Unlocking the Cloud in Government Services

Tyler Podcast Episode 87, 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.

Episode Notes

In today's episode, we revisit past conversations with Russell Gainford, the Senior Vice President, Cloud Strategy & Operations at Tyler Technologies.

Drawing from his extensive expertise in cloud-based technology solutions, Russell Gainford offers insights into the transformative impact of cloud adoption in government services and its resulting positive effects on resident experience and engagement. He emphasizes how cloud technology has fundamentally reshaped government operations, facilitating more efficient, accessible, and user-friendly services while enabling public sector employees to scale and seamlessly integrate their systems. Tune in to gain a thorough understanding of the benefits the cloud can bring.

We also look ahead to Connect 2024, which will be in Indianapolis, Indiana from May 19th to May 22nd - early registration, which saves you $250, is now open at: www.tylertech.com/connect

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

• E-Book: A Digital Government Guide to Modernizing the Resident Experience
• Blog: Cloud Advantages Help Government Resiliency
• Blog: The Cloud Experience: Improving Government Services
• Blog: Is it Time for Your County to Move to the Cloud?
• Video: Enhanced Security and Efficiency in the Cloud
• Blog: District Goes From Cumbersome to Convenient with Cloud
• Podcast: Leveraging the Cloud to Elevate the Digital Resident Experience
• Podcast: What to Know About Cloud Adoption with Russell Gainford

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

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

Transcript

Russell Gainford: Moving into the cloud is providing a lot more citizen services that didn't exist before. And, you know, the ability to interact, it's something that everybody expects now. And so, being able to move content into the cloud, to be able to provide data analytics, to be able to provide citizen services is huge.

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 revisiting past conversations with Russell Gainford.

Russell is the Senior Vice President, Cloud Strategy & Operations here at Tyler Technologies, and has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to cloud-based solutions.

Russell will dive into how cloud technology adoption can not only modernize the digital experience, but provide seamless, scalable, integrated services, and significantly enhance the resident experience as well.

All that and more in today's episode, we hope you enjoy!

First up, Russell's going to walk us through how cloud adoption and system modernization has fundamentally changed the way residents interact with government, and the overwhelmingly positive impact those changes have had.

Russell Gainford: The cloud has become a transformational shift in the way we operate and the way that we are as human beings. Connectivity, you know, the ability to access information real-time over the internet. And, you know, I can get to services. I can interact with my local city or municipality, and I can interact with corporations and my friends and family and we're a connected world, more than we've ever been, you know, historically. And the ability to get information from the cloud and the internet is transformative, right?

People can blog. People can create content. They're able to see news stories and stuff we never could before. The ability to learn online in the cloud, and the access to education information is incredible, more than has ever existed, as a human race and, and the cloud and the internet are part of that.

They're a big part of that. And so, it's really ties people together. We can see what's going on. We can chime in on it. And we can be more educated about who we are as people and where we're going.

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.

Josh Henderson: And these days, cloud-based connectivity isn't just what residents demand, it's what they expect.

Russell Gainford: Moving into the cloud is providing a lot more citizen services that didn't exist before. And, you know, the ability to interact, it's something that everybody expects now. And so being able to move content into the cloud to be able to provide data analytics, to be able to provide citizen services is huge. And that was harder to maintain a level of service inside of these private data centers. So, it's providing their constituents and their staff a level of service they've never seen before, and they're getting it basically built into the cost of managing in a cloud environment.

And so if you actually think about how government started providing services online. It really started by taking a form 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 or 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 is accelerated in the commercial world, in private or 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's 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 of the residents 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 to submit the next service that they need.

You can prepopulate 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 that they may get by providing 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 or constituent that provides them the best experience and value in thinking about how they can get as much accomplished in a digital fashion as possible.

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

Jade Champion: I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of The Tyler Tech Podcast. Hey podcast listeners, my name is Jade Champion, and I'm here with Breanna Case to tell you about Tyler's annual user conference, Tyler Connect. Breanna, tell our listeners why they shouldn't miss Connect 2024.

