Like the United States Postal Service (USPS) and State of Arizona, government agencies rely on an array of infrastructures to deliver on their mission – many of these being legacy systems. While trusted, these outdated IT solutions can’t offer the capabilities agencies desperately need like data warehousing, computing, and enhanced security. Because of this, agencies are looking to the cloud to transform their IT environment by improving performance, driving down costs, and adding innovative new solutions.
The journey to the cloud can be difficult for agencies dealing with legacy systems, limited budgets, and an even smaller IT department – but it doesn’t have to be. With the right cloud solution government agencies will enhance security, scalability, and success in delivering on the mission.
“How do you modernize in a place without having to jump completely to the cloud? How do you bridge incompatible architectures while you transition?” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “How do you maintain flexibility and avoid lock-in?”
These are all questions that agencies must consider when choosing their path to the cloud, but two government agencies have shown the outcome. The USPS and the State of Arizona have taken the leap into modernization by partnering with Google Cloud and have seen improvements in efficiency, security, and mission delivery.
With competition heating up from carrier services like Amazon, the USPS has begun a journey to reinvent itself – starting with customer experience which was called “one of the bigger pain points” by Mike Daniels, vice president of global public sector at Google Cloud.
With lengthy call wait times and limited staff, the USPS decided to launch cloud-based artificial intelligence agents that can respond to customers much quicker than an employee. USPS plans to use the assistants in the agency’s call center and website so customers can ask questions or track packages. These assistants will work to reduce wait times on the 80 million customer calls the agency receives per year.
“Postal is really looking to transform everything they’re doing from a production, back-end standpoint,” explained Daniels. “From true production systems that deliver the mail to customer interaction systems.”
The State of Arizona has improved efficiency and security for nearly 100 agencies and 36,000 employees by migrating to the cloud. This cloud modernization initiative has consolidated more than 30 email platforms to just one and improved collaboration and communication throughout agencies.
“We wanted a better way to share data from one agency to another,” said Doug Lange, Arizona’s chief strategy officer.
This was achievable with the migration to the cloud which the state broke into phases. “We leveraged internal lessons-learned meetings and a dynamic VOC (voice of customer) strategy to mature our migrations as we progressed through the project,” said Heather Sheston, who championed the project. “We learned a lot through every phase and documented those so we could implement changes as the migrations progressed.”
Arizona also implemented two solutions which increased cybersecurity. After only one month on G Suite, 107,000 malicious emails had been filtered out of the system, protecting valuable data. The State of Arizona also reported cost savings on both infrastructure and employee resources.
Migrating to the cloud can provide agencies with an array of benefits. From cost savings to security, modernization helps agencies deliver on the mission. Ready to begin your modernization journey? Join us at Google Cloud Next.
