Wendy Wu, Google Apps for Government Team

In Rockingham County, North Carolina, the IT department supports 500 employees who for the past several years had used three different client applications for email. The county switched to Google Apps for Government earlier this year to simplify its operations and improve collaboration among employees.

Join us for a live webinar on Wednesday, August 24 to hear from David Whicker, IT Director for Rockingham County, about the County’s experience with Google Apps, including:

• How Rockingham County standardized on one easy-to-maintain hosted application suite, saving the County IT department precious resources
  
• How Google Apps for Government boosted employee collaboration and productivity
  
• How the County deployed Google’s cloud solution easily and quickly

Live Webinar: Rockingham County empowers employees with Google Apps
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT
Register here.

Posted by Sarah Falvey, Sr. Policy Analyst, Google

In May we announced our participation in the TechAmerica Foundation’s Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD²). The Commission had a three-month mandate and we are excited to unveil the finished report entitled Cloud First, Cloud Fast: Recommendations for Innovation, Leadership and Job Creation.

This report is an important roadmap to assist the US government with moving toward more rapid cloud adoption while continuing to promote commercial innovation. More than 70 companies worked together to provide the government with detailed recommendations—and Google is proud to have been a member. The report consists of four key policy areas: Trust, Transformation, Transparency, and Transnational Data Flows and seeks to address barriers within each area that hinder cloud adoption. The Commission also produced a “Buyer’s Guide” to help government agencies evaluate cloud offerings and move services to the cloud.

This report is an important first step in outlining the necessary policy steps needed to keep the U.S. at the forefront of cloud innovation.

Posted by Kripa Krishnan, Google Apps for Government team

Today we light a single candle to mark one year since we introduced Google Apps for Government. And appropriately enough for a first birthday, it’s been a year full of firsts.

Last year, Google Apps became the first cloud-based email and collaboration platform to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) authorization from the U.S. government.

Last month, Wyoming became the first entire state in the country to go Google. They’ve been joined by state agencies in South Carolina, Virginia, and Kansas; cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Des Moines, Iowa to Mesquite, Nevada; and counties like Multnomah County in Oregon, Rockingham County in North Carolina, and Washington County in New York. At last count, state and local governments in 42 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia are using Google Apps.

Earlier today, we announced that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) became the first federal agency to complete migration to a cloud-based email service. Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) became the largest federal agency to date to select Google Apps as its email and collaboration platform for 25,000 employees.

GSA and NOAA are demonstrating the benefits of the federal government’s “cloud first” policy, which challenges agencies to move three services to the cloud by mid-2012, in recognition that cloud computing can provide agencies with agile, secure, reliable and cost-effective options.

We couldn’t be more pleased about all that’s happened in our first year and look forward to what year two brings.

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government team

Last month, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) completed the transition of its employees to Google’s cloud-based email and collaboration applications. In a display of both speed and teamwork, it took just over six months since the decision was made to “Go Google” for GSA to migrate over 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government.

GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, managing $500B in federal assets, 9,600 federal buildings, and more than 200,000 government vehicles. Among the many services it provides to other agencies, GSA provides innovative technology solutions to enhance government efficiency and increase citizen engagement. By moving to the cloud, GSA hopes to serve as a model for other federal agencies.

The successful move to the cloud resulted from the involvement of hundreds of GSA employees who volunteered as early adopters and training buddies to support colleagues in making the switch. These efforts were supported by technical implementation experts from prime contractor Unisys and partner Tempus Nova.

This teamwork is indicative of the collaboration these new tools make possible. The teams used a Google Site to educate employees about Google Apps, Google-hosted videos to share recorded trainings, and Google Docs to share timely information among the early adopters. GSA also introduced the Google Chrome for Business web browser to give employees a faster, simpler & more secure experience with Google Apps.

Good customer service is at the heart of everything GSA does. These new tools are empowering employees to find innovative ways to improve service. Employees can collaborate both internally and externally with customers and industry partners to solve problems faster.

On top of this, these new applications are simplifying the IT experience for GSA employees, especially when employees are working remotely. As GSA Administrator Martha Johnson has said, “work is what you do, not where you are.” The added flexibility to access information and connect with colleagues while away from the office – and on a range of different devices – is helping GSA teams be more productive in serving customers.

