Thursday, January 5, 2012

Googland

Googland

[G] New year, new start for the City of Pittsburgh

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 04:42 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: New year, new start for the City of Pittsburgh


Posted by Luke Ravenstahl, Mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Editors note: Today Mayor Ravenstahl is announcing that almost 3,000 city employees just started using Google Apps for Government.

People love to work and live in Pittsburgh. It's ranked America's "Most Livable City" year after year due to a low, and decreasing, crime rate, a burgeoning arts and cultural scene, and an affordable cost of living that offers families the nation's largest scholarship program for public school students. Pittsburgh also has a humming high-tech economy that builds off of our manufacturing past. To keep our city at the forefront of innovation, my administration adopts the latest technology applications that modernize our government, while cutting costs and improving our daily operations.

I am pleased to announce that in about four months we successfully retired our Microsoft Exchange 2003 email system and moved almost all 3,000 city employees to Google Apps for Government. This move will save us 25 percent or more in annual email support costs and allow us to deliver better services to our residents. Our employees are working more efficiently because they have 500 times more email storage and no longer need to waste time emptying their inboxes. We're also able to capture and index all employees' email and attachments in one centralized and searchable repository, which helps us meet e-discovery needs much more efficiently.

Since 40 percent of our employees already have personal Gmail accounts, the migration went smoothly with the help of Google implementation partner, Daston Corporation. Our employees are excited to collaborate on a single document simultaneously, and participate in video chats with each other no matter where we are. My staff is better able to address the needs of community members by creating a shared document that outlines neighborhood needs and tasks that all can reference and update.

We are also enhancing the security of our data while saving money. Our data now lives in a datacenter environment dedicated to US government entities that has been through the federal government's FISMA certification process. "While the city still retains full ownership of our data, we can count on Google for data safety and security," said CIO Howard A. Stern, Ph.D. who spearheaded the transition."Our data is more secure with Google than with the previous system."

We're grateful for Google's commitment to the tech sector in Pittsburgh, and we're proud to be using Google Apps in city government. As we kick off the New Year in the "cloud," we look forward to exploring more ways to improve collaboration and productivity with Google Apps. We believe that this transition will help keep the City innovative.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-year-new-start-for-city-of.html

[G] NOAA moves 25,000 to Google Apps

Posted: 05 Jan 2012 04:42 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: NOAA moves 25,000 to Google Apps

Posted by Kennith Jackson, Deployment Manager, Google Apps

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is ringing in the new year with a new email and collaboration system for its 25,000 employees, contractors and associates. They have all successfully moved to Google Apps for Government, making NOAA the largest federal agency to complete the switch to cloud-based email and collaboration tools.

NOAA employees work with the latest technologies like environmental monitoring satellites and high-tech weather forecasting tools. Now, they have cutting-edge email and collaboration tools to match.

According to NOAA CIO Joseph Klimavicz, the speed and ease of moving to Google Apps was an important factor in the agency's decision to select Google. Moving 25,000 people to a new system is no small task. To move a group this size to a unified email platform in just six months is a remarkable achievement.

The rapid deployment resulted from a well-coordinated effort by NOAA employees, prime contractor ERT Inc., and Google partners Unisys and Tempus Nova. NOAA issued a request for proposals in January 2011 and made the award to ERT in June. The team put in place an aggressive schedule to have the system implemented by December and delivered on the plan. NOAA staff now have a set of modern tools like instant messaging, video chat, and real-time, multi-user document collaboration to help the people of NOAA work together more effectively. What's more, NOAA estimates the cost to the taxpayer is approximately 50% less than developing a solution in-house.

With operations around the nation, in the air and on the sea, NOAA needed applications that work anywhere without the hassle of managing hardware in all these locations. Many members of the workforce spend time outside the office collecting data on weather, climate, oceans, and coasts. As a result, access to work information on mobile devices is critical. Google Apps allows NOAA's scientists and staff to get their email and other information wherever their work may take them.

We welcome NOAA as the latest -- and largest -- in a string of government agencies from Wyoming to the General Services Administration to Des Moines, Iowa that switched to Google Apps in 2011. We look forward to welcoming many others in 2012.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/01/noaa-moves-25000-to-google-apps.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)