Government 360: Amplifying Democracy through TechnologyA Blueprint for Agency Modernization

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It wasn’t long ago that interacting with government could be a frustrating and disjointed experience characterized by long lines, interminable wait times on the phone or a

fruitless search for information. Seeking answers or finding needed services was a time-consuming, tedious and sometimes inaccessible journey for many citizens.

Today, many agencies have embraced a new model that expands the notion of government beyond the confines of an office building. Now, the pervasive digital culture that defines society — at work and at home — is steadily becoming the norm in government. Almost everyone expects 24/7 availability, cross-platform integration, multiple communication channels and an immediate response. Government leaders know they can no longer rely on traditional methods of conducting business.

Monolithic technology investments from just a few years ago are complicated, expensive to maintain and don’t allow employees time to focus on higher-priority services. Government agencies that rely on outdated technologies and processes also may find it difficult to attract and retain talented employees; and business owners may be reluctant to set up shop in these jurisdictions. Many agencies are eager to adopt modern processes that enable them to deliver the digital services citizens demand.

Advances in technology have unlocked the doors to city hall in a way that was unimaginable 10 years ago. Agencies are increasingly digital and interconnected; constituents instantly interact with city and state employees; and devices — sensors, smartphones, wearable technologies

and cameras — provide a constant stream of data to help agencies think proactively about citizen needs.

Forward-thinking agency leaders recognize that serving both constituents and employees requires IT systems and solutions that are responsive instead of reactive, and positioned to turn on a dime to meet the needs of a modern workforce. These systems must meet the needs of a modern workforce and a citizenry possessing different levels of digital access, from the constantly connected consumer to the digitally disenfranchised.

This is the vision behind Government 360, a strategy for ongoing government modernization. As an approach, it encompasses a modern, flexible infrastructure and widespread automation and mobility. It means always-on availability through multiple channels and data-driven insights gathered via machine learning and predictive analytics. These digital touchpoints can create a circle of citizen engagement, constituent service, private business productivity and civic mission.

Follow the progress of this new way of perceiving government through the eyes of state and local IT leaders just like yourself. Each pillar contains a compelling case study from one of your state and local government peers. Visit us online for more digital content, from webinars with state and local leaders to videos, white papers and a calendar of events. Get the expanded Oracle Government 360 digital content at www.governing.com/oracle360 and follow us on Twitter at #OracleGov360.

Modern, Secure Architecture Rooted in The CloudThe innovation journey often starts with moving workloads to a secure cloud platform supported by autonomous services. IT staff can eliminate rote maintenance and manual monitoring tasks in favor of mission-focused work.

A Cloud-Enabled and Mobile Back Office The modern back office is a springboard for enhanced connectivity and business automation, and can help ensure government employees have the right tools to serve constituents anywhere, anytime. Cloud enables seamless back office processes and enhances mobility.

Government 360 is built on four pillars

Introduction

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Smarter Solutions for a Connected GovernmentBy integrating evolving technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and artifical intelligence (AI), government can become increasingly smarter and citizen-centric, fostering a vibrant and streamlined business climate. Agencies can reduce repetitive and menial tasks, while helping boost economic development through an always-open digital front door to city hall.

Emerging Technologies Powered by Predictive AnalyticsGovernment 360 is not just aboutbeing smart today; it’s about beingpredictive for tomorrow. Technologies like AI and blockchain can unlock the value of agency data, igniting innovation across every level of government.

A Cloud-Enabled and Mobile Back Office

Emerging Technologies Powered by Predictive Analytics

Modern, Secure Architecture Rooted

in the Cloud

Smarter Solutions for a Connected Government

The Four pillars of

Government 360

Government IT leaders struggle with a common challenge: how to innovate when approximately 75 percent of time and budget are dedicated to

simply maintaining existing systems.

Many government IT leaders are turning to the cloud for answers. Cloud-based platforms give agencies the opportunity to drastically reduce spend and free resources to develop, deploy and securely manage applications. Regular upgrades that come with cloud services often improve overall performance and software security, and add new features and functionalities that would take agencies months or more to test and implement using an on-premises system.

Former Kansas Department of Labor CIO William Sanders, now Director of Cloud Platform Strategy for Oracle Public Sector, has witnessed firsthand how rigid on-premises systems can hinder agency progress.

“In December, many companies would need to lay off employees to meet their budgets. Our traditional unemployment systems couldn’t keep up with the demand for benefits, especially right before Christmas. The governor’s phone would ring off the hook with unhappy citizens trying to submit claims,” Sanders said.

Today, with a cloud-based infrastructure, agencies can easily scale up capacity to meet the deluge of seasonal transactions.

The bottom line Cloud enables agencies to establish a more modern, secure platform that connects everything; allows employees to better serve constituents; and provides insights that lead to more consistent, rapid and transparent decisions.While there are numerous advantages to adopting cloud, there’s not a single “right choice” for every situation. For most agencies, the best option is to choose the most cloud-worthy applications, services and processes, and then

select the cloud “as-a-service” model that makes the most sense.

SaaS: For example, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model enables immediate access to applications; however, it can also limit an agency’s ability to tailor processes to its specific requirements. Core business functions are ideal for SaaS services, but ad-hoc or agency-specific requirements may need a more customized approach.

PaaS: The answer for many agencies is platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which can seamlessly integrate legacy applications with the cloud while providing many of the cloud’s best features, such as mobility, enhanced security and advanced analytics. Agencies can retain full responsibility for applications, but defer management of the underlying stack (including the supporting technology components) to their service providers. In other words, PaaS allows an agency to pick the building blocks it needs to solve different business problems, then give those blocks to someone else to integrate and service. PaaS also enables agencies to “lift-and-shift” custom in-house applications to the cloud without requiring complex rework to underlying systems.

A MODERN, SECURE INFRASTRUCTURE ROOTED IN THE CLOUD

Pillar One:

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IaaS: Agencies today already have tremendous investments in their on-premises infrastructures. This includes capabilities for storage, compute, database and networking requirements. But all these capabilities are available in the cloud, combining the benefits of public cloud (on-demand, self-service, scalability, pay-for-use) with those benefits usually associated with on-premises environments (governance, predictability, control) into a single offering.

These offerings provide agencies choice and the operational agility they need to manage a hybrid environment of on- and off-premises applications and storage. For example, an agency might keep critical, custom-written legacy applications on-premises while it moves enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other core business applications to the cloud. The ability to choose what makes the most financial and practical sense gives agencies the greatest possible flexibility. The best way to accomplish this is to work with a vendor that offers a broad set of cloud services.

Many cloud vendors are specialized firms that offer highly targeted SaaS components with limited knowledge of how to integrate them with existing systems. Ideally, a cloud vendor will offer services that can be fully integrated at every level: SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. With an integrated cloud ecosystem, agencies can

reap the full benefits of the cloud while avoiding the perpetual upgrade cycle that occurs when they work with multiple cloud vendors. And with the right cloud-based tools, agencies can manage everything through a single console.

Oracle’s approach — a complete cloud Oracle offers public cloud, managed cloud, private cloud and traditional on-premises deployment models to support agency choice regarding when, where and how they go to the cloud while maintaining the interoperability of platform and infrastructure components. Agencies can optimize their IT organizations by running workloads where they run best — on-premises or in the cloud — then integrate business processes across these environments and easily migrate workloads between them. In short, agencies can tailor the service and deployment model to match their unique workloads — thereby driving better performance, security and value. With Oracle Cloud, agencies can create modern services, streamline back-office processes, improve employee effectiveness and create new levels of citizen engagement.

