Hybrid Work and Google Cloud

Right, TGIF everyone, welcome to In Case You Missed It, This Week in GovTech. This is GovTech's government technology news roundup where we take a look at some of the biggest GovTech news from the past week and give you our thoughts on what it means for government citizens in the market. I'm Dustin Haisler, joined again by Joe Morris and Jed Pressgrove, and today our special guest is Katie Tobin. She's the Head of Workspace Innovation for the Global Public Sector team at Google Cloud. And this brings us to our sponsor that's also helping make state and local government workspace better and make our episode today possible. Joe, tell us who it is.

Well, today's episode is brought to you by Google Cloud. We all know and love Google's products, but they include Google Cloud, and they're helping government agencies improve citizen services, operational effectiveness, and of course powering innovation. They've helped governments worldwide respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Their customers include the Chicago Department of Transportation, the cities of Los Angeles and Chattanooga, the state of Arizona, and many others. For more information, you should also be checking out Google's Workspace Summit by visiting the link that's on your screen. And also check out our show notes a little bit later on govtech.com. We'll be providing links to all of Google Cloud's resources and the Workspace Summit link.

Absolutely. So excited about diving into all of that. But before we bring Katie on, let's talk a little bit about the week that was and dive into some of the stories that caught our attention in GovTech. Let's start first with a new dashboard that was launched by the state of Wyoming. This is a new data dashboard for workforce launched by the governor there. It was basically a new way to kind of help provide education, career tools, even tools for the businesses themselves as we start to think about the workforce challenges that many state and local agencies are facing. One of the key things that really stood out here was just the fact that the workforce has really become a target of economic development initiatives at the state level. So it's interesting to see and not, you know, really surprising to see these governors start to really take a stance on how do we equip people with, you know, the right skills, the right training, but also out-of-state businesses, how do we make sure they know who's here and the skill sets that are available within our state? So again, a really interesting move in the state of Wyoming. Joe, what do you make of this? More to come here?

Well, a lot more to come. I mean, just on the heels of NASSIO, Earlier this week, and the number one topic was workforce, workforce for the state IT agencies and how do they advance their agenda, workforce from inside their organizations. And then when you talk to the industry partners themselves, they're dealing with workforce within their own organization. So I think it is a wise move to kind of build a data-driven approach to how do you identify where those gaps are within your state, and then the efforts to close those gaps to build a more robust workforce.

And Jed, you've been covering this for, you know, a long time, so not, not a big new thing here, but workforce has been a top thing that GovTech's been seeing. What do you think of, uh, what do you think of this?

Well, you're right that I've been aware of this sort of thing for a long time. Actually, I was aware of this sort of thing before I even started working for government technology. I used to work for a research center in the state of Mississippi for Mississippi State University, and the research center would help different government agencies with different digital tools. And one of those tools was for the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. It was called Mississippi Works. It was basically a phone app that you could get on. You could put in all of your education credentials and all of your work experience, and then the app would automatically match you to available jobs within the state. And so I'm guessing— I haven't actually used this dashboard from Wyoming, but I'm guessing that it's sort of similar to that. You know, I don't know if Mississippi Works ever like really just, you know, blew up or anything, but I could definitely see this sort of thing taking off given all the workforce issues that you've already alluded to, Dustin and Joe. And so, you know, another thing that I found kind of interesting about this, this latest thing is that Wyoming, staying true to its moniker, the Cowboy State, uses the acronym BOOTS for this. So I thought that was sort of a, you know, a cute little detail.

Yeah, you gotta love government acronyms. And at least they got creative with that one. So the next story kind of sticks on the workforce path, and that was actually at an MIT Sloan Management Review, and that is the loneliness of the hybrid worker. And really, this was an interesting piece that kind of caught my attention that just talked about, you know, we focus on tech, we focus on all of these different things, but we also need to focus on the support networks that are around, you know, all of these hybrid workers and ensure that we're finding ways to, you know, continue to give them, you know, the mental health support that they need. and deal with some of these new challenges that we never really had to think of before. I mean, we've talked digital fatigue, but now we gotta think about the long-term support infrastructure necessary for investing in our people. So another really interesting kind of take. Joe, what do you make of this one?

Well, I think, you know, many of us crave that in-person engagement, and that's why we're seeing the in-person events come back with such a roar this year. Again, I don't wanna harp too much on the NACIO conference, but it was a mid-year conference where normally there might be 400 or 500 people in attendance, and it was right around 800 100 people, all very eager to be back and engaging in person. I think you see that same dynamic in the workplace. While we appreciate remote work, we do want those opportunities to engage with our peers, engage with our colleagues, and get us out of some of that loneliness.

