementing GovTech

Jeff Harrell: I'll be back with my conversation with Mike Teeters in just a moment. Do you want the latest in public sector insights drop straight into your inbox? Well, you can sign up for our monthly email at our resource center. Just go to tylertech.com and click on resources at the top of the page. You can sign up for our monthly recap from any of the content pieces you find there. I think you'll find a monthly recap email very helpful. Now back to my conversation with Mike Teeters. So Mike, any guidance that you can give these leaders as they try to get buy-in for this GovTech Stack approach?

Mike Teeters: I have a few recommendations that come to mind. First, I would start with your organization and agency goals. And I hope as we've gone through the discussion today, that's kind of been a theme. I think you want to start with, what are we trying to achieve as an organization? What are those goals and outcomes that we've laid out and in a lot of cases have really been publicly committed to by leaders in public sector org or agency, what is it that they've really talked about as goals or outcomes over the next few years? I think the other part of this might be alternately to kind of think about what are changes or challenges that we anticipate in that same period, those two things in terms of what we want to do and what we need to fend off I think are really going to then set kind of a set of expectations and a vision for where we want to go, right? So those goals which have been set by often are set by elected officials or leaders in the organization. That's step one as a starting point.

Mike Teeters: Step two would be assessing your current technology. We touched on this earlier, but really having an understanding how does my current technology support realizing those goals? Can we achieve what we want to do with the tech that we have in place? In some instances, the answer's going to be, yes, there could be process changes that we can make. It could be there's resourcing shifts that we can make. In a lot of instances, what we're looking at here are really going to be where this GovTech Stack approach I think can play very well because it provides a way for us then to say, okay, where we've got gaps, how do we effectively invest in order to fill those gaps and how do we organize these solutions and align them to agency goals? And that's where I think it can be a really, really effective tool in identifying, oh, we have a gap here, or there are some limitations with our legacy investments that would drive us to say, hey, we should really be thinking about a solution that can fill in a gap in a particular spot in the framework.

Mike Teeters: And then I think the third piece about this, and you asked a little bit about how do I explain and get buy-in? I think explaining things, if you think about those first two steps, a lot of that will resonate with leadership, but the probably how I start to get buy-in is very much in the show me results model, right? And that's where I think if you can identify high value low risk opportunities to start, find opportunities where you can do a pilot or otherwise demonstrate a technology solution in a way that is going to drive process change or organizational change, where you can very much show decision makers, here's the value of making this investment, right? You can see how it was able to kind of move the needle in terms of achieving a goal.

Mike Teeters: It can also solidify questions that people have around the ROI of an investment. And that's really a model out of the playbook that we see in private sector where we're going to make a small step forward, but that small step can often be very demonstrative in terms of what the longer term impact can be. And I think that same model can work really well in government, in public sector. So I'd say those three things really starting with your organization and agency goals, looking at your current tech picture. Again, the GovTech Stack framework, I think provides a great way kind of establish what that is and then align it to those organizational goals. And then once you've done that and you've identified where you want to start to prioritize investments, let's do that in a way that is very methodical, high value, low risk opportunities where we can pilot things.

Jeff Harrell: Mike, you've given us a lot of great information about GovTech Stack. If people wanted to go a little bit deeper, are there any resources that you can recommend?

Mike Teeters: Yeah, I'd say there's a few things that people might think about. First of all Tyler Technologies, we have a number of white papers that expand on a lot of the points that I made today that I think can provide another additional level of depth. And there's some really nice examples and use cases with our clients that really show how some of these solutions have really helped move the needle for them when it comes to either service delivery goals, outcomes, or in some cases, challenges that they were having. So I think that's probably a first great step. You can really familiarize yourself and get better read if you will on the topic. So that's step one. I think step two is also, and I'll be a little Tyler centric, is we've got client success folks in our various divisions, and there are great examples where those folks can certainly help to provide a clear picture how, for example, a current investment in a Tyler solution can then be built on and frame that in the terms of the GovTech Stack. And so whether that's the example I provided earlier, the new business owner in community development or in an example, I provided some examples around virtual court, the judicial system, another great example where we've got a very strong client success organization. And even more recently, you think about some of the broader strategies that we're using at Tyler, what we call Nexus, which is really around our enterprise solutions.

Mike Teeters: We have some dedicated individuals that focus on client success and can obviously be a great conduit to dig into this some more and maybe get a clear picture how it might fit into your particular organization. I think the third piece here, which is probably not GovTech Stack specific with our framework, but I still think is extremely valuable and I touched on this towards the opening of the podcast is really leveraging your peers. And I think a lot of our clients, and certainly a lot of public sector organizations and agencies are old hats at this, but there's a lot of value in talking to your peers, whether that's other agencies or municipalities that are within say your regional area or through industry groups. So for example, municipality might look at NACO or ICMA which are the city and county organizations, respectively provides a great, again, a great pathway for them to really understand more about how different organizations are leveraging technology to solve different solutions. And I think you can then take that and relate it back to again, the GovTech Stack framework that we've offered up as one approach to how you might structure your thinking moving forward. So those are just a few that I would say right off the top of my head. We're certainly excited about this as you know, Jeff, so I think you could get a number of people at Tyler that would be happy to sit down and dig in with you as well.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Mike, this has been fantastic. If people wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Mike Teeters: Yeah, I'd say the easiest way is through my email address Tyler, it's just Mike, M-I-K-E, period, Teeters, T-E-E-T-E-R-S @tylertech.com. I'd certainly love to talk more and I'm happy to answer any questions that people have, look forward to seeing them as they come in.

Jeff Harrell: Mike, thanks so much.

Mike Teeters: Thank you. I appreciate you having me on Jeff.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Mike is a wealth of information and knowledge. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and found it valuable. Well, thanks so much for joining me and listening to the podcast. We have episodes dropping every other Monday and lots of great information is headed your way, so please subscribe. And until next time, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.