“A comprehensive cloud platform is foundational to innovation,” Sanders said. “Our modern-day CIOs are no longer focused on ‘speeds and feeds;’ they must be able to lead the transformation of government and become the linchpin of progress.”

3. Make a move:Whether it’s a test/development environment; a production environment; a disaster recovery environment; or a new, innovative, cloud-based venture, moving at least one workload to the cloud can start an agency down the path toward modernization.

How to Build a Foundation for Cloud-Based Modernization

1. Consolidate and standardize: Standardize database platforms, development languages and hardware to enable the flexibility required to move back and forth from on-premises to cloud environments. Agencies can spin workloads up and down from the cloud and integrate data more easily once they’ve standardized.

2. Determine workloads:Determine which workloads — or aspects of workloads — to keep on-premises, which to move to a private cloud and which to move to the public cloud.

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Las Vegas attracts nearly $60 billion in tourist dollars each year. To keep that money rolling in, city leaders must ensure infrastructure functions

well. To appeal to new businesses and residents, they must also prove they are innovative.

A few years ago, city IT leaders realized their complex, dated IT infrastructure was holding them back. The city used numerous systems from nearly every large IT vendor, and almost 80 percent of its IT budget was spent maintaining those legacy environments. The city struggled to respond to citizens efficiently and effectively, enhance worker satisfaction and productivity, and compete with other municipalities.

“In no other time in history have cities competed with one another for businesses, for citizens, for everything like they do today,” says Michael Sherwood, director of innovation and technology for the city of Las Vegas. “Everything is about time-to-market. Staying competitive means having the right data to produce

proposals and handle citizen requests. All those things take time, which was something we didn’t have.”

In March 2016, the Las Vegas City Council created an Innovation District.

“The goal was to test new technologies to see how they might help us revitalize parts of the city, improve communications and mobility, increase public safety and create a better community overall,” says Sherwood. “We were looking for new approaches to some of the age-old problems cities face.”

City leaders quickly realized they needed to move away from hardware-dependent systems and adopt a more agile IT infrastructure. All signs pointed to cloud as a tool to modernize, streamline, reduce costs and innovate.

Las Vegas looked to Oracle and partner Arisant for help. Oracle and Arisant proposed migrating the city to Oracle Cloud at Customer — essentially placing a piece

HOW LAS VEGAS CREATED AN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE FUTURE

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of Oracle’s public cloud inside the city’s data center. Doing so would give the city all the advantages of public cloud in an on-premises model.

The city began migrating to the cloud in 2017, starting with its business suite, including payroll, human resources and purchasing systems. Working with Oracle, Las Vegas is using a lift-and-shift strategy, keeping some systems on-premises while gradually rolling other systems to Oracle’s managed platform in the cloud.

“We are not a hardware maintenance company,” says Sherwood. “We wanted to move away from things we aren’t good at, to shift that load to experts so the labor we have can be reallocated to more value-add tasks.”

The city’s goal is to eventually move roughly 50 percent of its systems from a physical environment to the cloud.

DATA, TALENT AND ANALYTICS It’s still early in the migration, but city IT developers have already drastically reduced the time it takes to build and test new IT environments. And because core functions like backups, failovers, patching and security are now automated, city staff have more time to work on higher-value tasks. Rather than manage hardware, staff use cloud and data analytics to help the city maximize efficiency.“I’m able to put workers in new areas where they are mining data, producing reports and training on software modules rather than worrying about disk utilization and upgrades,” says Sherwood. “It allows me to focus my resources on things that can help the city grow, attract new business, increase safety and improve citizen services.”

The city recently developed a mobile app called Go Vegas that allows residents to take pictures of potholes, graffiti and other city blights and upload those photos directly to city personnel, who can then quickly address those issues.

“That’s something we wouldn’t have been able to build and implement if we were still managing all the legacy components of our previous environment,” says Sherwood. “It’s a huge opportunity to improve citizen service. It’s also a way to promote economic growth and development because it highlights how Vegas is different.”

Sherwood says the changes are also providing his IT staff with opportunities for growth and advancement, while leveraging the Oracle cloud platform has helped the city attract and retain new IT talent.

“By doing things that are new and revolutionary, we’re creating a buzz,” says Sherwood. “The word is out that the city is on the right path with technology.” Cloud also enables the city to leverage data and analytics.

Using a combination of cloud, Oracle BI and IoT sensors to monitor traffic flow, air quality, trash collection and more, the city can better manage operations, analyze data in real time and make faster business decisions.

THE VALUE OF GOOD PARTNERS Modernization is important for Las Vegas, but city leaders are also wary of risk.

“Las Vegas is known for gambling, but our strategic technology plan is not something we want to gamble with,” says Sherwood.

Sherwood says the city’s strategic partnership with Oracle and Arisant is key to minimizing risk.

“As a government agency, we always have concerns about storing citizens’ personal data. The Oracle solution enables us to store data locally as well as leverage the benefits of cloud,” says Sherwood.

Moving away from physical hardware to the cloud will also help the city better prepare for the future.

“With new technologies and things like autonomous vehicles on the horizon, we need to be agile,” says Sherwood. “We also need access to data that will help us understand our community and what our citizens need so we can meet future challenges.”

The cost savings are already significant. The city went from spending $1.4 million a year on IT maintenance and hardware, network storage and staff to a much smaller spend and a higher value-per-dollar.

“By continuing to put money into hardware, we were putting huge resources into things that weren’t helping the city succeed,” says Sherwood. “Freeing ourselves from legacy infrastructure is allowing us to spend more time on things that make a difference for the community. It’s the future of our city. If we don’t have that cloud advantage, we’re going to be behind.”

LAS VEGAS LEADERS EVENTUALLY WANT TO MOVE ROUGHLY 50 PERCENT OF THEIR SYSTEMS FROM A PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT TO THE CLOUD.

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Blame it on the iPhone.

The iPhone, and every smart device that’s followed, has redefined how people communicate, research, learn, buy and share. These devices have also changed people’s expectations of the products, brands and services they interact with and has forced business systems to evolve.

Government is not immune. The status quo is no longer acceptable when a government worker is asked why it takes months to create a purchase order and only 30 seconds to hail a Lyft. Employees are often overextended and working with antiquated tools and technologies to perform business functions. They still operate in a largely transactional manner, making it difficult to predict or anticipate change. Government staff, as well as constituents, want government services to be intuitive, consistent, modern, insightful and mobile-enabled.

The back office can be a springboard for modernization. Better back-office systems — from human capital to finance to procurement and supply chain — allow employees to deliver timely and accurate front-office services to the constituents they serve. With modern, digital solutions, employees spend less time on redundant tasks and more time helping customers or pursuing strategic endeavors. Simply put, back-office modernization lets government agencies work faster, more accurately and more efficiently.

For example, a cloud-hosted finance system can enable agencies to procure the tools and materials they need, ensure they have the right suppliers, negotiate contracts, track funds and the allocation of those funds, follow how employee time is charged against projects tied to grants and more. A companion human capital management (HCM) system, meanwhile, can help governments attract the best and brightest employees and engage talent more effectively.

Migrating finance and HR systems to the cloud also allows public sector entities to take advantage of evolving

AUTOMATED AND MOBILE-ENABLED BACK OFFICE

Pillar two:

AUTOMATION CAN REMOVE THE DRUDGERY OF REPEATABLE WORK, ALLOWING EMPLOYEES TO FOCUS ON MORE SUBSTANTIVE ACTIVITIES.

