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Bridging the Digital Divide for Government

image overlooking the city and representing the digital divide for government

A Pivotal Moment in History

In 2020 and the start of a global pandemic, we found ourselves in a pivotal moment in time that accelerated the burden for reliable, affordable, and fast internet connectivity for everyone – personally and professionally. We shifted our lives to distance learning, video chats with family, and telehealth medical appointments. While maintaining our personal life, business still needed to move forward.

People everywhere set up home office internet connections for emails, collaboration, business processes, and of course, countless Zoom calls. Businesses shifted their in-person services to online customer interactions, curbside pickup, and even added delivery for home, medicine, and grocery essentials. When you take a moment to reflect on the mountains we moved as citizens, business owners, and government agencies, it’s very impressive what we can achieve when innovation is needed.

This pivotal moment was a far different reality for millions across the United States, and it’s not over yet. Many citizens and communities were stranded by inadequate or unaffordable access to internet connectivity and devices.

The change of pace to solve the digital divide in wireless and wireline communication infrastructure brings renewed energy to businesses and government services. While we work swiftly to bridge the gap, we must prepare for what happens immediately after access to the internet connectivity and devices becomes available for all. Gone are the days of traveling to city hall or the state office to complete applications or find the status of your inquiry.

What is that next step, and how do we prepare? Create long-term information infrastructure for future city leaders by investing in technologies as a platform for modernization.

I want us to ask ourselves every day, "How are we using technology to make a real difference in people's lives?"

Progression Toward the Digital Transformation for Governments

Steps to Take to Digitize In-Person Services

Fulfill the government’s commitment to driving innovative citizen services with scalable and secure solutions:

Collect data digitally.

Eliminate paper forms to provide staff and constituents with a better experience. Get more accurate data through standardization. Use a template from our pre-built library to get you up and running fast.

Automate everyday tasks.

Quickly route data from digitized forms, and speed up approvals to better serve constituents.

Collaborate and centralize content.

Transform the way you work with cost-effective and transparent solutions that enables a collaborative workforce through streamlined communication, simultaneous document editing, and robust search capabilities in a centralized document repository.

Simplify reporting and archiving.

Leaving a digital trail comes has its benefits. Need to know the volume of different services requested? No problem! Need a rock-solid audit trail for any particular request? That is easy! Need to archive the interaction and apply for access permissions? Yep, we got this too. And all without having a room full of filing cabinets.

Are you ready to begin your modernization journey? Check out our blog about technology modernization projects for a few questions to get you started.
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