Promoting Innovation and Collaboration in Government with Google Apps

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

Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks is going Google to improve collaboration and remote access

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

City of Rochester Hills Goes Google to Save Servers, Dollars and Cents

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

U.S. General Services Administration is going Google

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

Panama City promotes open government with Google Apps

Editor’s note: Today our guest blogger is Richard Ferrick, Network Administrator for Panama City, Florida, one of the first governments in the country to adopt Google Apps for Government. Join Richard for a live chat on GovLoop this Thursday, December 2 at 2pm ET / 11am PT / 6pm GMT.


Panama City, Florida is a beautiful resort destination on Florida’s Emerald Coast; our white sand beaches attract vacationers year round. We’re also home to 37,000 residents who care a lot about open access to their local government. Our city government makes it a priority to make our operations transparent to citizens, businesses, and visitors alike. At the same time, with a three-person IT department supporting nearly 250 city employees, finding ways to work smarter and conserve funds is essential.

Google Apps has freed our IT team from maintaining email servers and updating websites to focus on important transparency initiatives. We started with a 50-employee pilot of Google Apps in 2007 and gave all city employees the Google email and collaboration tools in 2008. Earlier this year, we became one of the first users of Google Apps for Government to take advantage of its government-specific security measures.

We decided to move our public facing website to Google Sites after experiencing a catastrophic server crash with our old site this spring. We were happy with our previous website, but now we like our site even more. Google empowers people in other city departments to update the website with ease. For example, major changes are underway for Panama City’s Comprehensive Plan. Planning staff post announcements, updates and amendments as they happen. Human resources adds new job postings and other departments collect input from residents using a simple form. IT no longer needs to make every update ─ and when we do, it can be from anywhere. This keeps the website more current and saves valuable time. Plus, we’ve had a lot of compliments from citizens who say everything is easy to find.


Google Apps also simplifies finding information to respond to public records requests. The state puts a high priority on the public's right of access to government information. This daunting task is now simplified with the email archiving capabilities of Google Message Discovery. What would take hours for a single request now takes minutes.

What’s more, mobility limitations for the staff are now a thing of the past. Previously, employees were forced to use a VPN connection and remote desktop. With Google Apps, no VPN is required. Some staff even access Apps securely from personal mobile devices. Employee productivity is at an all time high.

With time savings like these, our IT staff has more time to focus on open government initiatives. In 1967, the state passed the “Sunshine Law” establishing a basic right of access to most public government meetings. This used to mean people could attend these meetings in person, but that isn’t always practical. We wanted to make the proceedings more broadly accessible. So, we added live streaming of all public meetings to pcgov.org. Then we set up our own YouTube channel, making past meetings readily available to the public. We will also start testing video chat for use during city meetings, and look for more ways we can use Google Apps to open up our government.

Please join Thursday’s live chat on GovLoop to learn more.

by Richard Ferrick, Network Administrator / Web Development, Panama City, Florida

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

Larimer County Moves to Google Apps in Just 3 Days

Editor’s note: Today, our guest blogger is Andy Paratore, CIO of Larimer County in Colorado. Home to nearly 300,000 residents in north-central Colorado, the county’s offices are in the city of Fort Collins. Larimer County shares a border with the State of Wyoming, and both will soon have a common email system, as well.

Please join Andy for a live webcast about making a rapid transition to the cloud this Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT. Register today.

While most people watched fireworks over the July 4th weekend, the Larimer County government used the holiday to switch all our employees to Google Apps. With this “big bang” approach, it took just three days for us to migrate our 1,800 employees and over four million email messages to Google’s web-based email and collaboration applications. As a result of this rapid switch, the county saved implementation costs, improved mobile access to information, and provided employees with new and innovative applications to help us do our jobs.

Of course, careful planning and preparation were key to making this fast move to the cloud. We did a detailed comparison of Google Apps and several on-premise solutions and found Google delivered the best value and features. We had 100 county employees pilot the applications for six weeks, which allowed us to identify and resolve issues in advance of the big migration. And we took advantage of the contract put in place by the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority (SIPA) and Denver-based Google Apps partner Tempus Nova.

By switching to Google from our prior on-premise Novell Groupwise system, Larimer County benefits in many ways. We initially expect to save $50,000-$75,000 annually in server and support costs, and hope to save even more in the future as we take advantage of more capabilities of Google Apps; these are important savings for a county facing challenging budget circumstances. Perhaps more importantly, we’re enabling county employees to be more productive: offering additional collaboration capabilities like chat, real-time document sharing, and easy-to-build websites; allowing access to information from work, home or on the road with the same user interface; and making them less dependent on IT with an extensive set of online training and help tools that allow them to resolve questions themselves.

I look forward to sharing our experience with other organizations that are looking to make a rapid move to the cloud, please join me on Wednesday’s webinar to learn more.



