Local governments have long used information technology to capture and automate their business processes such as planning, permitting and code enforcement, however the complexity and cost of on-premise software often hinders jurisdictions’ ability to make use of this technology. The advent of the Internet as a delivery mechanism for a host of applications, now dubbed Web 2.0, allows local government to implement software solutions without a complex technology infrastructure – in fact, there is no hardware or software installation required.

Web 2.0, also called SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or On-Demand, refers to web-based applications available on a subscription basis. These applications combine the functionality and configurability of on-premise solutions with the flexibility and ease-of-use of a web application.

While your department may not have used a SaaS application - yet - chances are you have used one or more of these types of applications in your personal life.  The number of online services now available is astounding, encompassing everything from banking and brokerage to education and events.

Two of the most well known SaaS applications are Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Wikipedia (www.wikipedia). With 34 million members, Facebook, is the 7th most visited site in the US. A permission-based social networking site, Facebook provides an unparalleled opportunity for you to enter information about yourself and to view information about your friends – but restricts this information to an approved list of friends.

Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, boasts 8.2 million articles in 253 languages for a combined total of over 1.41 billion words on all Wikipedia sites.  Wikipedia's articles are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the majority are editable by anyone with access to the Internet. It has seen a steady rise in popularity since its inception and currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.

Local government has not been as quick to adopt SaaS applications as the private sector for a variety of reasons:

• They typically utilize complex processes – Paying bills online or transferring money between accounts are much simpler transactions than issuing a building permit or approving a new subdivision.
• Data Requirements – Government departments can have very complex and unique data requirements and typically have decades of historical data in one form or another.
• Customization Requirements – There are typically unique and specific requirements that must be implemented and changed easily over time.
• Integration Requirements – Applications must typically share information with other applications such as GIS.
• There is concern about security, control and ownership of information – Government often manages private, sometimes sensitive information, and there is a perception that if the data is stored outside of the internal network that it is more susceptible to being disclosed.
• Applications are not available for government – Without SaaS applications that can assist government programs, it is difficult to know where to start.
• Government is a conservative sector – New technologies are seen as risky, and risk avoidance is high in government to minimize the potential for loss of the public trust.
• This is compounded by a number of myths that surround local governments’ concerns and prevent them from taking advantage of the many benefits of SaaS applications.

Myth #1: Web-based applications are not as secure as an application installed on my internal network.
Truth: Your agency most probably cannot afford the high level of security offered by the top SaaS providers, from both a physical and logical security point of view.  Because of their tremendous economies of scale, SaaS providers are able to address security requirements in ways that far exceed the ability of IT sections within most organizations.  An audit standard referred to as SAS 70 Type II certification identifies SaaS vendors whose stringent security policies have been reviewed and verified by an independent auditor.  In truth, your data and applications are typically much more secure than if located on an internal network.

Myth #2: Web-based applications don't offer me the access or control over my information that I could get using an on-premise application.
Truth: SaaS vendors understand quite clearly the dividing line between their service (their technology, applications, hosting infrastructure, etc.) and your organization’s data.  You own your data, and are typically provided with tools that provide immediate access to any or all of the data.  Some vendors will periodically take an entire snapshot of your data to provide to you with a backup.  And due to a number of inherent aspects of SaaS offerings such a multi-tenancy (everyone uses one and only one version of the software) and world class server infrastructure (redundancy, fault tolerance, load balancing and even geographically remote redundant data centers), there is almost no downtime.

Myth #3: SaaS offerings are not cost-effective because you have to pay the subscription each and every month.
Truth: While traditional on-premise applications are typically licensed, and once the license fee is paid you "own" that version of the software, there is an ongoing cost to on-premise software.  Many have a software maintenance fee that is as high as 30% of the original purchase price and a new version of the software will likely need to be purchased in 3 to 5 years.  But more importantly, are the costs that are not always considered, such as:

• Implementation Costs (data conversion, custom programming, project management)
• Third party software costs (operating systems, database licenses, workstation licenses)
• Hardware costs (servers, workstations, network costs, storage costs, backup costs)
• Offsite storage (contingency plans, mutual aid plans, insurance costs)
• Personnel costs (project managers, data base administrators, IT person for maintaining infrastructure)

When looking at a 5-year total cost of ownership, it is not unusual for a SaaS offering to compare very favorably with its on-premise counterpart.   

Myth #4: You can't integrate anything with a SaaS application.
Truth: Admittedly the most difficult part about deploying a SaaS application is the integration with other technologies and applications; this will also be the most challenging aspect of an on-premise application deployment. Many of the same tools and techniques available for on-premise (XML, Web Services and other Service Oriented Architecture techniques) are available for SaaS applications, and some products have been designed to allow connection to legacy architectures and applications.

The "Early SaaS Adopters" (see below) illustrates a number of public sector organizations that have already deployed one or more SaaS application. They each had an automation requirement that could have been handled using traditionally installed software, but chose a SaaS application for these types of benefits:

• No up front costs
• No capital costs
• Cancellable monthly subscription
• Up and running extremely quickly, in some cases within days
• No assistance from their IT department except for a reliable Internet connection
• No more worries about maintenance and upgrades
• Historical data can be converted
• Able to use their existing form and letter templates
• All users on the same software platform
• Able to have high-end features for searching, reporting, administration and customization

There are a number of successfully implemented SaaS offerings, and some have been available for quite a long period of time. Take for example the SaaS offerings from RightNow Technologies, Inc. (http://www.rightnow.com), a farming knowledgebase management solution for the Farm Service Agency of the USDA,  the system was implemented in just 3 days, and dropped weekly e-mail volumes from 3,000 to a mere half-dozen.

Avue Technologies Corporation (http://www.avuetech.com) provides a SaaS offering for human resource management.  Avue has served Federal government agencies with respect to job evaluation and classification, compensation, staffing and recruitment, performance management and optimization, management-employee relations, labor relations, and civil rights for more than 17 years. It currently serves more than 20 Federal departments and agencies with its Avue Digital Services (ADS) and associated services offerings.

As the number of applications available for local governments increase we look to another interesting SaaS platform, Apex™. Offered by a company called Salesforce.com that was originally founded to deliver sales force automation services over the web, they have more recently partnered with companies such as Oracle, Dell and Cisco to create a rich development environment that is suitable to host government applications. The Apex Platform™ offers over 550 applications; a dozen or more which have been developed with government in mind.

One such application is Local Government Manager™. Several local jurisdictions have subscribed to Local Government Manager to automate their permitting, planning and code enforcement business process.  For example, the City of Beaumont integrated their Local Government Manager application with their ArcGIS parcel data, to create a fully-enabled workflow process for their planning department.

While SaaS has established itself as a secure and reliable application in the private sector, there is clear evidence that more government-specific applications are becoming available and used.  SaaS applications are typically more cost efficient, user-friendly and facilitate communication among users. This risk in experimenting with these solutions is very low as most SaaS vendors offer short subscription periods and no upfront cost.  Because of the increase in functionality and performance, equal or better security and reliability, and lower cost, SaaS applications represent the next wave of software solutions for local government.