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1. Commit to change: The modus operandi for many government organizations implementing back-office solutions in the 1990s and 2000s was to purchase and customize off-the-shelf software to fit their processes, even if those processes were inefficient or ineffective. Today’s cloud-based software solutions include industry best practices, and adopting those best practices enables an agency to take advantage of the latest technology and updates.

For example, the city of Atlanta struggled with a legacy financial system that made managing day-to-day financial functions complex and time consuming. Today, the city is transitioning to a cloud-based finance, procurement and HR solution. As a result, Atlanta is seeing the perks of cloud and back-office modernization, including enhanced data security, improved controls, fewer manual processes, streamlined operations, simplified procurement practices and a lower cost of ownership.

Getting there requires a top-down commitment to evolving processes. Agencies that don’t set themselves up to adapt to change are more likely to revert to old business processes.

2. Prepare staff for the new normal:Beyond leadership commitment, agencies must institutionalize their business modernization plans. That idea needs to permeate throughout the organization, from executives to frontline workers. If staff aren’t on board, modernization efforts may stall. Leaders should set expectations ahead of time and be consistent throughout the project to ensure they deliver on their promise and commitment to change. Change management and communication are critical throughout the project.

3. Ensure data quality and retention:The more digital data an agency produces, the more business intelligence it can gather, and the more predictive analytics can inform and improve government services. But data is often spread across disparate and disconnected systems.

Tactics for Back-Office Modernization Success

technologies like chatbots and predictive analytics, powered by the transformational potential of AI.

For example, experts predict the escalating growth of AI technologies embedded directly into human resource and financial management processes to automate even complex, non-routine activities. Meanwhile, blockchain and distributed ledger technology will transform the delivery of public and private services; redefine the relationship between government and the citizen in terms of data sharing, transparency and trust; and fundamentally improve government service delivery. And robotic process automation tools can remove the drudgery of

repeatable work, allowing employees to focus on more substantive activities.

Modernize in Four Months, Not 40Nazer Uddin is the finance manager for the Fox River Water Reclamation District in Elgin, Ill. Previously, he and his team had to create and distribute seven paper copies of a purchase order each time they ordered supplies. Fox River adopted Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for financials, purchasing, project accounting and grants along with a planning and budgeting solution. It took only four months to convert the on-premises

system to the nimble and cost-effective Oracle ERP Cloud. The solution massively reduced Fox River’s ongoing costs and internal resource pressure and delivered reporting, ease of use and world class functionality. By leveraging the embedded social networking tool, conversations and notes about any issue can be documented and attached to an individual transaction, providing a clear record of due diligence and detailed information for auditors.

Fox River Water Reclamation District serves 200,000 people and treats an average of 38 million gallons of wastewater daily. To meet this commitment, field service workers require an instant connection to the district’s headquarters. A broken wastewater pipe may need an emergency requisition to order a required part. Extra chemicals for wastewater treatment might be required in the event of an environmental disaster. Today, using the Oracle ERP Procurement Cloud, Fox River can approve, release and issue a purchase order to a vendor in less than a minute.

The Oracle Approach – an Integrated, Cloud-Based Back Office Back-office modernization requires two primary components: integrated technology systems that cover all facets of business operations and skilled personnel who find purpose and mission in working for a modern government entity.

Maintaining human resources and financial data in a single system has five major benefits:

3. Reporting and Analysis:A unified platform provides a single data source and a single reporting environment across the enterprise. Agencies can drive transactional reporting needs or run predictive analyses knowing the security and access approvals are the same in both HR and financial systems.

5. Single Data Entry Point:A single user experience eliminates redundancy and provides one system of record and information that is accurate, rich in content and current.

1. Security and Governance:Because HR data is an essential part of the business infrastructure, integration can impact security. Single sign-on (SSO) security is straightforward to implement in a unified platform environment and avoids the complexities of workaround fixes in a multivendor environment.

4. Common Self-service Access:A manager is also an employee. A unified cloud platform provides a common entry point for everyone to have a consistent user experience across multiple domains. The degree of system access is tied to each user’s log-on, no matter what level.

TODAY, USING THE ORACLE ERP PROCUREMENT CLOUD, FOX RIVER CAN APPROVE, RELEASE AND ISSUE A PURCHASE ORDER TO A VENDOR IN LESS THAN A MINUTE.

2. Workflow and Business Process: A single, unified cloud platform cuts across processes and domains to ensure consistent workflows. For instance, when a purchase requisition is requested, the process can determine the approval routing by pulling from both ERP and HCM data.

The Power of Integrated HR and Finance

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Modern systems: Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud, Human Capital Management Cloud and Enterprise Performance Management Cloud give government agencies a single, integrated solution. Oracle’s Cloud delivers embedded best practices that cross lines of business between HR and finance, providing process efficiencies and transparency. Workflows and approvals are available and configurable, so agencies can take advantage of best practices while maintaining compliance. A single solution on a single platform sharing a single data model allows data to flow seamlessly between departments. Meanwhile, automation, analytics and reporting features ensure an agency is smarter and better prepared — game changers that are key to market competitiveness.

Government employees do their work in and around the community. Through the seamless connection of mobile devices and applications, they can make instant assessments and impactful decisions. Oracle back-office solutions are device-agnostic and include an embedded social platform to help agencies track activities and adhere to compliance requirements.

Oracle also gives public sector agencies the flexibility they need to either adopt a complete back-office transformation or to incrementally move some functions to the cloud while leaving others on-premises. According to Celeste O’Dea, senior manager for public sector application strategy at Oracle, agencies often transition planning and budgeting to the cloud first, followed by HR and finance.

“Many agencies use workbooks and Excel spreadsheets to manage their budgets, so it’s easy to start making changes there because they don’t have an existing legacy solution like they commonly do for finance and HR,” says O’Dea. “Budgeting is easiest to start with because the rest of the finance functions really have to transition en masse.”

Empowered personnel: Agencies also need the right staff to deliver on their commitment to the

public. When the private sector is competing for the same talent, government agencies must be able to quickly source candidates and offer the kind of digital back-office experience that suits today’s workers. Technology can help here, too. New machine learning capabilities in Oracle HCM Cloud reduce the time it takes to fill open positions by automatically highlighting qualified individuals. Adaptive intelligence can identify best-fit candidates, not only according to how they line up against a requisition, but also based on how well-suited they might be to succeed other people in the organization.

“Because they are often constrained by civil service rules and regulations, public sector agencies might only have data relevant to the job function or functions a person has performed over their career,” says O’Dea. “But that person might have other skills the agency is not aware of. Therefore, an agency may not have a good picture of its existing talent pool.”

By simplifying the means for collecting and analyzing a comprehensive picture of the workforce, senior leaders and frontline managers can align staff skills with evolving mission needs.

Finally, machine learning in Oracle HCM Cloud applies algorithmic analytical models to preprocessed data to uncover hidden patterns or trends. Those patterns or trends can then be used to identify existing employees to consider grooming for advancement, predict the correct response to inquiries or identify the best candidates for talent sourcing.

Smaller entities may find it easier to move to the cloud because they may have less complex systems or less digital data. Larger entities will need to retain some of their legacy systems or retain data for a certain number of years due to regulatory requirements. In those cases, the availability of PaaS solutions in addition to SaaS solutions ensures an agency can easily manage both cloud-based and on-premises systems in the same operational ecosystem.