By Andy Paratore, CIO, Larimer County

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

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Wyoming is Going Google

Wyoming is a state of many firsts. In 1872, it became home to the world’s first national park – Yellowstone. In 1925, its citizens elected Nellie Tayloe Ross the first woman governor of a U.S. state. Now in 2010, we’re thrilled that Wyoming is the first state in the country to announce plans to move all state government employees to Google Apps for Government.

According to Wyoming CIO Bob von Wolffradt, all state agencies – representing 10,000 employees – will migrate to Google Apps within a year. This will be the first time all Wyoming state employees share a common communications platform, which will improve their ability to collaborate with each other in serving the citizens of Wyoming.

The decision to go Google was the result of a transparent and competitive evaluation process that began roughly two years ago. Wyoming solicited proposals from multiple vendors and awarded the contract to Google partner Tempus Nova. The state estimates the move to Google Apps will save Wyoming taxpayers $1 million annually.

Many other states around the country are using Google Apps, including departments in Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico. Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, New York, and Oregon are also bringing Apps to their K-12 classrooms. All these governments are saving money while equipping their employees with modern collaboration tools that carry the assurance of federal government security certification.

We welcome Wyoming to the cloud, and look forward to working with them and Tempus Nova to make the project a success.

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

Multnomah County Goes Google

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Sherry Swackhamer, CIO of Multnomah County, Oregon. Multnomah County is located in northwest Oregon; it’s county seat is the city of Portland. More than 4,500 Multnomah County employees provide over 715,000 residents a wide range of health and human services, public safety services and other government services.

This morning, Multnomah County completed the transition of most county employees to Google Apps for Government. In Oregon, local governments like Multnomah County have faced difficult budget circumstances and diminishing resources for many years, while experiencing growing demand for services. In order to effectively continue providing needed services in our community, it’s critical that we seek ways to become ever more innovative and efficient.

Switching to Google Apps plays an important role in achieving these goals. This new environment increases government transparency by allowing employees complete access to email and information on demand, vastly improving employee efficiency and collaboration while saving taxpayers approximately $100,000 each year in licensing and related costs and up to $500,000 in staff time and staff costs.

This transition was informed by a careful analysis to evaluate our technology needs and options. Multnomah County considered two cloud-based options for replacing our old system for email, calendar and contacts. We selected Google Apps due to its low cost, ease of use, and innovative capabilities that will allow county employees to be more collaborative and productive in their jobs.

With 250 times the email storage of our prior email system, Google Apps will save employees considerable time previously spent deleting or archiving old emails, while allowing each department to follow specified email retention policies. The web based technology means employees can access their information from any internet-connected device.

New collaborative tools like searchable instant messaging and real-time collaboration in word processing and spreadsheets provide Multnomah employees with useful and innovative tools to help them do their jobs. In fact, the independent analysis found that the document sharing capabilities of Google Docs meet the needs of the vast majority of county employees.

Currently, every county employee is licensed to use the complete suite of Microsoft Office applications, but many staff members only use a small portion of those features. Google Apps provides Multnomah County with equivalent capabilities for no additional cost. Many employees will be able able to do their jobs without those costly software packages in the future.

As an added benefit, all county employees now have a shorter email address. That makes our email addresses easier to remember and much simpler to share with members of the public and those with whom we conduct business.

We began testing Google Apps with a small group of IT users and expanded that to a pilot of 150 and later 500 county employees. These employees came from a variety of county agencies and allowed us to identify and work through any issues with the migration. Our workforce has shown a high degree of interest and engagement in the project and have demonstrated that we’re ready to learn, explore and collaborate. We’ve gone Google.

by Sherry Swackhamer, CIO, Multnomah County

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

City of Westerville, Ohio has Gone Google

Editor's Note: We are pleased to welcome guest bloggers Todd Jackson, Director of Information Services and CIO, and Bryan Mundy, Network Operations Manager, for the City of Westerville, Ohio – a city that has recently Gone Google. Westerville is nationally recognized as one of "America's Best Places to Live" by Money Magazine. The city features over 46 parks, a community recreation center, and 26 miles of leisure paths for residents, visitors, and businesses. Now one of America's best places to live has an email system to match – Google Apps. Mundy and Jackson use Google Apps to support nearly 500 users. Westerville has also invested in fiber infrastructure (52 linear miles) as well as a community data center/carrier neutral hotel that will serve as a launch pad for local businesses and community partners who need access to cloud-based technology to grow.




Please join Todd & Bryan for a live webcast on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT. Register today.

The City of Westerville has a workforce of about 500 people who rely heavily on email. For many users, email is mission-critical. Police officers, for example, need to send reports by email 24 hours a day. Until recently, we relied on Novell GroupWise, and despite the fact that we were on the latest version, we were suffering constant outages. At last count, we had over 100 known issues, and it was taking its toll. As an IT team, we worked late nights and holidays. We were chasing issues versus adding value.