GSA expects the introduction of Google Apps to help the agency transform its business and provide better results for its customers by promoting clearer communication and better team collaboration. What’s more, GSA projects that moving to Google Apps will lower email costs by 50%, a savings of $15 million over five years.

For GSA, this project has been far more than a new email and calendar system – it’s about enabling a whole new way for GSA employees to work.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

A week ago the Google State and Local Government team and our partner SADA Systems were out in force at the National Association of Counties Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference provided a platform for over 2,000 county leaders and industry experts from across the nation to discuss innovative programs and technologies impacting county governments.

Our team was honored to moderate a session entitled “Counties Saving Money in the Cloud,” which featured three counties of different sizes using Google Apps for Government: Multnomah County, Oregon; Larimer County, Colorado; and Amador County, California. Leaders from these counties discussed their first-hand experience going Google, offering unique insight into the challenges they faced and the success they’ve seen. We developed a case study to recap the key points from the panel: Google Apps improves employee productivity while dramatically lowering IT costs.

In the evening, we had the chance to meet many more conference attendees at our tent in South Park (seriously, that was the park’s name). We’d like to extend a huge “thank you” to everyone who stopped by to say hello, play interactive games, make funny faces in our photo kiosk and pose for caricature portraits. It’s because of you that NACo 2011 was informative and fun!


To hear more from Multnomah, Larimer, Amador and other counties that have gone Google, visit our website.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

From big cities to small towns to suburbs, from forests to tundra to islands, Americans live in diverse habitats. No matter where we live, we all have county governments. Today, members of Google's government team are flying from Santa Clara County (home of our Mountain View headquarters) to Multnomah County in Oregon to talk to county leaders from across the country at the National Association of Counties Annual Conference, NACo 2011, from Saturday to Monday, July 16-18.

This year’s NACo conference is hosted by Multnomah County, one of our Google Apps for Government customers. Due to tight budgets, counties across the nation, like Multnomah, have been forced to look for innovative ways to save money while maintaining critical services.


Our team will moderate a panel session featuring three distinguished county government leaders who will discuss their experiences moving their email and workplace collaboration to the cloud. Please join us if you’ll be at the conference.

Counties Saving Money in the Cloud
Time: July 17, 1:30 - 2:45 PT
Location: Room 113 (level 1), Oregon Convention Center

Speakers:

• Sherry Swackhamer, Chief Information Officer, Multnomah County, Oregon
• Lew Gaiter, Commissioner, Larimer County, Colorado
• Jeff White, IT Director, Amador County, California
• Scott McIntyre, Director of State and Local Government, Google

Be sure to stop by our booth 601 to learn more about our technology offerings for governments. Even if you can’t attend the conference, you can visit our website for more information about Google Apps for Government.

We hope to see you there!

Posted by: Jay Garg, Google Apps Team

Yesterday we announced that Wyoming became the first state to go Google. With the help of Google Apps implementation partner Tempus Nova, Wyoming moved 10,000 state employees to Google Apps in less than eight months, saving the state approximately $1 million a year. But, state employees aren’t the only ones in Wyoming using Google Apps. Today we’ll hear from other organizations in Wyoming that have gone Google.

Dubois Youth Activities - Dubois, WY
Dubois Youth Activities is a nonprofit that offers a variety of programs and activities for kids up to 18 years old. “We chose Google Apps because it was simple, and it made it easy to transfer job responsibilities from one employee to another. We also thought it would be easy to use for the parents and the teachers in our town. With Google Apps, we were able to create documents and surveys that all employees could easily access. We were also able to participate in conference calls and webinars together with Google Talk. I really love how user friendly it is.”
(Amanda Verheul, Manager)

Alpine Family Medical Clinic - Alpine, WY
Alpine Family Medical Clinic is a clinic of just 3 people, including a doctor, medical assistant, and office manager. “It was difficult to update and make changes to our lab forms, so we started using Google Apps. Now when parameters on our lab forms change, we can easily go into Google Docs and make changes. We can keep track of medication expiration dates, our inventory of crash-carts, and other types of equipment.”
(Wayne Noffsinger, Medical Assistant)