BY SIMPLIFYING THE MEANS FOR COLLECTING AND ANALYZING A COMPREHENSIVE PICTURE OF THE WORKFORCE, SENIOR LEADERS AND FRONTLINE MANAGERS CAN ALIGN STAFF SKILLS WITH EVOLVING MISSION NEEDS.

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Although small local governments are under pressure to modernize operations, the budgets and resources needed to do so are often out of reach.

St. Croix County, Wisc., is one of many organizations pursuing a strategy to rapidly bring its financial and HR systems up to speed, deliver new services and prepare for the future, all by using applications powered by cloud computing.

Like many smaller entities, St. Croix County (with a population just over 89,000) is working to meet the rising expectations of citizens who look to their local governments to provide the same convenient, innovative digital services as a private company — whether that’s using a computer or smartphone to pay property taxes, obtain a license, report potholes, check on the status of a contract bid or do other city business. Citizens also want financial transparency so they can see how their tax money is being spent.

A popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts, St. Croix County is also an attractive location for residents who may work in the nearby Minneapolis/St. Paul hub but crave a more affordable, suburban lifestyle. Similar to their big city counterparts, leaders in such counties and smaller towns recognize the potential of smart city implementations to streamline operations, deliver innovative services and generate revenue from the data they collect.

St. Croix County implemented cloud-native Oracle ERP and HCM services to integrate data across the organization and change the way that every department does business. In doing so, the county has laid a foundation for modernization. Central to its implementation success is Oracle Platinum partner CherryRoad Technologies, a full-service consulting

firm with more than 30 years of experience in modernizing, optimizing and managing complex back-office processes and technologies for the public sector.

Mobile procurement is just one example of the solution’s impact. For instance, when social workers conduct in-home or facility visits, they no longer need to come back to the office to order supplies for their clients. In addition, information about vendors and other services is at their fingertips. The same is true for parks and facilities workers, highway crews and others in the field who can now order parts from the job site.

On the HR side, employees can submit their time cards electronically, and managers can approve expense reports and handle other HR-related tasks from their mobile devices.

STANDING STILL IS NOT AN OPTIONSt. Croix faced challenges familiar to many government leaders. Before adopting Oracle’s cloud-native services, the county used a legacy financial system with limited functionality.

Data came from disparate databases, spreadsheets and other sources, and had to be gathered and entered manually into the finance system. The process was time consuming and unwieldy, which hindered reporting and limited transparency as well as the timely delivery of important information to citizens and business decision-makers. It was not unusual for project management teams to be weeks behind in knowing how much money had been spent on a project. When citizens needed information, they would have to come into the government center, file a public records request and wait for the small office staff to fulfill the request.

CLOUD-POWERED BACK OFFICE PAVES WAY TO MODERNIZATION IN ST. CROIX COUNTY

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Another persistent problem was keeping the system updated — never mind modernizing it.

County leaders knew they could not meet stakeholders’ needs without up-to-date technology. They realized that with the old system, standing still was not an option, as it was impossible to catch up with advances in technology.

SELF-SERVICE FOR EVERY DEPARTMENTSt. Croix County leaders wanted a cloud-native solution that would allow them to capture data more efficiently. The county needed to start fresh with a system that integrated everything and that was easily accessible to accommodate every employee. And, of course, the solution needed to fit within the county’s tight budget.

With Oracle’s cloud-native ERP and HR services, staff can access data and programs from anywhere. Moreover, staff can avail themselves of the industry-standard workflow built into the system, which also helps ensure painless future upgrades.

Prior to modernization, the county was not able to encumber funding because it lacked a purchase order system. Through Oracle’s procurement functions, budgetary and purchasing controls are built into the workflow. When an employee makes a purchase, it now flows automatically to the correct cost center and account.

Take the highway department, for example. The county builds and maintains its own roads, and can easily spend one million dollars in a single day. Staying on track is now possible, and finance managers now know how much money is encumbered. The solution also helps with compliance and reporting on state-regulated services such as the county’s nursing home.

The service’s intuitive reporting features have also been a huge boon in terms of expediting decision-making and reducing reliance on analysts and IT staff. In the past, departmental employees had to depend on IT or the finance department to pull reports, and often waited one or two days for results. Today, these employees can immediately generate their own reports with easy-to-use tools and a user-friendly interface.

And, as a wave of workers retire, Oracle’s HR reporting and talent management tools will expedite the hiring and onboarding of new employees.

However, the built-in functionality and ease of use weren’t the only advantages that attracted the county. Because the service is cloud-based and maintained by Oracle, the county’s back-office systems will always be on the leading edge of innovation and technology. System updates are organic, and the county no longer bears the operational and

financial burdens of maintenance. In addition, systems can easily expand to accommodate the county’s growth.

A NEED FOR EXPERTISESt. Croix had never implemented any kind of system of this magnitude, and needed a partner who knew the Oracle system and had public sector experience. CherryRoad was instrumental in providing the expertise, services and long-term support that St. Croix County needed to be successful.

The CherryRoad team could predict how certain decisions would impact the county in the future.

“We saved St. Croix a lot of time and heartache,” says Stephen Lange, CherryRoad president and chief operating officer. “We helped navigate new workflows and processes that made sense for them.”

The smaller scale of St. Croix County was ideal for a cloud-based solution.

“Five years ago, St. Croix would have purchased a Tier 3 system that would not be able to change with its needs,” says Lange. “Today, cloud can revolutionize the way local governments do business by ensuring that their systems will always be up to date with the latest software.”

BEST PRACTICE TIPS FROM ST. CROIX COUNTYBesides teaming up with a partner like CherryRoad, the following are some recommendations from St. Croix County officials to help their peers throughout the country transition to the cloud: • Get help with the RFP – The county enlisted the

Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) to help draft the RFP and review responses.

• Review data early – Organizations should decide what data they want to move to the cloud and remove or update data that is obsolete, redundant, incomplete or improperly formatted.

• Supplement staff – The county brought on temporary staff to help backfill key positions during set up and throughout the process. Testing and training can consume a lot of time from the regular workload of employees.

• Manage change – Involve employees and obtain their buy-in as a vital component to success.

READY FOR THE FUTUREMoving forward, the county plans to bring in more employee self-services and overhaul its point-of-sale (POS) system to make it more user friendly. The opportunities will continue to unfold as the county rolls out new features and more data is added to the system. In the meantime, migrating finance and HR applications to the cloud is already paying off by bringing insights, efficiency and innovation to the workplace and the community — without the costs, complexity and built-in obsolescence of an on-premises solution.

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citizen sits stranded at a bus stop late at night. Unsure whether she missed the bus or the bus is simply running late, she eventually resorts to

calling a friend to pick her up.

Given the data and technology available today, citizens in any city should be able to access up-to-date transit schedules or other government information via smartphone. But that’s not always the case. While many private sector companies have leveraged technology to improve customer service, government information and services often remain difficult to locate and navigate.

Granted, when it comes to improving the customer experience, government agencies often face challenges the private sector does not, including a dearth of funding, longer procurement cycles that complicate IT modernization, or rigid policies and regulations. But that doesn’t have to stop government from connecting with citizens in new ways.

State and local government agencies can improve the citizen experience and address their challenges, but one-off solutions won’t work. Instead, agencies must address their business problems holistically, develop solutions that enable the integration of platform services to create connected citizen experiences, and automate connections among systems. A cloud-based approach is key. Cloud can enable an agency to:• Improve the customer experience in a

coordinated way• Move away from legacy technology and innovate • Integrate mobility, IoT and AI derived from machine

learning to increase efficiency and reduce costs• Create an omnichannel experience that allows

citizens to interact with government in the ways — and at the times — most convenient for them

• Add new capabilities as needed in the future

To better understand how it all works, let’s examine a few areas where this approach is taking root in state and local government agencies across several verticals.

