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Enhancing Communication and Collaboration for The State of Colorado, Office of Information Technology (OIT)

The State of Colorado: A Needed IT Overhaul

The State of Colorado is comprised of 22 different state agencies that employ over 33,000 individuals. The Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) serves the executive branch agencies by providing IT infrastructure, network services, telecommunication tools, cloud computing, application development and support, and provisioning services. The State of Colorado and OIT are tasked with supporting each agency’s mission and enable effective cross-functional IT solutions.

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The Problem
The Solution
The Result
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The Problem

In the early 2010s, Colorado agencies found themselves in a bit of IT wasteland. Departments were found to be operating individually and as distinct entities with respect to their email servers, email platforms, authentication systems, and corporate address books. This decentralized and siloed infrastructure created a vast sea of complexity with systems integration and communication, IT planning, and budgeting across the agencies.

OIT was brought in to fix this massive infrastructure issue and began looking for a cloud-based solution to enhance communication and collaboration across the state with the requirement that the fix would also provide cost savings and long term ROI.

The Solution

KSM Consulting worked closely with OIT and agency stakeholders to identify their IT and business requirements, security and compliance requirements, and establish integration points between the state’s legacy systems and a Google-based solution. KSMC helped the state map their business processes with application functionality and designed a comprehensive change management strategy to prepare each user for the coming change. Following the migration, a suite of comprehensive training on each application was provided with additional role-based training for executives, executive assistants, administrators, and help desk staff.

KSM Consulting integrated individual agency directories with Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) to enable the automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of users. GCDS also provided the state with access to a Global Address List (GAL) that represented all active employees throughout each agency. This solution finally allowed Colorado to tear down the silos that had prevented integrated contact, allowing for seamless communication between each agency and department.

In the end, email, calendar, and contact data for over 33,000 employees was converted over three deployment phases, with each targeting a distinct group of users. In addition, KSMC also led compliance sessions that enabled state agencies to develop and agree upon shared use policies throughout the organization.

The Result

The State of Colorado deployed their integrated G Suite solution statewide in 2012.

In their reports for their State Legislature in 2014 and 2015, Colorado identified cost savings/cost avoidance of $2.4M in 2014 and $3M in 2015. In 2016, that savings jumped to $7.2M.

In 2014, Colorado executed a statewide initiative to build on the success of the first migration and leverage Google Sites (public and private websites hosted by Google for collaboration) and Google Drive (electronic file synchronization and virtual storage in the cloud).

In 2015, the State deployed Google Mobile Device Management (MDM), Google Hangouts (video conferencing and screen sharing), and increased their use of Sites and Drive.

Presently, KSM Consulting continues to support CO OIT with its Google Cloud environment (test and production domains, Google Chrome, etc.), cloud initiatives and requirements, and with GCP application development services.

The result of these Google platform initiatives is an increase in communication and collaboration across the State of Colorado and a multi-year, rolling return on investment, that has saved millions in taxpayer dollars.

The result of these Google platform initiatives is an increase in communication and collaboration across the State of Colorado and a multi-year, rolling return on investment, that has saved millions in taxpayer dollars.

 

This post was originally shared on TempusNova.com. KSM Consulting acquired Tempus Nova, a 20-year-old, award-winning consultancy that exclusively provides Google Cloud solutions and implementation consulting across the nation, in early 2021. Identified by CIO Review as one of the Top 10 Most Promising Google Consulting Services Companies in 2019, Tempus Nova is a Google Cloud Premier Partner and a GCP Premiere Partner. Further, it is a Google Certified Training Organization and has migrated more applications to Google App Engine than any other Google partner.