Tetra 4D - Cheyenne, WY
Tetra 4D helps support Adobe’s existing customers using 3D PDF technology, which allows 3D data to be converted into interactive PDF documents. “In 2010, Adobe asked us to form a new company that would be ready to take orders and provide customer service in less than four months. This never would have been possible without Google Apps. With Google Apps we were able to register our domain and set up email and a document management solution in a matter of minutes. Google Apps allowed us to launch our business quickly and begin taking orders from customers all over the world.”
(Greg Baker, General Manager)

Posted by Governor Matt Mead, State of Wyoming

Editors note: Today Wyoming Governor Matt Mead is announcing the completion of the migration of all 10,000 state government employees to Google Apps for Government. State employees now have a unified communications system that makes it easier for them to find & collaborate with one another. View the live stream of the Governor’s announcement starting at 8:00am MT.

Hello from the great State of Wyoming. We have some exciting news: our entire state government has gone Google. Wyoming is the first state in the country to make this transition. I am extremely proud to say that we are early adopters and this continues a long tradition of Wyoming firsts -- where Wyoming leads the way. Wyoming was the first state in the country where women voted. We also have the first National Park, Yellowstone, and first National Monument, Devils Tower. We had the first woman governor too. Join us online today at 8:00am MT/7:00am PT to view the live event as we make the announcement.

Wyoming and Google finalized the agreement in October of last year and so in less than 9 months we have moved 10,000 state employees over to Google Apps for Government. This is a sign of the adaptability and flexibility of our state government -- another source of pride for us.

Not only has Wyoming cut the cord and gone to cloud-based computing, allowing more mobility for and collaboration between employees, this is also the first time all of our employees have been on a shared email platform. This means greater efficiency and it will almost certainly lead to better service to the public. It also saves money in costs related to servers, licensing and staff. In addition, compared to what we would have spent for equivalent features in our previous system, we anticipate dramatic savings associated with email storage and overall security.

My office was in the first wave to transition to Google Apps, and I am pleased to say it has already made a big difference. Among its many features, Google Apps has provided efficiencies for scheduling and for keeping the office running smoothly. Our pioneer spirit is alive and well, which means great things for the state of Wyoming!

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.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

The IT staffs of the Senate of Virginia and Division of Legislative Automated Systems (DLAS) were taxed with the responsibility of maintaining and upgrading servers and desktop clients for a legacy email system, as well as purchasing server and client licenses. As users’ mail databases grew larger, so did the storage space and the amount of data to backup daily. In addition, plans were being established for continuity of operations, which their current email system environment could not easily offer. All these factors led to their migration to Google Apps.

After conducting initial pilot projects using Google Apps, DLAS and the Senate officially migrated to Google Apps in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Last summer, convinced by compelling cost savings and reduced IT administrative work, 11 legislative agencies supported by DLAS made the switch, including the Division of Capitol Police, State Crime Commission, and Joint Commission on Health Care.

The switch to Google Apps has enabled DLAS and the Senate to reduce IT maintenance time and dramatically increase document and email storage space -- all while saving significantly on licensing costs. Best of all, employees are more productive with Google Apps. They enjoy larger email quotas, easier access to their email on the go, and the ability to collaborate on documents in real time via Google Docs.

Join us on Thursday 5/19 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET for a live webcast. Presenters from DLAS and the Senate and Google partners DLT Solutions and MiCore Solutions will discuss the business drivers behind their decision to go Google and how they approached the implementation. You’ll also learn how the various legislative agencies are leveraging and integrating Google Apps into existing business processes.

Click here to register. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Sarah Falvey, Sr. Policy Analyst, Google

At Google, we believe the Internet is a rich platform for innovation and that when organizations fully adopt online services (what we call "100% web") they dramatically improve productivity and reduce their costs. In order to advance these interests, we work closely with similarly minded groups to advance this common goal and to enable innovation.