Improving the Citizen Experience in San Jose As a community based in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose city leaders recognized residents had high expectations for innovation and participation. Passed by the mayor and city council in 2016, the San Jose Smart City Vision sought to help citizens engage city government in safer, more inclusive and user-friendly ways. As part of this vision, city leaders launched Project ACE (Amazing Citizen Experience) at the end of 2016 to transform how the city provides services and information, break down information silos and improve operations.

ACE includes advanced customer engagement features prioritized by the community: removing abandoned vehicles, addressing illegal dumping, fixing potholes, repairing street lights and cleaning up graffiti. Citizens report these issues via whatever channel they choose — phone, website, chat or mobile app. The solution uses a platform-based approach and integrates the city’s back-office systems, automatically routing citizen service requests to the work crews in charge of responding.

SMARTER SOLUTIONS FOR A CONNECTED GOVERNMENT

Pillar three:

AGENCIES MUST ADDRESS THEIR BUSINESS PROBLEMS HOLISTICALLY, DEVELOP SOLUTIONS THAT ENABLE THE INTEGRATION OF PLATFORMSERVICES TO CREATE CONNECTED CITIZEN EXPERIENCES ANDAUTOMATE CONNECTIONS AMONG SYSTEMS.

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As state and local governments move toward a more connected digital environment, there are many areas ripe for transformation. One such area is community development, which is the heartbeat of any municipality seeking to attract new businesses and expedite the construction and renovation of schools, town centers, office parks and homes — projects that will ultimately revitalize communities and create jobs.

Today, many community development and city planning departments are burdened by cumbersome and paper-driven processes, where multiple individuals and agencies must examine and approve a series of sequential and time-sensitive actions using disconnected systems that have been in existence for decades. Many cities and counties also have antiquated legacy systems that operate in business silos, unable to communicate with other departments.

A new solution — Oracle Public Sector Community Development — enables government entities of all sizes to improve and facilitate land development and economic growth while ensuring public safety and accountability. This solution gives local government a system to streamline the permit process with configurable workflow automation, spatial intelligence, mobile technology, advanced analytics and the ability to integrate back-end financial systems.

This new category of transactional service can accelerate the routine business of government through end-to-end assisted digital workflow solutions and will ultimately take advantage of what is now standard in commercial transactions: online payments, email and text reminders, mobile approvals and sophisticated mapping capabilities. These services give builders, city planners and citizens an instant snapshot of any parcel of land with its permit status. Oracle’s solution takes advantage of the latest advances in technology, such as AI, chatbots and cloud-powered software that quickly guides users to the resources they need, without shuffling between license counter employees or visiting countless websites. Moreover, the solution fits squarely with Oracle’s cloud-based back-office systems for procurement, finance and supply chain needs, expediting payments and making most transactions as easy as booking a hotel room or ordering a pizza. The benefits are many. Agency staff can reduce paperwork, phone inquiries and in-person office visits while speeding up the routine machinations of government and increasing productivity. Real-time connectivity between developers and local government on the progression of permits reduces idle time. And citizens, especially those not accustomed to the complexities of home construction, can get quick and easy answers to their questions through a guided online experience. The solution launched initially with the permit and inspection process, and planning and zoning. Code enforcement will be introduced shortly. From the homeowner seeking to install a new water heater to the developer building a new, upscale town center for shopping and dining, the manual process of securing permits for land use, water, electricity and construction today often involves an in-person trip to a local community development office. Moving to a digital solution speeds up the construction process and saves time and money through faster approvals of inspections, without requiring a trip to city hall to fill out forms and make payments. Moreover, every new construction project is an opportunity for cities to become even more connected through a safer, sustainable digital infrastructure with sensor-enabled monitoring. Learn more at: www.oracle.com/communitydevelopment

Driving Economic Growth Through Streamlined Community Development

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Today, the city can make decisions based on real-time data and analysis. Lessons learned regarding communications, process engineering and user-centric design have helped reshape the city’s customer relationship management system into a true digital services transformation affecting 170,000+ citizen requests per year.

Responding to the Opioid Crisis in Massachusetts and Illinois Every day in the United States, 91 citizens die from an opioid overdose — a rate of one person every 16 minutes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Looking for a better way to provide citizens information and referrals on substance abuse prevention and treatment resources, Massachusetts and Illinois moved to a cloud-based solution. The new solution helps individuals with opioid use disorder and their families, caseworkers and treatment providers better access information and resources.

For example:• Individuals suffering from opioid use disorder,

their family members and their caseworkers can access a portal, answer a few short questions and receive real-time detailed information on the most appropriate resources and/or treatment facilities based on their location, health insurance coverage and the substance(s) they are using.

• Treatment providers can update the information about their services in real time — including an up-to-the-minute reflection of current waitlists.

Both the Illinois portal and the Massachusetts portal were implemented to assist call centers operated by Boston-based Health Resources in Action (HRiA). The underlying software is cloud-based, which means it can be set up and configured quickly at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional portal implementations. The portals don’t replace the call centers, but rather work in tandem with them to provide citizens additional channels to receive assistance.

The solution allowed Massachusetts to handle more than 23,000 calls and 147,000 website visits in 2017.

Safeguarding Environmental Compliance in OhioThe Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses an environmental permit, license and registration information one-stop “wizard” to offer citizens an easy-to-use, online permitting experience. Every business, from a manufacturer to a body shop, restaurant or dry cleaner, has specific regulations with which they must comply. Using Ohio EPA’s online wizard, businesses

can determine which permits, registrations, licenses or notifications are required by either the federal or state EPA. The wizard directs the user through a series of questions and uses the answers and embedded logic to determine if a permit is required.

The wizard contains paths for common business/industry types as well as a separate path for individuals who may be using the tool to find occupational licensing requirements or environmental health issues that may overlap with federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Most references to EPA regulations and jargon have been purposely omitted wherever possible. The tool is based on Oracle Policy Automation, which helps organizations in all industries effectively deliver services and consistently determine policy obligations while maintaining full compliance with laws and regulations. The solution aims to increase compliance, reduce call-ins and promote consistency in customer-facing guidance.

The Oracle Approach: An Integrated, Citizen-Centric ExperienceToday, many state and local government agencies make customer service a key part of their IT solutions. But improving the citizen experience requires a holistic, business-focused approach. The Oracle Customer Experience (CX) platform — services, social, mobile and marketing — offers a complete solution that enables integration across platforms. And because Oracle solutions integrate evolving technologies like the IoT and AI, they help government become smarter and citizen-centric. Agencies can reduce repetitive and menial tasks, improve transparency, remove barriers to interaction and help boost economic development across an array of industries throughout state and local government. For example, Wi-Fi-enabled street lights can monitor and control traffic flow; trash cans can signal for pickup; the HVAC unit in the county courthouse can alert maintenance about a needed filter change to prevent costly repairs; and a transit system once on the brink of bankruptcy can generate new revenue streams by serving up geo-located digital ads to riders.

Perhaps most importantly, such solutions help citizens like the woman stuck at the bus stop late at night. Instead of waiting and wondering, she can now use her smartphone to see exactly where the bus is, its estimated arrival time and even how many passengers are on the bus so she can predict whether she’s likely to have a seat or not once it arrives.

