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Boosting Resilience: Cloud Solutions for Modern Government
Presented by
Tyler Technologies
Presented by
Tyler Technologies
Local communities and the agencies that serve them face increasingly complex disruptions, including natural disasters, security threats, and economic uncertainty. As agencies work to increase resilience, they must reexamine and strengthen processes and systems. Along the way, they often confront the limitations of traditional on-premises digital infrastructure — such as geographic risk, high costs, and technical debt.
Here are some insights on how cloud-based solutions address these challenges as well as some best practices for improving resilience.
Cloud Infrastructure vs. On-Premises Systems
On-premises systems had a long and productive run in government technology but have inherent downsides today. Many agencies don’t have the budget required to develop and maintain on-premises systems with in-house technology staff. Those that do still face the challenge of geography. When systems are limited to one geographic location, any disruption or downtime can immediately impact staff and residents. Another significant issue is the complexity of managing vendor systems and trying to find the root causes of any issues that occur.
The public cloud simplifies all that, partly due to the hyperscale available. Within a given availability zone, there may be one or more physical data centers, with more isolated centers in adjacent zones and still more available across the country. This capacity provides unmatched flexibility and failover options. Systems can scale as needed. Downtime is reduced or all but eliminated. In addition, agencies only pay for what they are using and can customize that based on application priority, demand load, and other factors. Cloud-based solutions support more flexible cost models and the digital availability residents expect.
Organizational Security and Risk Management
Organizational security — especially the threat of ransomware — continues to be a top concern for agency leaders. Cloud-based solutions provide the ability to protect systems through network segmentation, identity access management, and through account segregation. Systems can be kept segmented and accessed independently in the event of a security incident. Risk management begins with identifying and prioritizing threats and then using all the tools in the cloud to deploy appropriate systems. Establishing testing routines that include tabletop exercises and other techniques is important. IT teams should play out disruption scenarios and how they would respond. It’s recommended that resiliency DR-type tests are performed quarterly. In settings with many critical systems, agencies can do sample-sized testing and analysis instead.
Agencies must also ensure they know all the underlying dependencies between systems. It is vital to identify shared services as well as interconnected data and APIs. Planning and testing should include everything so that problems with one system don’t expand unexpectedly.
Strategic Planning and Technical Debt Reduction
Effective strategies to increase resilience begin when agencies identify the most critical services they provide and the threats to them. What could seriously impact and affect the output of the agency and the residents in the community? Start there and then work down the list through lower-priority services. Document everything.
Another best practice is to identify technical debt, such as areas where existing systems require workarounds or lack features the agency needs. Technical debt can also exist due to the knowledge gaps created when staff retire or due to aging hardware that is difficult to support and susceptible to frequent outages.
Cloud(y) With Increasing Resilience
Building resilience in government technology includes proactively identifying risks, reducing technical debt, and designing systems that can adapt as needs evolve. Cloud-based solutions empower agencies to develop stronger defenses, gain the flexibility to adapt, recover faster, and keep critical systems running.
Tyler Technologies is committed to providing cloud solutions and expertise that helps governments build long-term resilience and prepare for the unexpected.
About the Author
Russell Gainford
Russell Gainford is the chief technology officer at Tyler Technologies, where he leads cloud development, operations, and deployment strategy. His work helps clients strengthen resilience and deliver secure, scalable services to the public through modern, cloud-based infrastructure.
This content is made possible by our sponsor; it is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Route Fifty's editorial staff.
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