Adding to the challenge, we were having trouble scaling email. Users were unhappy because they couldn't effectively store important email due to limited inbox quotas.

We also have users on Windows, Mac and Linux – and we want to support them all equally well. Besides reducing IT complexity (and allowing us to have holidays off), we wanted to drive innovation by providing services like document sharing, mobile access, SMS functionality, and the ability for our users to build their own intranet sites. Finally, by freeing up our time from minding servers, we could dedicate time and resources to new projects and drive innovation within the community.

When we decided that GroupWise was no longer feasible for our city, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation that included the top hosted solutions, including Microsoft's hosted BPOS. We came away impressed with Google Apps' value and features. Google's solution was platform-agnostic, so we could easily support users on a variety of platforms. It was also less costly and came with capabilities like document sharing and Google Sites for building intranets. We felt that we could accomplish more with Google Apps for less money.

Our migration of all city departments – which included bringing over every single email, as well as calendar events and contacts – took just six weeks. We didn't lose data and we never had a major issue.

Our move into the cloud has freed IT staff time to focus on projects that provide more value to the city, departments, and the residents. We now have time to invest in new IT initiatives to help us grow our economic base. For example, we are working to build a newly-approved community data center – or 'community cloud' as we call it – which will provide access to services for small and medium business owners that typically only larger corporations enjoy. As far as we know, it is the first community data center in the country.

Today, IT makes jokes internally about how hard we work to "release new features." With Google Apps, we've received a constant stream of innovations that our users love and has allowed us to finally enjoy late nights at home.



Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government team

The City of Wooster Goes Google for scalability, reliability & usability

Editor's note: Following up on our recent announcement of Google Apps for Government, a new edition of Google Apps for our government customers, we invited Jim Dodd, Information Systems Manager for the City of Wooster, Ohio, to share Wooster’s story. Jim is a Northeast Ohio native who joined the city’s Information Technology Division in 2006 and has been an active I.T. professional since 1995.


Wooster, Ohio is a cozy community of approximately 26,000 people nestled in the center of Wayne County, home to some of the finest farmland in the state. If you draw a line from Columbus to Cleveland, Wooster is located close to the middle. “Multi-faceted” is an apt description of Wooster. It's a small town where people know their neighbors, and still greet strangers passing by on the sidewalk. The presence of The College of Wooster brings cultural opportunities -- like the Ohio Light Opera and Wooster Symphony Orchestra -- that a town of Wooster's size might not ordinarily possess. Wooster is blessed with a diverse economy that features notable manufacturing, education, transportation, technology, and healthcare companies.

The current administration of the city government stresses the imperative of maintaining the high level of services our citizens enjoy, while using current resource levels more effectively. Google Apps has provided us with the rare opportunity to expand the communications tools available to city government personnel without requiring major new funding and infrastructure.

Scalability, reliability, and usability are the reasons the City of Wooster switched to Google Apps. Google has built a dispersed, secure infrastructure that offers a level of availability and a scale of resources that we could never begin to match internally. For example, offering 25 gigabytes of email storage per user was never a realistic option for us. Integration of Google's search technology into Google Apps creates great efficiencies in data retrieval. And to top it all off, all of this is accessible from any device with a web browser, wherever city employees' jobs may take them.

Wooster switched to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange in September 2009. We started with a ten-user pilot in June 2009, and then made the switch for all 207 city employees. For the first six months, we focused on acclimating our staff to using the web browser as their primary tool for messaging and calendar, as well as raising awareness of the different features available in those two components. Reactions to the changes ran the gamut: some enthusiastically embraced the new platform and immediately began exploring its potential; others didn't have a strong opinion as long as they could read their email; and some preferred the old messaging system. Recently, we introduced the option of using Microsoft Outlook (with Google Apps Sync) instead of a web browser for those few people who absolutely prefer Outlook. Chat was a new addition to our communication tools and was instantly embraced by our personnel as a means of communication.

Starting in January 2010, we began a concerted effort to expose our staff to the features of Google Docs, Groups, and Sites. For instance, our Parks and Recreation department uses Google Docs to share rosters and schedules with coaches and players involved in city sports leagues, providing for streamlined updates and easy access for both staff and participants. Our training coordinator offers on-site as well as classroom sessions exploring the features of Google Apps. We've also been sending out short "Didja Know" communications several times a month to highlight new or particularly useful features.

Several city departments have begun experimenting with Google Sites to create websites that will be linked to as part of our intranet. The Police Department created an extensive website that even features various training videos, which will be shared and included in the city's official website. The Information Technology Department uses a Google Site as a technical reference wiki, compiling How-Tos, troubleshooting, notes, and other relevant information on the City's computing systems.