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E very business, whether it’s a manufacturer, body shop, restaurant or dry cleaner, must comply with environmental regulations. Failure to follow these

rules can put the public at risk. But a citizen who opens a nail salon, for example, may not know how to store and dispose of chemicals or which permits are needed. In most cases, that person will call the state environmental protection agency (EPA) or visit the agency website to find the information.

In the past, information on Ohio EPA’s website was difficult to find. This resulted in multiple phone calls, which irritated business owners and overwhelmed Ohio EPA employees. Ohio business owners often had to call as many as five program offices to find out which regulations and permits applied to their businesses. But in many cases, Ohio EPA employees could not easily give businesses the information they needed. The complexity of the regulations and the number of groups involved frustrated everyone involved, and the consequences could be severe. Misunderstandings could result in a business taking the wrong action, which could harm citizens and damage the environment.

Creating a WizardYears earlier, Ohio EPA developed a custom permit wizard to help business owners locate the information they needed. But the wizard was outdated, lacked functionality and Ohio EPA no longer had staff that could support it. Agency leaders needed a new way to enable self-service to reduce costs and staff workload. They also needed to improve the consistency of their information.

In late 2015, Ohio EPA released a request for a new compliance and permit wizard that could increase self-service and connect field resources with back-office systems to improve operational efficiency. TruePenny People, a company that specializes in Oracle Policy Automation technology, responded to the request.

“Ohio EPA leaders had some big ideas about what they wanted to accomplish,” says Raj Dubey, president of TruePenny People. “They didn’t just want to update

their existing wizard, they wanted something that would be very customized toward each person’s experience and each business’ situation, but that could also answer routine citizen questions.”

Ohio EPA was an early adopter of Oracle Service Cloud and decided to build a new environmental permit, license and registration information one-stop wizard based on Oracle Service Cloud’s Oracle Policy Automation.

“Rather than replace a custom product with a custom product, we would use Oracle Policy Automation and Oracle Service Cloud to provide Ohio EPA a solution that would allow them to consolidate and better leverage their existing knowledge base,” says Shane Caldwell, Oracle Policy Automation specialist at TruePenny People. “That would also take some of the pressure off their staff and allow them to focus on more strategic activities.”

The Ohio EPA Journey Ohio EPA had an ambitious six-month timeline. This was a challenge given that complex regulatory requirements had to be built into the tool. That meant involving the right subject matter experts (SMEs) and conducting rigorous testing to ensure the correct information would be provided to users.

HOW OHIO EPA REINVENTED PERMITTING AND COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE

“IF WE CAN GET PEOPLE INFORMATION DIRECTLY, IT MAKES THE PROCESS MORE EFFICIENT AND PROVIDES A BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR BUSINESSES IN THE STATE.”Rick Magni, Chief Information Officer, Ohio EPA

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“One of the biggest challenges was finding the right people to work with,” says Rick Magni, chief information officer for Ohio EPA. “We are fairly siloed, so just finding the right people was a challenge. We have a lot of experts, but they aren’t all experts in the same thing.”

Once the correct SMEs were identified, TruePenny’s Oracle Policy Automation specialists worked one-on-one with them to develop a series of questions, known as an “interview,” that could be integrated into the agency’s existing website. The team effort continued through the refining and testing phases of the project, allowing agency SMEs to increase their Oracle Policy Automation skill sets.

Working together, Ohio EPA and TruePenny People launched the new compliance and permit wizard within the agency’s six-month window.

A New Experience for Ohio BusinessesOhio EPA’s new online permitting and compliance wizard reduces agency silos and makes life easier for entrepreneurs in the state. Using the wizard, Ohio business owners can easily determine which permits, registrations, licenses or notifications are required by federal or state EPA regulations. The wizard directs users through a series of questions and uses embedded logic to determine if a permit is required. The dynamic nature of the software determines which questions are applicable based on the previous answers provided, so a hairdresser is not asked questions that apply to a plywood manufacturer, for example.

At the end of the interview process, the user can download a “roadmap” that includes recommendations and information regarding requirements, local contact information and steps to take to begin the permitting process. It also suggests a series of steps businesses can take to comply with environmental regulations.

“There are educational mechanisms within the wizard to confirm people understand what they are

using,” says Magni. “For example, one question is ‘Do you use hazardous waste?’ If they reply no, the next question might ask whether they use certain chemicals. On that list could be something like methyl ethyl ketone, which is indeed a hazardous chemical. In that way we — and they — find out they are indeed using hazardous waste. It adds another layer of security and compliance and reduces our liability.”

To help improve the citizen experience, most references to EPA regulations and jargon have been omitted from the wizard wherever possible. And the system is available 24/7, so Ohio EPA offices don’t need to be open for citizens to access information.

Since its implementation, Ohio EPA’s new permitting and compliance wizard has improved consistency in customer-facing guidance, reduced time and effort for Ohio businesses, and increased Ohio EPA’s staff work capacity.

“If we can get people information directly, it makes the process more efficient and provides a better experience for businesses in the state,” says Magni.

Magni says the wizard will help Ohio EPA increase compliance, reduce liability and improve public safety. The wizard is also serving as a model for future Oracle Policy Automation application development at Ohio EPA. Some applications currently in development include better systems to notify Ohio EPA of a water line break and route that information to the right person day or night, a grants management application, and an application to help Ohio EPA employees monitor fish populations in local rivers — a primary indicator of water quality.

“We have a slew of use cases we’re looking at,” says Magni. “Leveraging Oracle Policy Automation has a lot of potential benefits for many types of state agencies, and the return on investment is there.”

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Government 360 is not just about being smart today; it’s also about preparing for tomorrow. The three pillars we’ve examined so far enable

government agencies to lift and shift to the cloud, automate and mobilize the back office, and provide a better customer experience. The fourth pillar focuses on analytics, business intelligence and machine learning — tools that equip agencies to gain data-driven insights that position them for a more effective, efficient and innovative future.

The Evolution of Data and Analytics The amount of data available to agencies today is growing at a phenomenal pace. According to IDC Research, data volume will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 42 percent through 2020. In the 2010-2020 decade, IDC predicts the world’s data will grow by 50 times, or from about 1 zettabyte in 2010 to about 50 zettabytes in 2020.

Data comes in one of two forms: structured, which is organized data produced by business systems, and unstructured, which is essentially everything else — social media posts, images, video, audio tracks and signals from sensors. The more data of either type an agency produces and collects, the more business intelligence it can gather, and the more predictive analytics can inform and improve government services. On the commercial side, IDC estimates there is a $430 billion economic advantage to organizations that analyze data and deliver actionable insights.

For government agencies facing fiscal pressure, analytics can help them make more informed, impactful decisions that maximize limited resources.

But agencies are often overwhelmed with data and unsure of what to do with it. How do they turn data into intelligence that can show them which programs are working and which aren’t? How can they gain visibility into their data so they can refocus resources and drive transformation to solve problems?

Some early analytics tools promised a lot and delivered little. But analytics tools have evolved. Today’s tools are more sophisticated and easier to use, allowing agencies to address a range of challenges without requiring them to build expensive data warehouses. These tools let government agencies pull both structured and unstructured data together to answer questions they’ve never been able to ask before, find hidden patterns in data using intelligent visualizations and machine learning, and detect anomalies and predict outcomes.

To better understand how it works, let’s examine some areas where analytics is being used in state, local and nonprofit agencies.