Jed, any thoughts on this one?

You know, I'm mainly an extrovert. So, you know, when the pandemic hit, those first few months were pretty difficult for me just being cooped up inside. I definitely missed going to the office at eRepublic and You know, talking with people every day. But, you know, over the last couple of years since we've been doing this whole thing, things have been getting better. You know, we've been having some in-person events around the Sacramento area. In addition to that, we still have, you know, video conference calls for like fun chats and things like that. But it really is the in-person things that mean the most to me. Those are the things that are the most memorable. And so the findings of this study here completely make sense to me. You know, there are certain individuals I think that don't necessarily need as much in-person contact, but I think in general though, it's a good thing to be in contact with other human beings.

Absolutely. All right, and our last story for the week was around some market news, some major market news, and that was that GTY, the publicly traded company that had taken 6 companies public, is going private through an acquisition by GI Partners. Joe, I know this one caught your attention this week. Tell us what this means for the market.

Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's fascinating news, right? We've been seeing the market heat up for quite some time. GTY is a cloud-based suite of products and services that target state and local government predominantly. I'd say local government, but now they've got some investment from GI Partners, and that may not be a name that's been on the radar before, but they're an investment firm that's raised billions of dollars in capital. not necessarily or historically focused too much on the GovTech space, but now coming in here and augmenting their investments in private equity, real estate, data infrastructure, and now GovTech through this acquisition. So phenomenal acquisition and excited to see what comes out of the future in GTY.

You know, Dustin, you remember— Dustin and Joe, you remember we were talking when Tyler acquired NIC last year, And we were wondering what's next. I mean, is this the what's next? You know, I mean, I know the article does say that, you know, there's some lack of certainty about whether other private equity organizations are going to do similar moves. But do you guys really think that this will be a trend?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's a limited number of companies that are publicly traded. I think that was even a point Steve Ressler made in the follow-up piece that Thad wrote. So, you know, only so many that you can take private. But I think the posturing of these platform companies is something that continues to be a trend, right? everyone trying to bring these integrated capabilities across multiple different solution areas in the market, whether it's a horizontal player or whether it's, you know, someone that specializes in GovTech. It's interesting to see that. I think PE will continue to get involved, so you'll see private equity, you'll see the traditional investors, and, you know, there's a lot of funding flowing to GovTech, and that's not slowing down.

All right, well, without any further delay, we want to welcome our guest, Katie Tobin, to the conversation. Before joining Google, she's had quite an illustrious career. She's a fellow— was fellow with the Truman National Security Project, also worked for the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence. I'm sure she could tell us a lot more about her career, but maybe we don't have the proper security clearance. Katie, welcome to In Case You Missed It.

Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. And yeah, that's about all you're going to hear about my past career. But I can share that when I was in the government, I had the honor of building a community of innovators from all across the government, really helping empower them with the tools, policies, and culture they need to get their job done as efficiently and safely as possible. And I'm doing the same work at Google, essentially. So I'm helping public sector innovators from federal, state, tribal, local, education institutions, everyone who's a public servant, helping them get their mission done as as effectively and efficiently as possible. And I love it. It's really fun.

Yeah, we're so excited to have you on. And, you know, you're doing some amazing work, you know, with public sector partners. And it's been so fascinating to follow some of that work. And I mean, you've been looking at this landscape and how it's changed and evolved over the last 2 years. I'd love for you to maybe break down for our audience, you know, where we're at with hybrid work today.

Yeah, it feels almost like a ping pong, right? So in the beginning, in the before times, we went to work and work happened at work and home happened at home. And then all of a sudden everything happened at home and there were often no boundaries, right? And people were thrust into this weird situation where you had to figure out what tools are we allowed to use, how do they work, what are the policies, what's the security? Because, you know, especially the public sector, like the job has to get done, right? The services need to still be provided to the public. And then often those This had to change during the pandemic. And then 2 years later, we're figuring things out. I think a lot of people— I think I saw over 80% of remote workers want to stay remote, at least to some extent. And yet now we're seeing the move toward going back to work. Asterisk, it seems to be different for every office, right? Some are full-time, some are part-time, some are do what you want, some are do as you're told, some are gradual, some are not. And so now everyone has to figure it out for themselves. And so this can be a really exciting time or a really scary time. And I want to focus on the excitement factor and the opportunities here for our public workers, um, because there's a lot you can do. Um, so we are not— we do not have to go back to 2019, right? Especially on the Google Workspace side, a lot of the tools either didn't exist at all or not in their current form, um, before the pandemic. And now there's a lot you can do to not only get your job done well regardless of location, but also to kind of to do it better when half of your workforce is is physically in the office and half are remote. And so I'm really excited to talk to you guys about some specific things you can do for that, but really just to kind of spark some interest in trying it yourself.