Earlier this year, Wooster became a trusted tester for Google Apps for Government. Having an edition for the use of only government customers provides us with added assurance that the data used in serving our citizens is well-protected. Google Apps receiving FISMA certification demonstrates Google's commitment to maintaining top-of-the-line data safeguards. For the City of Wooster, Google Apps for Government is a welcome enhancement to an already compelling product that adds increased value to our efforts to serve the citizens of our fair city.

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government team

Supporting the U.S. Navy’s humanitarian mission with Google Apps

Editor’s Note: We’ve invited U.S. Navy Captain Douglas Wied to share the story of how Google Apps is being used to improve coordination in disaster relief efforts. Captain Wied currently leads the Navy’s effort to develop and foster Non-Classified data sharing among the U.S. and its many international partners focused on improving regional maritime security.

The United States Navy’s Maritime Domain Awareness program focuses on improving maritime security around the world. As part of this initiative, the U.S. collaborates with international governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to increase maritime security capabilities in different regions in order to prevent threats like piracy and terrorism, as well as to respond to natural disasters.

Sharing information is critical to maritime security. And most of this information is public – or sensitive but unclassified, as the government calls it. In summer 2008, we began InRelief to improve our collaboration capabilities using Google Apps. InRelief supports the Navy’s humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission. We use email, chat, shared documents, calendars, sites, and other Google applications to support our information sharing needs.

Previously, on U.S. Navy ships, the unclassified network was a U.S. network only, so NGOs or foreign governments could not access it. We set up a Non-Classified Enclave (NCE) as a way to give our partners access. The NCE is a network of virtualized servers located in Miami, Florida that provide secure connectivity. InRelief is basically a cloud-based implementation of NCE.

Our team saw several advantages to building InRelief on Google Apps, including security, scalability, reliability, and other powerful features we didn’t have to build ourselves. As part of the military, gaining familiarity the security controls of Google Apps was of critical importance. Our security team met with Google’s team and went through in detail how Google implements security. We came away with the understanding that Google Apps is very secure. The fact we’re hosted on a FISMA-certified environment allows our team increased flexibility and assurance when collaborating and sharing unclassified but sensitive content and documents.

In the event of a major crisis when we would need a lot of accounts for a short period of time, Google Apps lets us scale easily to as many users as necessary. We can turn them off again when we no longer need them. That’s a tremendous asset. It would be really tough – and not cost-effective – to resource a system ourselves that could scale up and down like this.

As for reliability, with Google Apps data is replicated in multiple data centers, so we can be assured we’ll have access to our data. Having a single point of failure is a constant challenge with other systems. Particularly when dealing with disasters, knowing the system will be available is a big plus.

Some of the built-in features of Google Apps were critical to our needs. For example, real-time collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations supports crisis response planning efforts using multiple personnel who are geographically dispersed. Also, real-time translation in chat can be extremely helpful when we’re trying to coordinate efforts with a coalition of people who speak multiple languages.

Another issue we are always concerned about is the training requirements new tools impose on our users. With InRelief, we can give an account to a foreign government representative or NGO and it doesn’t take much time for them to get started. Earlier this year, we put Google Apps to test in coordinating a response to the Haiti earthquake. When the Haiti effort kicked off, our team was dispersed. We used the Google collaboration tools – email, chat and shared documents – to get things moving. Even the remote team members could review and contribute to the team’s work. Half the people in the group hadn’t used Apps before our efforts got underway – they just did it, with no learning curve. Our team is currently using the same capabilities to support relief efforts for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Finally, the concern for developing cost-effective solutions that maximize the benefits of tax dollars spent, our overall costs were hundreds of thousands versus millions of dollars; a significant savings when compared to what we spend to host traditional stovepipe type systems requiring network connectivity, software, hardware, system administrators, information assurance testing, and certification & accreditation.

With InRelief.org, we have a collaborative environment easily accessible with a secure and reliable infrastructure that allows us to respond rapidly to crisis.

– Captain Douglas C. Wied, Assistant Program Manager

Non-Classified Enclave, U.S. Navy

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Enterprise team

Google Apps for Government

Last September, we announced our intent to create a Google Apps environment dedicated to our government customers, and to complete United States government security certification for Google Apps. Today, we’re delivering on both.

Today, we’re pleased to introduce a new edition of Google Apps designed specifically for the needs of U.S. government entities. It’s called – appropriately enough – Google Apps for Government. This new edition is available now to federal, state and local governments in the United States.

Google Apps is also the first suite of cloud computing applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification from the U.S. government. With this federal government certification of our security controls, government agencies can use our cloud services with confidence.

A wide range of U.S. government customers are already taking advantage of Google Apps, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab to the U.S. Navy’s InRelief program, to the City of Los Angeles, to smaller governments across the country like Panama City, Florida and the City of Wooster, Ohio.

You can learn more about how U.S. Government customers can benefit from this new edition in today’s Official Google Blog post.

