ARPA opens doors to modernizing the infrastructure of government itself

U.S. cities, counties, tribes and other local governments are now in the process of digesting about $148 billion of the $1.9 trillion in investment from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). Infrastructure as recognized traditionally (highways, public housing) and less traditionally (solar installations, EV charging stations) tend to dominate the imagination. These are legitimate needs, no question, and ones whose origins predated the coronavirus-pandemic hammer blow to city and county budgets that ARPA was designed to address.

Another form of infrastructure deserves serious consideration also. You can’t drive over it, live in it or charge your car with it. But without it, the process of procuring, designing, building, managing and maintaining all other infrastructure—not to mention operating a town, city or county’s many departments—becomes less efficient, less effective, more frustrating and more costly. I’m talking about data infrastructure, and if the ASCE were to score it, the C-minus that the organization gives our roads, levees, water mains and so forth might seem a solid grade by comparison.

Data is the infrastructure of government itself. When done right, data infrastructure provides a foundation upon which public-serving departments as diverse as parks and recreation, police and fire, housing, transportation, public works and all the rest enjoy potent, tailored IT capabilities that then integrate with internal functions such as finance and HR. That combination enhances a government’s capabilities and resilience while giving its leaders visibility across departmental boundaries and analytics to make better decisions. IT enablement becomes government enablement, and that becomes community enablement—and that’s the ultimate goal, right?

As we all know, city and county data infrastructure is not always done right. Systems have arrived piecemeal to solve specific problems in specific departments. With budgets as tight they have been, many of those systems are still churning away. But ARPA has arrived just as the transition from on-premise to cloud-based (or hybrid-cloud-based) data infrastructure has gained steam. This represents an enormous opportunity for local governments. But that opportunity must be seized with an eye on the big picture.

By that I mean ARPA can be a catalyst for taking a hard look at a government’s systems, their costs, their benefits, and their ability to enable staff and the community they serve. You must understand the systems in place and what advantages cloud-based solutions can bring—and in my experience, the obvious ones of OPEX-to-CAPEX, continuous innovation, enhanced data security and immediate scalability are only the beginning. You must step back and think platform versus point solutions, mission system versus ad-hoc potpourri. It’s hard work, but it pays off—I’ve seen it happen, over and over.

Central to the value proposition is that, while it may seem a cloud-platform approach would sacrifice the IT needs of the front-line departmental periphery for the common good, satisfying a specific need often yields broader advantages, and fast. Let’s say public works is instituting a fee-based composting program and needs an online signup facility. Doing so as part of a cloud-based system means not only that it integrates smoothly with finance, HR, and other core systems, but also that you can easily adapt the design and operational elements of the composting add-on to the needs of other departments. For example, if parks and recreation wants a picnic-area reservation system upgrade, it’s a matter of tweaking what already works.

Just as importantly, moving governmental data infrastructure to a cloud platform takes pressure off the ongoing labor crunch. That goes beyond the challenge of finding and retaining IT people needed to maintain and upgrade on-premise systems—or even enabling hybrid- and contingent-workforce management, a proven strength of cloud-based systems. A common platform also unifies the various, too-often redundant data puddles so common in the patchworks of municipal and county systems into unified bodies that provide reliable pools to be tapped for all variety of reporting, planning and action. Citizens can find what they need on their own, or with the help of automated chatbots. This saves management and clerical time and effort and enables a tighter alignment of resources to needs. That’s going to be critical in an environment in which governments are increasingly forced to do more with less.

The transition of government IT infrastructure to the cloud will take time and money up front. But it’s an investment that’s reaping rewards from San Diego to Sedgwick County, Kansas, and it will continue to pay dividends through lower long-term costs, improved and more efficient public service, greater transparency, and other ways. ARPA has arrived at the right time to vastly reduce the up-front outlays. Governments should take full advantage of it.

Dante Ricci is director of public service at SAP.