To that end, we are excited to participate in the TechAmerica Foundation’s recently formed Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD²). The Commission’s three-month mandate is to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how the U.S. Government could help drive American innovation in the cloud. This comes on the heels of the Administration's "Cloud First" policy, an important first step in helping the federal government take advantage of the benefits cloud computing has to offer. The Commission will make recommendations to the U.S. Government on ways to spur the adoption of cloud computing and to address policies that hinder U.S. leadership in the commercial space. We’re supporting the efforts of two CLOUD² working groups: the first works on facilitating the flow of information between countries, and the second deals with security in the cloud.

With Google Apps, we are investing in technologies that help businesses, educational institutions and governments be productive with a 100% web approach. We’re committed to minimizing barriers to adoption of the cloud by the public sector. Additionally, we hope to promote the development of technology-neutral, non-proprietary and interoperable standards to ensure that the benefits offered by cloud computing are fully realized.

For these reasons, we’re excited to support TechAmerica’s efforts in this important area and look forward to working with other industry players to further the adoption of cloud computing.

Google has a contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for the first instance of Google Earth Builder. Google Earth Builder will enable NGA to use Google’s vast geospatial processing power to enhance its ability to provide timely, relevant and accurate geospatial intelligence to its customers, who span a broad range of U.S. federal government departments and agencies.

Google’s work with NGA marks one of the first major government geospatial cloud initiatives, which will enable NGA to use Google Earth Builder to host its geospatial data and information. This allows NGA to customize Google Earth & Maps to provide maps and globes to support U.S. government activities, including: U.S. national security; homeland security; environmental impact and monitoring; and humanitarian assistance, disaster response and preparedness efforts. This is particularly critical to provide damage and mobility assessments after natural disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan or Hurricane Katrina.

NGA has been a long-time user of Google Earth Enterprise. As part of NGA's Geospatial Visualization- Enterprise Services, Google and NGA have teamed up to make it easier for the government to get useful and current geospatial content to federal employees who need it to execute their respective missions. Once an individual has been authorized on one of the government’s secure networks, he or she will be able to access maps customized to his or her specific department or role using Google Earth, Google Maps or via widely-used Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services.

Behind the scenes, Google Earth Builder will host and serve NGA geospatial content to its mission partners and customers, equipping them with timely information using the user’s tool of choice. NGA will have the ability to use the vast number of cloud resources for rapid processing of the ever-growing quantities of geospatial data and then provide the GEOINT in an online, on-demand environment.

We’ve been excited to work with NGA as one of the early adopters of Google Earth Builder, and are pleased to make the product available to other organizations who want to take advantage of Google’s vast processing power to manage and publish their own geospatial data.

Posted by Sean Wohltman and Phil Dixon, Google Federal Team

Across the country, governments of all sizes are turning to Google Apps for Government. Like any other organization, governments need their employees to communicate and collaborate effectively and efficiently -- especially when employees are working from home or from remote locations.

American City and County Association has joined Google to present a live webinar “How Local Governments Use Google Apps to Improve Productivity and Reduce Cost.” The webinar will feature special guests from two local governments that recently switched to Google Apps for Government: Pierce County, Wisconsin and the City of Mesquite, Nevada.

Join us to learn:

• The reasons these local governments switched to Google Apps -- and the benefits they’ve realized since.
• How Google Apps has improved collaboration and productivity while meeting government requirements for security and document retention.
• Best practices for adopting and deploying Google Apps in your government.

Register now to attend the live webinar on 4/14 @ 11:00 am PST.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

Editor’s Note: Providing a safe and secure environment for the citizens is the mission of U.S. law enforcement agencies. Today we invited Jeff Smith, Enterprise Systems Manager from the Georgia Department of Corrections, to share how it improved offender management by using Google Maps.

The Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) is the largest law enforcement agency in the state. Our team of over 13,000 Corrections professionals strives everyday to manage the offenders effectively while helping to provide a safe and secure environment for the citizens. With a growing number of probationers to supervise - now more than 150,000 - this challenge was becoming increasingly more difficult and we needed modern technology to help us.
With the massive number of probationers in the GDC system, it’s fundamental that we have accurate mapping tools in order for probation officers to manage their caseloads appropriately. Believe it or not, for decades we had been plotting the probationers on paper maps and manually drawing the routes we took to supervise them. More recently, our officers turned to publicly available mapping tools to make their job easier on their own. In spite of that, accuracy was still a problem, and we came to realize the urgent need to equip our officers with accurate, interactive maps.