– Kripa Krishnan, Technical Program Manager, Google Apps for Government

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Enterprise team

Preparing for emergencies with Google Earth Enterprise

Editor’s Note: Brant Mitchell is Associate Deputy Director of the State of Louisiana Department of Homeland Security. The state of Louisiana Department of Homeland Security is a Google Earth Enterprise customer that leverages Google Earth Enterprise for emergency preparedness and now becomes the first Google Earth Enterprise customer to create a Google Earth Enterprise globe specifically for the public.

For the last three years the State of Louisiana has provided our first responder community a secured access to Federal, State and local geospatial data and high resolution imagery of Louisiana through a Google Earth Enterprise client. In preparation of hurricane season, Louisiana is pleased to announce that we have launched the first public version of a Google Earth Enterprise platform.

Louisiana Earth was released as part of the state's "Get a Game Plan" campaign, to assist citizens in creating evacuation plans by providing access to all of the states evacuation routes, sheltering points historical hazard data and other information that is essential during an evacuation such as locations of and available occupancy of hotels, gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores, veterinary clinics and banks.

Louisiana Earth will also serve as a mechanism to relay critical data during disasters to help inform the public on the status of response and recovery efforts. Using the Deepwater Horizon Rig incident as an example, there is existing data that Louisiana is making available which includes the latest oil sightings from aerial observations, oyster bed closures, as well as critical environmental data such as bird nesting areas.

During hurricanes and other natural disasters, Louisiana will be able to provide information such as the location of points of distribution (PODs), food stamp offices, unemployment claims offices, disaster recovery centers as well as the status of parishes' power outages as an example.

Finally, while the primary purpose is to utilize Louisiana Earth as a mechanism to provide critical data during emergencies, it will also be utilized to promote Louisiana. We will constantly be adding data that the public can use to take advantage of the many activities and events, such as festivals, that are available in Louisiana.

Louisiana Earth already has information on all of the state parks which consists of lodging accommodations, hiking trails, and camping sites. Historical data and cultural events will also be included and will continue to be updated.

To access Louisiana Earth, go to laearth.la.gov.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps team

BlueSpace and Google Earth Enterprise: taking visualization to the skies

Editor's Note: Justin Marston is the CEO of BlueSpace, an enterprise software company focused on the defense and intelligence communities. BlueSpace has built a next generation command and control application using their security middleware and Google Earth Enterprise. They are currently showcasing it as part of the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (an international "war game" exercise) with support from a government agency. The BlueSpace app showcases just how far you can take Google Earth Enterprise as a visualization environment.

Geospatial visualization of multiple streams of data has been critical to the defense and intelligence communities for a long time. Whether it’s showing aircraft flying around, soldiers taking a hill or different types of intelligence – seeing it on a map has been key to understanding a conflict.

In the second World War, the allies used maps with little models to show units, and moved them with poles to update their locations. With modern radar and GPS systems, things are a bit more sophisticated, but much of the mapping functionality has lagged behind. Many of the currently deployed command and control (C2) systems use flat, two-color vector maps with triangles showing units.

Visualization of AWACS plane in Google Earth

BlueSpace and AWACS

Before BlueSpace engaged them, AWACS was already actively working with 3D visualization. AWACS is the US Air Force Airborne Warning and Control System: a forward deployed radar platform (the planes with big spinning discs on top). The vision of the AWACS program has been to move away from a black screen with green triangles on it, and move towards a more visually rich C2 environment for operators that can show the terrain in which they are working.

How has BlueSpace helped? Well, we have focused on two problems – high quality, real-time visualizations and creating a Unified Operating Picture.

High Quality, Real-time Visualizations

The first problem is creating a much more "real" view of the battle theater, with 3D models moving around in real-time based on input data feeds giving latitude and longitude references for units. Our design goal was to create something more like a real-time video game using Google Earth's richness of graphics and capabilities.

BlueSpace is demonstrating its Multi-Level Security Command and Control (MLS C2) application at 5 different locations for the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (CWID), a joint exercise between the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NATO (among others) to help find and prove technologies and systems that can help better orchestrate coalition warfare. For the exercise, BlueSpace worked with its partners to model around 100 units including aircraft, ground units and boats and of these units move around in real-time based on data feeds being fed to the application.

You can take a look at some of the interface, captured from Google Earth in this unclassified video: http://www.bluespace.com/mlsc2.html

A Unified Operating Picture

Wars used to be fought by relatively small numbers of allies, with each nation focused on a particular theater. As warfare has evolved over the last two decades, the reach of aircraft, missiles, satellites etc. have blurred lines between the different services and often between nations.