Creating a Data-Driven Culture in Las VegasAl Pitts is on a mission to create the future of data and analytics for the city of Las Vegas. As the manager of enterprise data and analytics, Pitts leads an effort to use data to run a smarter, more effective and more efficient city.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES POWERED BY PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS

Pillar FOUR:

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“We want to move our city toward a data-driven culture, giving our C-suite the ability to make decisions based on data, not just their gut or whim,” says Pitts.

Las Vegas has been an Oracle business intelligence (BI) customer for more than a decade. But more recently, Pitts began using geographic information system (GIS) data, operational data and more to create executive dashboards for the city manager, chief operations officer, chief community services officer, chief public safety officer and chief financial officer.

“These five different chiefs are now able to, at a glance, look at a dashboard that gives them insights into their respective areas and allows them to perform their jobs more effectively,” says Pitts.

For example, the chief public safety officer is combining public safety information, fire and police data, and IoT sensor data to more quickly respond to emergencies.

“If there is an emergency, someone typically dials 911 and relays the situation to an operator who dispatches first responders,” says Pitts. “But using IoT, BI and analytics we can get an automatic alert when an airbag is deployed, for example. An information packet is then sent to a dashboard and we can dispatch fire and rescue immediately without any human intervention whatsoever, cutting down on the turnaround time and potentially saving lives in the process.”

On the back end, analytics are used to examine trends over time.

“We can look at a particular intersection, for example. Maybe there’s something wrong with the timing of the signal,” says Pitts. “We can analyze that data, realize there is an uptick in the number of accidents happening in that intersection, and then proactively check the lighting and make sure the signal is actually operating the way it’s supposed to.”

Taking Maine’s Data Warehouse to a New LevelMaine built an ad hoc data warehouse for BI in 1995 —

a progressive step at that time. The legacy tool contained administrative and financial information to be shared with administrators around the state. However, only a small percentage of users had the skills to use the tool, and they could only access a limited amount of data.

In 2018, Jeff Jordan, Maine’s director of enterprise data services, partnered with the state controller and made the strategic decision to move to a cloud-based solution. Jordan and his team evaluated several solutions, but ultimately chose Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC).

“Oracle Analytics Cloud provides a single point of entry to our governed data, allowing us to accomplish all our objectives with one product,” says Jordan. “For that reason, OAC became the de-facto choice for me.”

The effort — which is still underway — will eventually enable users to access more data, perform ad hoc analyses and predictive analytics functions, and build more meaningful, customized reports using dashboards and other features.

“With OAC we’re bringing in a much broader set of data,” says Jordan. “Every piece of data in our various administrative and financial services systems is being made available to every data analysis user in state government. Previously they could only view about 200 data elements. Now there are over 8,000 data elements available to our end users.”

Using OAC also enables a data “mashup” capability with unstructured data sources while enforcing the business rules of the department.

“End users will be able to extract data from any source they want — structured or unstructured — and mash it all together to create the types of analysis we couldn’t before,” says Jordan. “Ultimately it will allow us to make better business decisions.”

Leveraging Analytics to Protect Honey BeesAccording to the World Bee Project (WBP), honey bees are at risk for extinction. To help protect bees, the WBP

TODAY’S TOOLS ARE MORE SOPHISTICATED AND EASIER TO USE, ALLOWING AGENCIES TO ADDRESS A BROAD RANGE OF CHALLENGES WITHOUT REQUIRING THEM TO BUILD EXPENSIVE DATA WAREHOUSES.

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Pillar FOUR:

Data is an asset for any organization. But getting value out of data is challenging. Today’s data is diverse — it exists in many different forms and comes from different sources at varying volumes and rates. Disparate data also needs to be securely stored in a way that is readily accessible to support a growing number of users.

The way data is used has also changed. Today, more users and analysts need to experiment with and analyze data in near real time to support new needs or processes. They often need to analyze a sampling of different data sets to recognize trends or correlations — and they need to get results fast.

Unfortunately, many government agencies still rely on legacy data warehouses based on decades-old technology. As analytics has become a common practice, and a larger volume of more diverse data is collected, the data warehouse has become the biggest roadblock

How to Tap the Potential of Your Data

many agencies face in their path to insight. To meet the demands and opportunities of today and tomorrow, data warehouses need to fundamentally change. They need to become easier to create, faster and more elastic.

To address these issues, Oracle developed the Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud, a modern data warehouse ecosystem that helps government agencies meet evolving data and analytics needs. The Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud platform allows agencies to take in any type of data, easily store it, rapidly process it and provide valuable insights in an easy-to-consume visual fashion to help users make smarter decisions. And it supports heterogeneous environments, allowing agencies to continue to use existing BI and analytics tools.

To find out more, visit: https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/datawarehouse

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launched an initiative in partnership with Oracle and the University of Reading School of Agriculture, Policy, and Development to leverage analytics to help slow the decline of bee colonies.

“Imagine a farmer whose crops yield one-third less than they did before,” says WBP Founder Sabiha Malik. “That is what we are faced with if bee colonies continue to decline.”

The WBP Hive Network will remotely collect data using a network of smart beehives. The data WBP collects will feed into OAC, which will use analytics tools, including AI and data visualization, to give researchers new insights into the relationships between honey bees and their environments. Researchers ‘listen’ to the honey bees and analyze intricate acoustic data captured inside the smart hives, including the movement of bees’ wings and feet. Combined with other precision measurements — including temperature, humidity and honey yield — researchers will closely monitor bee colonies, detecting patterns and predicting behaviors. This will enable conservationists and bee keepers to act to protect colonies, such as preventing swarming at the wrong time of year or removing predators like the invasive Asian hornet.

The WBP Hive Network launched in the United Kingdom with expansion expected in the United States and Africa soon.

The Oracle Approach: Machine Learning Advances AnalyticsMost state and local government agencies see the potential in data. But transforming that data into actionable intelligence is challenging. OAC provides comprehensive cloud-based analytics in a single platform, so agencies don’t have to stitch multiple systems together. The integrated analytics platform has the horsepower to analyze any type of data from any source — on-premises data warehouses, streaming data from IoT, data managed by Hadoop, video and text data, and more. And because Oracle Analytics leverages cloud, agencies need less manpower to manage infrastructure and applications.

OAC equips government agencies to get more value from their data. For example, a growing number of agencies use the solution for predictive maintenance, allowing them to anticipate which machines or systems are most likely to break down so they can perform maintenance before expensive problems occur, improve labor planning and

leverage warranty claims. By combining analytics with machine learning, it is now possible for agencies to enter into a new realm of predictive analytics, from calculating the probability that an underserved student will complete high school to predicting when electricity or water are at their peak usage.

OAC’s embedded machine learning helps take the human bias out of data analysis and lets agency leaders see anomalies, make predictions and model scenarios to ascertain answers to important “what if?” questions. It helps leaders ask questions they did not previously know to ask. Always on, and always working in the background, machine learning is continuously learning from the data it takes in, making it smarter and more accurate as time goes by.

Most critically, advanced analytics platforms let government agencies use data to inform the way they operate, providing insights that help them deliver on their missions both today and in the future.

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TURNING DATA INTO INSIGHTS IN SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY

L ike most counties, San Joaquin County, Calif., collects a vast amount of data about its operations and the community it serves. But until

recently, the county couldn’t put that data to use.

“We couldn’t tap our data to collect meaningful metrics and insights that would help us be better at what we do,” says Jerry Becker, assistant county administrator for San Joaquin County. “One of our board’s priorities is to improve operational efficiency. We wanted to mine our data and pull out key facts that could help us make better business decisions, but we didn’t have the tools to do so.”

