The City of Dearborn, Michigan, has partnered with Google in a multi-faceted project to modernize the city’s IT and data infrastructure with the goal of better serving citizens in their own language online, 24 hours a day. As part of this initiative, they engaged Resultant to migrate 1,600 city workers over to a Google Workspace environment.
When legacy systems impede collaboration
Dearborn’s city employees relied upon a very basic version of a system that was over 20 years old. Despite innovative workarounds, they were impeded by these obstacles to collaboration:
Files were difficult to share between and within heavily siloed departments.
- The fire and police departments couldn’t work together on overlapping cases or share intelligence easily due to multiple isolated, outdated processes.
- A limited number of Zoom licenses made it hard for all but a select few to have video conferences.
- 300 city workers had never had a work email address.
On top of all that, many city employees had been finding ways to work within the limitations of this outdated system for many years, and around half of them speak a language other than English at home. The city and Resultant therefore prioritized training and support to facilitate and promote user adoption.
Expert training ensures a smooth transition to Google Workspace
Organizations undergoing any kind of digital transformation must evaluate and address their end users for successful change management. That’s why we used engagement sessions and surveys to look at the level of user technology experience, primary language, length of time in the job, processes and workflows for each specific role, and individual concerns.
That discovery showed where and how to direct our communication and training. In addition to targeted training, we implemented these steps:
- Provided city workers access to live and on-demand training in advance of the go-live date.
- Went on-site for the go-live to work with users and ensure support for their success.
- Spent three days in Dearborn meeting people and getting a clear picture of their jobs to help them find solutions in this new technology realm.
- Created customized digital assets and guides accessible to all current and future users.
Dearborn: A technology model for American cities
Mayor Abdullah Hammoud’s initiative to partner with Google and Resultant to modernize city government shows foresight and a deep understanding of his constituents. Other cities considering agency modernization or other projects can find value in the work done in Dearborn.
The city’s 1,600 employees have secure, cloud-based tools that streamline their work and allow them to collaborate easily to create more digital processes that will provide more services to the city’s citizens online with ease.
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