MLS C2 User Interface using Google Earth Enterprise

for geospatial visualization of ground, air and sea units

Right now, the NATO configuration of the AWACS planes can have up to 14 different screens on each AWACS aircraft – one for the US aircraft, one for the British, one for the Canadian, one for the German, etc. So when something new comes up on radar, operators may have to look at up to 14 screens to figure out what is going on.

BlueSpace has taken these separate pictures and consolidated them into a single Unified Operating Picture (UOP) that spans all the different networks, providing one Google Earth environment, with all the units in that environment, no matter which nation or service they serve. This means an operator on an AWACS plane only has to look at one screen to see what is happening – a vast improvement.

Google Earth's extensive capabilities allow an operator to fully utilize this unified operating picture to see terrain, roads, etc. in their relation to the plotted units. In addition, Google Earth's full camera controls provide the viewing flexibility necessary to interact with those units.

BlueSpace and Google

We see a great future for Google Earth Enterprise in our C2 system. Being able to see the helicopter, visually recognize its type immediately and see which mountains are next to it when the pilot calls in, “I’m taking fire from the ridge on the left” makes a big difference in a real fight. Doing all of that across many different security domains in a Unified Operating Picture that spans multiple networks – that’s a game changing capability.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth Enterprise team

The City of Los Angeles on Going Google

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Kevin Crawford, Assistant General Manager for the City of Los Angeles Information Technology Agency. Kevin was part of a team of technology executives that chose Google Apps six months ago to support the city's 30,000+ employees and 44 different departments, from police and fire to transportation and more. In the past, Kevin has served as CIO of Sound Transit, senior manager of IT infrastructure at Port of Seattle, and support manager at Weyerhauser. Kevin shares his thoughts about how the US's second largest city has gone Google in perhaps one of the most-watched technology deployments in recent memory. This post is a follow-up to the initial blog post on the City of LA from Randi Levin, CTO.

Kevin will speak at a live webcast this Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 2:00 PM (EDT) | 11:00 AM (PDT) Register today.

The City of Los Angeles currently faces a $400 million deficit, but from a technology standpoint, we still have to provide advanced tools to 30,000+ employees and 44 different departments – technology is vital to the inner workings of the city. Running a city of this size requires people to work together, from designing and operating public facilities to policing the streets.

At the city’s Information Technology Agency (ITA), we are responsible for managing all of the City's enterprise applications – including email. Up until about six months ago, we had an aging, on-premise email system. Our Novell Groupwise system didn't work on some mobile devices and we had to enforce inbox space quotas that City employees found limiting.

In addition to providing better collaboration tools and remote access, we also needed archiving and disaster recovery capabilities to safeguard information. Disaster recovery precautions are especially important in this part of the world where earthquakes are not a question of if, but when.

We looked at 15 different proposals and went through extensive due diligence, finally gaining the City Council's unanimous buy-in with a 12-0 vote in favor of a proposal from Google and CSC. We found that Google Apps provided the richest, most cost-effective and efficient communication solutions. That was six months ago. Since then, we've worked with CSC to implement Google Apps City-wide.

By ITA estimates, Google Apps is saving Los Angeles $5.5 million over five years by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google has freed up nearly 100 servers that were previously used for our existing email system, which in turn – an unanticipated benefit – is lowering our electricity bills by hundreds of thousands over five years. Los Angeles found Google's system availability of 99.9% and service levels for response in the event of an issue to be equivalent – if not better – to what we could provide ourselves. In short, this decision to go Google helps us safeguard information and get the most out of the city's IT budget.



Because we are such a large government organization, people are eager to hear how our deployment is going. We also built a Google Site to help us easily provide updates on the process and gather input from our user base. We'd be pleased to discuss the progress we've made in the six months since we unanimously decided to go to Google Apps. Please join me for an interactive webinar!

On switching 30,000 Employees to Google Apps
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Time: 2:00 PM (EDT) | 11:00 AM (PDT)


Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps Team

Do you have an informative and fun Google Apps story to share? Please submit it here.

Google at Gov 2.0

The Google Enterprise team is excited to be taking part in this week's Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, DC. From today through Thursday, the Gov 2.0 Expo brings together government and industry leaders from across the nation to discuss transformative technologies that can help support the mission of governments everywhere.

We're particularly excited that Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, and Randi Levin, the Chief Technology Officer for the City of Los Angeles, will be sharing the stage for this event’s keynote. Titled "Cloud Computing Services: Finding a Solution for Over Budget, Understaffed Agencies,” this conversation, moderated by conference chair Tim O'Reilly, will explore Los Angeles’ decision to move to the cloud and adopt Google Apps – and what’s happened since.

If you’ll be at Gov 2.0, watch for Dave and Randi on the main stage at 8:50 a.m. EDT. Afterwards, stop by the Google booth to learn more about how Google Apps is helping government agencies of all sizes provide secure, modern collaboration tools to their employees, while at the same time allowing them to realize significant cost savings.