Beanna Case: Well, Jade, Connect is back in the beautiful city of Indianapolis, Indiana, and we have so much planned. From product training and networking opportunities to influential speakers, this year's conference has it all.

Jade Champion: I hear there's an awesome keynote speaker as well. What can you tell us about that?

Breanna Case: Yes! We're excited to announce Lisa Bodell as this year's keynote speaker. Lisa is a best-selling author and the CEO of Future Think. And she's all about eliminating complexity and boosting productivity and innovation in the workplace. Get ready to feel inspired, fuel your curiosity, unleash your creativity, and most importantly do meaningful work.

Jade Champion: Be sure to mark your calendars for Tyler Connect 2024 from May 19th to May 22nd. And you can still take advantage of early bird pricing right now, which saves you $250 if you register before March 22nd at tylertech.com/connect or by clicking the link in our show notes. We hope to see you in Indy as we continue transforming for tomorrow. Now let's get back to The Tyler Tech Podcast.

Josh Henderson: There's obviously so much to consider when it comes to cloud solutions. But ultimately, it's about creating a seamless, scalable experience for residents, and making sure all the critical data being gathered is secure. But system transformation requires buy-in from government agencies. And here, Russell's going to outline a roadmap of how to successfully modernize your digital infrastructure.

Russell Gainford: As you're looking at what you have today, if you're deciding it is time for your 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. You 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 road map? 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 access 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.

Now that you've actually got a road map, and now that you're moving stuff to the cloud, you also then want to look at data. You want to be able to measure. You want to be able to measure the user experience. 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 within a government jurisdiction, there's different 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 want to have a data and analytics strategy.

And the public cloud is great for that. It'll 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 door. 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 platforms 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 to access.

People and constituents as well as the actual jurisdictions themselves, they want to see that information. They want to share and collaborate and 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 to 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 before.

Josh Henderson: So, with all of that data being utilized, how does the cloud ensure the safety of resident information?

Russell Gainford: When we look at the cloud and we look at the ability to have world class leaders on cybersecurity maintaining these public cloud environments, there's a huge benefit to think about there. What is the cost and the risk of not going versus, you know, the benefits that you get when you're in that type of secure and compliance environments? And you can read and they're very open about you know, what they what they do and how they manage these environments and all the standards they comply with, whether using the cloud environments or you're using a commercial environment.

There's so much that's done to protect those environments for customers that wish to use them. So, think about that. Think about the long-term implications, because we are seeing so many more alerts and so many more publications on cybersecurity threats, whether it's ransomware, whether it's exploitations or critical vulnerabilities seen in software products that are used, and having the ability to patch those quickly and to keep on top of those things is really important. And so, these agencies see that as a huge benefit.

I'd say another thing is you know, as you're looking as a jurisdiction, if you're looking more towards adopting and moving your content to the cloud, you know, look at your staff and make sure they're continued to be educated on the benefits that the cloud can provide and that they feel that they know where they're going and that they're educated in what those cloud platforms are like. Because people that are trained and are given the investment from an organization to learn, these new platforms, they'll make better decisions when you get there. So, there's definitely an organizational culture and training that needs to take place as part of any jurisdictions cloud adoption.

It can't just be something said. It's got to be something that's coupled with a pragmatic strategy to get there.

Josh Henderson: And that's it for today's episode. Many thanks to Russell Gainford for the cloud expertise.

Cloud adoption in the public sector empowers agencies and enables the seamless integration of digital services. From data storage and processing to application hosting and infrastructure management, the cloud securely streamlines operations and enhances accessibility for government services. For recommendations on how to utilize cloud based solutions and improve the resident experience, check out the links in our show notes for some helpful resources.

Tyler Technologies creates solutions made for the public sector and has experts with government experience ready to support you on your 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 you'd like to learn more. And whether it's cloud adoption and 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 leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.

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