We implemented a solution that integrates large amounts of offender management data that we collected into Google Maps API Premier in October 2010. Google Maps gives us the flexibility to send large amounts of data to draw a single map and customize the data icons. We can easily map the address of each offender and color-code it based on the offender’s supervision level. Probation officers are now able to access customized Google Maps both from their desk computers and on their netbooks when they are on the road. An officer can quickly see on a map all the offenders he supervises, their addresses, identification information, supervision levels, and the probation office supervising the offenders’ cases. Officers can optimize caseloads based on real geographic boundaries so each of them can focus just on a sector of the city and reduce the amount of time spent navigating through Atlanta. We can also run a search by officer, office, or by radius to identify the cases. If an offender reports a home address change, we can tell if he or she moves out of the region and needs to be reassigned to another officer or office. We no longer have to rely on the offenders’ self-reported data for the city or county their residence is in. Google Maps has helped advance our case management and collaboration significantly.

With the capability to visualize where the offenders live, Executive Management also realized Google Maps would be a valuable tool in deciding where to establish new offices. These new ways to look at managing offenders and officer caseloads were hard to imagine with our previous systems.

Google Maps has helped us improve collaboration and optimize resource allocation intelligently. We can now focus more on our core agenda, which is to protect our citizens and provide effective opportunities for offenders to achieve positive change.

Posted by Jeff Smith, Systems Manager, Georgia Department of Corrections, Office of Information Technology

Rochester Hills, Michigan, and Panama City, Florida have improved internal communications and dramatically reduced costs by implementing Google Apps. These cities faced the same challenges that many other government agencies do: declining budgets, pressure to deliver better citizen services, and the high cost of a do-it-yourself hardware infrastructure.

Join IT managers from Rochester Hills and Panama City, a senior fellow from Center for Digital Government, and Google for a live discussion where they will shed light on how government agencies can:

• Cut costs on email and office productivity applications
• Improve collaboration with employees and the public
• Move quickly to implement these solutions
• Respond to trends in government cloud computing

Register to attend the live webinar on Tuesday, March 29 at @ 11am PST / 2pm EST. We hope to see you there.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise team

Editor’s Note: Today our guest bloggers are Mark Switalski, Macomb County Circuit Court Chief Judge and Carmella Sabaugh, Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds. The Macomb County Court and Clerk/Register of Deeds Office has gone Google to control costs, improve service, and keep innovating.

The Macomb County Circuit Court and Clerk / Register of Deeds border Detroit (“Motown”) to the northeast. Nestled on 31-miles of Lake St. Clair shoreline, and home to nearly 830,000 residents and growing, Macomb is Michigan’s third most populated county. Near Michigan’s two Big Ten universities, workforce training is also provided by Macomb County Community College, Michigan’s largest grantor of associate degrees with over 22,000 students. The county boasts three regional hospitals, expansive parkland, nearly 100 miles of hike/bike trails, and more than 1,900 retail establishments. Waterways hold 52,000 registered boats, and toll-free expressways provide quick access to two international airports and two international bridges to neighboring Canada. Brimming with engineers and skilled workers, the county accounts for 61 percent of Defense Department contracts awarded in Michigan.

Macomb County judges are among the most efficient at meeting State Court Administrative guidelines despite having the highest caseloads per circuit court judge across the state. Last year, we had to cut over $1.4 million from our budgets and downsize our workforce. We needed tools to meet the challenge of increasing caseloads and decreasing staff.

308 county court users recently joined 68 clerk staff on Google Apps for Government. Google Apps provides a way for judges and staff to access information anytime, anywhere and find things fast, while keeping costs down. Google lets us do more, despite budget cuts.

Google Apps for Government gives our employees great collaboration tools we never had before. County staff use Google Talk to communicate with clerks while they are in court or on the phone for quick answers. Jury staff use Google Docs to post juror Web updates without Web publishing software, even when working from home during bad weather. We can even send text messages from a computer to attorneys’ phones when their cases are being called. This is helpful when attorneys have cases in multiple courts and a judge wants to speed the docket along.