If you can't be at Gov 2.0 in person, we invite you to tune in live to Dave and Randi's presentation on the Gov 2.0 site (note: online registration required). Watch this space for more about Google Apps and the work we're doing with our government customers.

Posted by Dan Israel, Public Sector Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

Getting public opinion on the cloud

We’ve seen quite a few state and local governments make the switch to Google Apps in recent months. Cities from Orlando to Los Angeles, state agencies in Kansas and New Mexico, and an ever-increasing number of counties across the country have all gone Google. These agencies have found making the move to Google a great way to cut costs ⚊ a top priority in these days of budget shortfalls ⚊ and to gain capabilities like seamless collaboration, “anywhere” access, and other benefits of cloud computing.

We were curious to find out what people across the country think about their local government’s adoption of new technologies, so we asked the Clarus Research Group, a non-partisan survey research firm based in DC, to poll 1,000 U.S. voters nationally to get their opinion on government technology issues.

The results are out today, and they show that 92% of U.S. voters believe “public agencies should make better use of new technologies to cut government spending and improve efficiency.”

That’s certainly how we feel here at Google, and we’re glad that a clear majority of polled voters also appreciate the need to invest in 21st century technology in the public sector.

The results also show people think email is a great place to start. When given a list of different technologies that could make a difference, three-quarters of those polled thought that “quicker and more efficient email systems” would make government workers more productive. Google email is fast and reliable ⚊ providing 99.9% uptime, and access from any computer or mobile device to allow government employees to be productive anytime, anywhere.

Government employees everywhere are getting more efficiency for less money with Google Apps. Bigger email inboxes and collaboration tools like video chat and shared documents are just a few of the tools within Apps that can make public employees more productive and collaborative.

Government IT staffs benefit from Google’s expert security team and processes, best-in-class disaster recovery at no additional cost, and a dramatic reduction in time and dollars spent maintaining and patching software & hardware. That is time and money that can be dedicated to more strategic priorities.

If you work for a local government agency, we’d like to hear from you. If you’re an interested citizen who’s part of the 92%, then ask your elected officials to take a serious look at new ways of computing that can cut costs while increasing capabilities. You can even point them to this website. You’ll be doing your part to equip your local officials with better tools to do their jobs, while saving (your) taxpayer dollars. It’s a win-win.

Posted by Dan Israel, Public Sector Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

State Library of Kansas in Topeka goes Google

Editor's Note: Today's guest blogger is Patti Butcher, Director of Statewide Resource Sharing for the State Library of Kansas in Topeka, Kansas. She received her MLS from Emporia State University in 1993. In addition to her current position she previously worked at the Central KS Library System, Northeast KS Library System, and has served as the State Librarian of South Carolina.

Last week, on April 1, the same day that Google re-named itself "Topeka," the State Library of Kansas (SLK) decided to "go Google" and switch our agency's email to Google Apps. But, unlike Google, we weren't fooling around!

The State Library of Kansas provides on-site and online information services for state government, the Legislature, all Kansas libraries and Kansas residents. We also work closely with seven regional library systems geographically distributed throughout our state. We have a large collection of print and audiobooks, plus state and federal documents. We manage a suite of online resources available 24/7 to all Kansans – from databases and digital books to online tutoring and services for the visually impaired.

Google Apps will provide the library’s staff with Gmail, calendar, video chat, real-time document and video sharing, backups, and additional services such as archiving powered by Postini. It will, for the first time, allow the agency’s multiple locations to have a staff intranet using Google Sites and join together teams that were previously separated by several firewalls.

The State Library relies heavily on technology so this chance to modernize our communications and collaboration systems is a welcome one. We switched to Google Apps for many reasons:

• Substantial cost savings
• Hosting by a trusted third party
• Archiving and backups happening continuously in the cloud
• 99.9% uptime, guaranteed
• Strong recommendations from staff at the Northeast Kansas Library System, which made the switch last year

Now SLK’s IT staff will be able to focus on internal staff training needs and upgrading all of our technology systems – rather than on server maintenance. As we deploy Google Apps in the coming weeks, we will first be training our management team who will then work 1-on-1 with all staff to ensure that questions are answered and staff are comfortable with the new products and services. A number of State Library staff already have Gmail accounts and are familiar with its functionality.

Staff members are also interested in Google Apps capabilities beyond Gmail – like Google Groups and Google Docs. Our staff is eager to take advantage of the capabilities of Google Apps!

Staff from SLK will be at the Kansas Library Association conference in Wichita beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, April 7, and encourage anyone interested in Google Apps to seek us out.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps Team

Do you have an informative and fun Google Apps story to share? Please submit it here.

City of Orlando: cutting costs while advancing our infrastructure in just two months

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Conrad Cross, CIO of the City of Orlando, Florida. In November, the city announced it had Gone Google. Last month Orlando became one of the first cities in America to switch all of its employees to Gmail. Cross has been CIO at the City of Orlando since December of 1999 and has been leading the Google Apps deployment that took only two months and is resulting in more than 60% savings.

