More and more government agencies going Google

Posted by Scott McIntyre, Director of State and Local Government, Google Enterprise Team

Editor's note: Today over 100 government IT leaders are gathering in Washington D.C. for “Innovation for the Nation,” the inaugural government leadership forum hosted by Google. At this event we announced six government agencies that have recently chosen Google Apps for better innovation and collaboration while reducing costs.

In the past few months, dozens of government agencies representing tens of thousands of public sector employees have made the switch to Google Apps for Government to improve employee productivity while saving critical budget dollars. Today, at Google’s “Innovation for the Nation,” a gathering of over 100 government IT leaders in Washington D.C., we announced these six government agencies across the country are among the latest to go Google:

Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), South Carolina
With the mission to promote and protect the health of the public and the environment, DHEC needed a robust email system to handle sensitive and confidential communications. The agency recently evaluated a number of cloud solutions via an open RFP process, and decided to switch its 4,200 employees to Google Apps for Government. With security certification from the federal government, Google Apps gives DHEC peace of mind in adhering to its high security standards. It will also enable the department to operate more efficiently, conserving financial and personnel resources while improving collaboration among DHEC employees.

Rockingham County, NC
Rockingham County’s IT department had the tough job of maintaining a legacy email system with three different client applications for 500 county employees who had no simple way to collaborate with one another. After evaluating different on-site and hosted options, the county chose Google Apps for Government. Now employees from different departments -- from Emergency Services to Finance -- can share documents and calendars, video chat, and create intranet pages that all county employees can access. The IT department’s burden of supporting a legacy email system is gone, replaced by an easy-to-maintain solution that requires fewer resources while offering employees new, modern communication tools.

Washington County, New York
Washington County had been struggling with an aging email system. Email storage was limited and employees spent hours cleaning their inbox in order to avoid being locked out of their email entirely. At a crossroads of rebuilding the existing on-premise infrastructure, or moving to an alternate solution, the county decided to switch to Google Apps for Government. Now 420 county employees can rely on Google’s data centers to run the email application, which guarantees 99.9% uptime with no planned downtime, provides 25GB of individual mailbox storage, and frees IT up to focus on other critical initiatives.

City of Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines has faced budget challenges for the past 15 years. This year, the City Council voted unanimously to move all 1,900 city employees to Google Apps. Google Apps offers powerful new collaboration functionality that will enable City employees to be more productive -- including voice and video chat, corporate video, and secure access to documents from any mobile device. With the money saved from the old software licenses, the City was also able to add email security and archiving services from Google.

Village of Westmont, Illinois
After evaluating online email solutions to replace its in-house email server, the Village of Westmont recently moved all 220 employees to Google Apps for Government. With Google Apps, employees receive a robust email application as well as an entire productivity suite that allows them to easily collaborate on documents and presentations. Google Apps also allows workers in departments such as public works, code enforcement, police and fire to have easy access to their documents when they are in the field via mobile devices.

Amador County, California
Like many counties, Amador County faced the challenge of ongoing budget cuts and thin IT resources. By switching to Google Apps, the County estimates it has saved $20,000 annually versus other email solutions. Google’s collaborative tools also gives the County’s 400 employees a simple way to share files for projects, streamline scheduling meetings, and create websites. All of these reduce demand on IT support staff, and save the County the billable IT expense.

Across the nation, more and more governments are choosing to go Google. In doing so, they're realizing a multitude of benefits. Google Apps helps all employees be more productive in their jobs, frees IT staff from software and hardware maintenance, and dramatically reduces the costs of these systems -- allowing governments to focus resources on other critical initiatives.