Our county has over 80,000 immigrants, speaking 40 languages, which is one reason staff appreciate the option to use Google Translate in Gmail. Viewing e-mail attachments in different formats is easy. Check out our short videos and information about our experience using Google Apps.

Besides the enhanced productivity, we know that when a disaster happens, our system will not go down and because our data is in the cloud, it is protected and accessible from anywhere. After a rare tornado hit last summer, briefly disrupting power and some network services, the clerk’s Google service remained accessible via cell phone and other networks until the county’s network and e-mail were restored.

The biggest draw for us to go Google is the cost control that comes with cloud computing. For a fixed per employee cost, the county gets Google Apps for Government and Google Message Discovery for archiving and e-discovery. There is no additional cost for servers, backup, antivirus or antispam protection, or disaster recovery. When new enhancements are available, there is no need for extra investment. Savings are also realized because Google Apps for Government has zero scheduled downtime! Maintenance is performed while the system is running. Our IT Department staff who have become proficient with Google Apps for Government are making themselves more valuable to the taxpayers.

We in Macomb County are pleased so far with the decision to improve service and control technology costs by switching to Google Apps for Government. Instead of spending time and resources to administer computer hardware and software, we can better focus on administering justice.



Posted by Mark Switalski, Macomb County Circuit Court Chief Judge, and Carmella Sabaugh, Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds, who are pointing to where Macomb County is located in Michigan.

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Paul R. Verkuil, the tenth Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency whose mission is providing expert advice and recommendations to improve the federal government. He was sworn in by Vice President Biden on April 6, 2010. ACUS has just launched a brand new website, acus.gov, which takes advantage of the collaboration capabilities of Google Apps for Government.

The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) is an independent federal agency dedicated to creating a public-private partnership designed to make government work better. ACUS has had a long history of saving the government and taxpayers money. In 2009, ACUS was revived by Congress after a 15-year hiatus to bring creative thinkers together to focus on how innovative technology, transparency, and collaboration can help us improve the operations of our federal government.

To build a 21st century agency, we need 21st century technology. To that end, ACUS has recently developed a new website designed to engage the public and solicit ideas from citizens across the county, using video, social media tools, and more. We have integrated Google Calendar into our site to make information about our public meetings readily accessible.

Bringing together multiple perspectives and a wide variety of ideas in order to arrive at the best solutions is another key to our success. The conference itself includes representatives from 50 federal executive departments, agencies, and independent regulatory boards and commissions, as well as 40 members of the public. We also have a nimble team of 15 staff, who bring their own innovative ideas to our mission.

This week, ACUS just launched a collaborative workspace for members and staff using Google Apps for Government to share documents, calendars and websites. We chose Google Apps because of its intuitive, easy-to-use interface. What’s more, Google Apps’ FISMA certification and accreditation gave us confidence it could meet our security needs.

We’re excited to be delivering new ideas for how to improve government efficiency and to make government less intrusive and costly. The collaboration capabilities from Google Apps will allow us to be a model of effectiveness for those we hope to help.

Posted by Paul R. Verkuil, Chairman, Administrative Conference of the United States

Today our guest blogger is Ron Kaufman, Director of Information Services for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. We’ll hear from Ron on the benefits his department enjoys by migrating 420 users to Google Apps.

The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) oversees 26 state parks and a variety of wildlife areas, nature centers, and state fishing lakes with roughly 420 employees. The department supports multiple offices and remote employees such as natural resource officers, field biologists, various biological technicians and others that rely on mobile devices quite frequently to manage state lands and patrol state lakes, survey species and help improve habitats for wildlife. Because many of these employees work in the field, from their homes or vehicles, they are not always in areas where they can plug in a computer and access the Internet easily.

Having used Microsoft Exchange for many years, and then switched to an open source solution for five years, KDWP decided to test a cloud-based solution to improve collaboration and efficiency. We picked Google Apps for its broad capabilities and simplicity to deploy and use. The initial 45 test users were very pleased with the availability of the cloud tool suite. Being able to access files from any web browser and the additional calendaring and global directory functionalities played a big part in the department’s ultimate decision to go Google. Working with Google Apps Partner SADA Systems, KDWP was able to migrate 420 users to the production environment last summer in just two months.

