One of the biggest hurdles of upgrading IT systems is compliance, and this is a particularly important point for public sector entities. The government agencies and departments – from the local and state level all the way to the federal level – face stringent and important regulations when it comes to tech and data.
Oftentimes, the public sector thinks it would be easier to maintain the status quo of legacy solutions. However, in the long run, legacy solutions put sensitive data at risk as technology advances. Plus, maintaining legacy systems costs a lot. In 2016, the US Government Accountability Office released a report highlighting that in 2017, nearly $60 billion will be spent on maintaining old legacy systems while investments in new technology are down $7.3 billion since 2010. The report even highlighted that many government organizations are using technology that is nearly 50 years old, putting data at risk of a cyber breach.
The good news is that now, maintaining compliance is not the overwhelming feat it used to be when it comes to new technology systems. It is possible for government agencies to move to a newer, safer platform while maintaining – or even exceeding – the current regulations and compliance requirements. Really, it means IT systems have future-proofing built in.
For example, take the City of Bloomington, Ill. Its located 125 miles southwest of Chicago, in the heart of Illinois. Bloomington was already tech savvy, and had been using SharePoint 2007 when SharePoint 2010 was released. With more intuitive governance and permissions, and better integration with the applications their staff relied on, they were eager to move to SharePoint 2010. However, much of the city’s data, especially that from the police department and legal system, was restrained by strict compliance guidelines. The city needed to ensure no data was lost or put at risk during the move to the new platform.
The City of Bloomington, along with some support from us here at AvePoint, successfully migrated their data in one business day, four days sooner than originally planned. Bloomington easily maintained all the metadata, permission and compliance requirements for their sensitive data. To say the migration was a success is an understatement.
No two migration scenarios are the same, but when compliance requirements are of the utmost importance, it is best to ask for outside support. The Microsoft partner community has really seen it all, and supported private and public organizations through all sorts of migration projects, including on prem, hybrid or cloud solutions.
We’ll be focusing more on public sector migration in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for even more information on how to move you data safely and securely. In the meantime, get in touch if you have questions about how your public sector organization can upgrade legacy systems while maintaining compliance standards.