In 2016, San Joaquin County hired Graviton Consulting Services to upgrade its existing on-premises PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. During implementation, Becker discussed his data challenge with the Graviton team. For years, county leaders had talked with Oracle representatives about Oracle’s business intelligence solutions, though budget constraints prevented them from committing. But when the Graviton team told Becker about Oracle’s new subscription-based analytics solution, he was intrigued.

In 2018, San Joaquin County agreed to work with Graviton and Oracle on an Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) proof of concept. Leveraging a data lake and OAC would give the county a low-cost way to apply analytics across its vast troves of data — whether that data resided in cloud-based or legacy systems.

Diving into Data The county focused the proof of concept on its biggest expense — personnel.

“Personnel are our most valuable resource, and also our most costly resource,” says Becker.

The proof of concept project analyzed sick leave use for 7,200 county employees.

Leveraging OAC, the county culled its data and built dashboards and heat maps to display a variety of information, including which days employees were most likely to call in sick and how much sick leave was used by certain job classifications.

“It was a tremendous eye-opener for us,” says Becker.

The county identified several unexpected trends, including the fact that some personnel waived sick leave benefits in exchange for cash payouts, or did not use any sick leave at all for multiple years. Unused sick leave creates a future expense for the county because employees can cash that leave out at retirement. The county didn’t want to needlessly drive up that balance and create a large future liability.

“Some employees were using other types of leave when they were sick,” says Becker. “The OAC product helped us realize we had some education to do.”

Based on findings from the proof of concept, the county made changes that will ultimately reduce its risks and expenses.

“We knew some of these things before, but until we implemented OAC we didn’t have an all-inclusive look,” says Becker. “It allows us to bring together a wide variety of information, and if something looks odd, we can dive in and take a closer look.”

“Performing some quick, easy analytics on its data helped county leaders think about how they could improve productivity and increase efficiencies,” says Vineet Srivastava, president and CEO at Graviton Consulting Services. “Just by bringing data into OAC and animating it, the county pulled out insights it wouldn’t normally be able to see.”

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“THE FACT THAT WE CAN BRING LARGE QUANTITIES OF DISPARATE DATA INTO OAC AND TURN IT INTO STRUCTURED, INTELLIGIBLE DATA WE CAN USE IS EXTREMELY VALUABLE.”Jerry Becker, Assistant County Administrator, San Joaquin County

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The original proof of concept created an appetite for additional analytics projects among San Joaquin County’s executive staff. Over the next several months, the county launched two more analytics projects, including one at San Joaquin General Hospital, a county-run hospital and trauma center.

San Joaquin General Hospital is required to produce multiple reports, including a Public Hospital Redesign and Incentives in Medi-Cal (PRIME) report required by the state of California. The PRIME report is critical to the county because it’s tied to state funding, but it requires hospital personnel to spend hundreds of hours collecting data. Using OAC, the county can now automatically gather structured data from its electronic medical system and unstructured data such as doctor’s notes, charts, pdfs and more from hundreds of thousands of hospital records. That reduces the time and effort required by hospital staff to create the PRIME report and improves the report’s accuracy because it reduces the potential for human error.

The county also used OAC to evaluate overtime pay at San Joaquin General Hospital. The county recently made personnel changes and hospital leadership wanted to evaluate how those changes affected expenses. Using OAC, they could see how much overtime they were paying staff and make further adjustments to lower costs.

“Just that little bit of analysis through OAC can help us more accurately project future costs,” says Becker.

The county eventually plans to leverage OAC within the hospital to build machine learning algorithms that can predict patient needs and outcomes more quickly. In the long run these efforts could help the hospital run more effectively and efficiently and further reduce costs.

“The fact that we can bring large quantities of disparate data into OAC and turn it into structured, intelligible data we can use is extremely valuable,” says Becker.

The third OAC project underway is using analytics to examine the county’s homeless population and evaluate each person’s fit for rehabilitation programs. That project

is still in its infancy, but Becker and team have developed data sharing agreements with multiple service providers throughout the county.

“We have about a dozen different systems that collect information about homeless individuals, so there is a tremendous amount of data that can be shared to give us a more holistic view of our homeless population,” says Becker. “Bringing that data together from what were siloed systems gives us insights we previously didn’t have. It has allowed us to ask new questions and better understand how we can interact with our homeless population and get them the services they need to be successful.”

Obstacles and OpportunitiesBecker says one of the biggest challenges he’s faced with each of the OAC projects is getting agencies to share data. Managing that challenge required him to focus on the positive and push through initial resistance.

“I sat down with department heads and asked them to focus on what we could share,” says Becker. “We’re not going to focus on the barriers; we’re going to focus on the things we can move forward on. Then we’ll work our way through the barriers.”

Becker says strong partnerships with Graviton and Oracle have also been important to the county’s success.

“It was helpful that we had such a powerful initial start,” Becker says. “We saw how quickly they were able to bring the data in and create meaningful results.”

San Joaquin County leaders are currently expanding the volume and types of data they’re feeding into OAC to create other types of insights and examine other areas where they can apply OAC’s analytics and machine learning capabilities.

“It’s exciting to see how OAC can help us analyze how we’re delivering services and determine where there are opportunities for improvement,” says Becker.

“BRINGING THAT DATA TOGETHER FROM WHAT WERE SILOED SYSTEMS GIVES US INSIGHTS WE PREVIOUSLY DIDN’T HAVE. IT HAS ALLOWED US TO ASK NEW QUESTIONS AND BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW WE CAN INTERACT WITH OUR HOMELESS POPULATION AND GET THEM THE SERVICES THEY NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL.”Jerry Becker, Assistant County Administrator, San Joaquin County

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Throughout this white paper, we’ve strived to provide government leaders with a framework for agency modernization, included examples

of where these concepts are becoming a reality in state and local government agencies throughout the United States, and shared stories that illustrate what can happen when IT leaders perceive government through the eyes of the people they serve.

In exploring Government 360 concepts, one thing has become clear: government agencies can no longer rely on traditional methods of conducting business. They must move away from monolithic systems that are costly to run and maintain, take too long to deploy and prevent IT teams from moving beyond activities that simply “keep the lights on” to more innovative ventures. They must adopt modern processes that enable them to become more nimble. And, they must strive to deliver the services constituents demand.

Failing to evolve is not an option. Government organizations that neglect to modernize face long-term sustainability issues. An agency that is not forward thinking or that utilizes antiquated technology will perpetuate an image of government as old fashioned and may struggle to attract new talent. Cities that rely on outdated technologies and processes can also fail to attract new businesses and industry, leading to lower tax revenues that impact the organization’s ability to provide citizen services.

We hope we have helped you build a vision for how to adopt modern processes that enable you to deliver the digital services citizens demand, and you can move forward with a strategy for ongoing government modernization.

No matter where you are with any of the four core concepts in the modernization process — moving workloads to the cloud, mobilizing and modernizing the back office, creating a smarter connected government, or implementing predictive analytics and other future-ready technologies — the key is to get started. Modernizing government services is a journey, not a destination. It won’t always be easy. But the effort put forth to create a circle of citizen engagement, constituent service, private business productivity and civic mission will certainly be worth it.

Conclusion

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About OracleThe Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com. To learn more about our U.S. Public Sector solutions, visit oracle.com/publicsector and follow us on Twitter @OracleCloud | #oraclegov360