We started to see immediate benefits, even while employees were still learning about Google Apps’ full capabilities. People working from different locations are now able to collaborate easily on the same document or spreadsheet online. We no longer need to mail copies of our budget spreadsheet back and forth by snail mail or as an attachment in email. Using Google Docs and video chat, employees 200 miles apart are able to collaborate as though they’re meeting in person. Since the applications now live in the cloud, meaning they are delivered over the Internet and accessed in a web browser, we worry much less about file size limitations, server downtime, technology upgrades or maintenance issues.

Before the migration, our network administrator was spending 20% of his time on maintaining email servers and clients. That has been cut down to roughly 5%, a considerable time savings. Our IT can now focus on more meaningful initiatives.

Posted by Ron Kaufman, Director of Information Services for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks

Governments in 38 states have adopted Google Apps for Government. Today we’ll hear from Kevin Krajewski, Deputy Director of MIS, and Rochelle Lyon, Systems Administrator for the City of Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Located in Oakland County, Michigan, Rochester Hills features a quality of life and a thriving commerce that few communities its size can match. The city features quality housing; award winning school districts; over 80 miles of linked pathways and a regional interlinking rails-to-trails system; and an abundance of cultural, historical, educational, medical and entertainment venues. Rochester Hills is situated in Automation Alley, Michigan's premier technology cluster, and one of ten SmartZones in Michigan.

Even with all of this going for us, we’re no stranger to the budget issues facing governments everywhere. All city staff have been challenged by our Mayor and City Council to find ways to be more efficient and reduce operational costs. That’s one of the reasons why we’re so excited to go Google: Google Apps for Government will save us an estimated $50,000 over the next six years compared to upgrading and maintaining our Microsoft Exchange email system.

Google Apps also simplifies our IT infrastructure and reduces the support costs. We eliminated two servers and the associated operating system and application software. That translates into less equipment and software to patch and replace in the future, which makes our day-to-day maintenance less time consuming and our next network upgrade less complicated.

City employees benefit from easy access to the applications from anywhere they have an Internet connection. With a training portal built in Google Sites, staff can learn whenever and wherever they have the time. We expect to use Google Video in the near future to provide training and informational videos to staff allowing them to learn at their own pace.

Rochester Hills selected Onix Networking as our implementation partner. In order to keep the costs low, we did most of the implementation in-house, with Onix providing support during the process as needed. It took about three weeks last September to move all 200 employees to Google Apps and Postini for email filtering & archiving. We also trained our staff on the features of Google Apps and answered questions. Overall the transition went as smoothly as we had hoped it would.

After almost three months since going live on Google Apps for Government I can say that we are very happy with our decision move to the world of 100% web.


By Kevin Krajewski, Deputy Director of MIS, City of Rochester Hills, and Rochelle Lyon, Systems Administrator for the City of Rochester Hills

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Apps for Government Team

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced its decision to move 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government. GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, providing real estate and building management services as well as acquisition and procurement assistance to other federal agencies.

GSA’s decision to switch to Google Apps resulted from a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process that took place over the past six months, during which the agency evaluated multiple proposals for replacing their existing on-premises email system. GSA selected Google partner Unisys as the prime contractor to migrate all employees in 17 locations around the world to an integrated, flexible and robust email and collaboration service in 2011.

By making this switch, GSA will benefit in a number of ways. Modern email and collaboration tools will help make employees more efficient and effective. Google Apps will bring GSA a continual stream of new and innovative features, helping the agency keep pace with advances in technology in the years ahead. And taxpayers will benefit too—by reducing the burden of in-house maintenance and eliminating the need to replace hardware to host its email systems, GSA expects to lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years.

Earlier this year, Google Apps became the first suite of cloud computing email and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification, enabling agencies to compare the security features of Google Apps to that of existing systems.

GSA is leading the way in embracing the federal government’s “cloud first” policy, under which agencies should opt for hosted applications when secure, reliable, cost-effective options are available. We are thrilled that GSA has chosen to move to the cloud with Google and look forward to expanding our productive partnership with them.

Posted by Mike Bradshaw, Director, Federal Enterprise team