Join Conrad for a live webcast on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT. He'll talk about moving 3,000 city employees to Google Apps. Please note that registration will occur on a third party site.

Like many city departments, the City of Orlando is facing an aging infrastructure juxtaposed with budget cuts and high demand for more advanced infrastructure services such as mobile access to email. We were using a Lotus Notes® email system and paying for numerous servers in City Hall, so we needed to find a different way of doing business.

This situation was all exacerbated by the fact that our IT department was recently whittled down from 84 workers to 69 this year. We determined after analyzing Google Apps that we could achieve significant savings and move into the cloud very quickly.

If we were to keep our current system, we estimated it would cost $133 a year for each of its 3,000 employees – or $399,000 including annual software licenses. Google charges $50 per user, or $150,000 delivering more than 60% in savings. In return, everyone from city planners to police officers will now use a web-based email system similar to Google's popular Gmail, but without the advertisements that support the free consumer version.

Google servers will store all city email and run the application, and Google technicians in Google data centers will make sure it runs smoothly. Google will also help us more securely host records such as sensitive law-enforcement and legal documents by mustering greater resources and expertise than we could on our own.

After considering the cost and feature advantages, we made the decision to move to Google Apps. We were able to move to Google Apps in less than 60 days, a major accomplishment. When the mayor cornered me in the hallway, I was nervous – but then he told me how excited and supportive he was about the switch. We're now on board with Google Apps and we don't have to worry about constant upgrades or implementing new innovations, and the cost-savings we're achieving are impressive.

My message for other city governments is: do the analysis and determine what your costs are. If the savings are compelling, then move quickly - you'll see the move into the cloud is relatively fast and painless—and ultimately very cost-effective.

We’re eager to share our experiences about the nuances involving our transition to Google Apps, including what the main concerns were across the city in making the move and how we address them.

Please join us for this live event:

City of Orlando Cuts Costs by Over 66% by Moving Email and Apps into the Cloud
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino®.

Why the City of Los Angeles chose Google

Editor's Note: In October, the City of Los Angeles – the second largest city in the United States – decided to switch its email to Google, a decision supported in a unanimous vote by the Los Angeles City Council. We've invited Randi Levin, Chief Technology Officer for the City of Los Angeles and general manager of the city's Information Technology Agency, to provide more insight into the reasons behind this decision.

Los Angeles is going Google. After a rigorous evaluation process to select the best email solution for the city, Los Angeles recently decided to move all 30,000 city employees to Google Apps from our existing GroupWise email system.

City employees fulfill a range of important functions – from policing our streets to supplying water and power to city residents and businesses, and from operating our libraries to designing and building wastewater treatment plants and other public facilities. We want to provide all these employees with modern tools that help them do their jobs. Some of the benefits our employees will see from the suite of Google applications include:

• Improved collaboration. Much of the city's work requires multiple people – even multiple departments – to work together. With instant messaging, video conferencing, and simultaneous review and editing of documents by multiple people, employees will have better tools to work together on projects.

• Easier remote access. In a fast-paced city government, people often need access to work information when they're not at work. With Google, employees will be able to access their information from any computer with an internet connection, as well as from their mobile phones.

• Expanded storage. With Google, we can provide employees 25x the email storage they have today, saving them from having to make difficult decisions about which emails to keep or delete.

In addition to empowering employees across the city, everyone will benefit from Google's security controls, which will provide a higher level of security for City data than exists with our current system.

Google Apps will also help conserve resources in the city's Information & Technology Agency (ITA), which is responsible for researching, testing & implementing new technologies in ways that make Los Angeles a better place to live, work and play. Because the email and other applications are hosted and maintained by Google, ITA employees who previously were responsible for maintaining our email system can be freed up to work on projects that are central to making the city run.

By ITA estimates, Google Apps will save the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city's IT budget.

The decision to move to Google Apps was not taken lightly. The city issued a request for proposals and received 15 proposals, which were evaluated by city officials. The top four proposals were invited to give oral presentations, with CSC's proposal for Google Apps receiving the highest marks. This decision was reviewed and discussed by the Los Angeles City Council which, after a healthy debate, voted unanimously to move forward with Google Apps.

Learn more about this installation here:



Many other government agencies across California and around the country have already reached out to us to learn more. In addition to the benefits mentioned above, Los Angeles found Google's system availability of 99.9% and service levels for response in the event of an issue to be equivalent – if not better – to what we could provide ourselves. Together with the cost savings, it all adds up to a compelling argument for government agencies both small and large.

We still have work ahead of us, but we're excited to be moving forward with Google and CSC to bring state of the art email and collaboration tools to the employees of the City of Los Angeles.

Randi Levin, Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Enterprise team