Yeah, let's dig into that a bit. I think we've heard conversationally, obviously, that this has changed how teams are managed and how managers are, you know, managing their employees, whether that's measuring their productivity, trying to wrap their arms around the culture. of their organization in a hybrid environment can be a daunting task. How should government leaders be looking at leading their workforces differently now?

I think they should start by leading by example, right? Be the change you want to see in the world. And so they can start by showing that they are taking this very seriously and setting their own boundaries around when are they working, where are they working, and when are they not working. So for example, in Google Calendar, you can set the days that you'll be in the office versus at home. And you can also set your work hours. And I don't just mean 9 to 5. You can really make it more granular. I know a lot of people have childcare duties. And so maybe they need to be offline for a little bit in the morning or the afternoon. I'm a triathlete. And so I have swim practice midday sometimes. And so you can set your boundaries in your calendar. And then it will automatically decline meetings that are happening when you're not actually at work. But that also gives more— well, it gives more space for the person to be a human. It also gives the managers more accountability because they know they schedule a team meeting on a certain day, how many people will actually be there. So you know how big the conference room should be. You know when would be a good day to actually have that all-hands. And so you can just— it's not working around the current system. It's actually enhancing the system and making it more transparent. more equitable for people. You can also, you can also improve your productivity by setting focus time. And so I know that I would be in meetings all day, every day if I allowed it. And so to actually get things done, you can create blocks of time in your schedule that show focus time to make sure that you're catching up on things. And that's, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We don't have enough time for me to go Feature by feature.

One of the things that our audience gravitates to are the specific examples, places that are doing it right. So where are those bright spots or those agencies that are some standout examples of doing hybrid work the right way?

Well, we have this community called Public Sector Connect, and I encourage you all to join. We can put the link in the— down below and in the show notes. And So that's a great way for all public sector employees to find each other and to share their best practices and to ask each other for help. And that— they have weekly coffee hours, which are, uh, which are via Google Meet, as you can imagine. And just today we had one where people were sharing their success stories around document management and approval workflows. And so we had people from all over, and the speakers were from Colorado, Arizona, and West Virginia. And just like one example from West Virginia, they figured out how to automate some approval workflows. So if you needed a document approved, it's a certain type of document, has a label, and then it automates, these are the people who need to sign for it before it becomes public. And everyone in the audience, even the Googlers, were like, that's amazing. Show us your ways. And you get that every week, new best practices. And so, we love that. We're also seeing in some communities, because of the hybrid nature of the work or the remote work, they can recruit and retain talent from outside of the municipality. So especially if you're a small town or you're a really expensive place to live, you can now recruit a workforce who doesn't necessarily live there because they don't have to commute in. And so some small towns, for example, are using a lot of volunteer support that's digital volunteers, whether that's for emergency management or helping run some of the behind-the-scenes work. for the town because so much of it is online. You can train people via a YouTube video. You can create checklists in Google Forms. You can just kind of set things up that allow your onboarding and your recruiting and your workforce management to happen remotely. And it just opens so many doors for people.

Katie, thanks again for taking the time to talk with us today. So you've already touched on some of these shining examples, so to speak. Especially when it comes to the impact on the workforce, you know, alluding to the idea of drawing talent from outside of the local area boundary, which is something we've been talking about in government technology for a while now, you know, really ever since the pandemic started. So what about the impact on how they deliver services? Could you talk a little bit about that?

Absolutely. I think now that we're— we as public citizens are used to doing our work remotely, we kind of expect public services to be remote-friendly too. I mean, I— we had to get driver's licenses without going into the DMV during COVID and so now there's this expectation of, well, we know it's possible, so, so what can we do remotely there? And just so one example off the top of my head is a county in Colorado has put a lot of their pet adoptions online. And like that, websites for dogs, that's been around since the beginning of the internet, right? Like, I feel like a large portion of the internet is dogs and cats, which is great. But they are able to use a combination of Google Forms and Apps Script to automate the workflows for this. And so they don't need humans, human employees to manually populate the, the website and handle adoptions for the dogs and communicate where things are. It's, it's scripted and automated. And so that's a much better user experience for someone. You don't have to go in, you don't have to call, especially, you know, if you are unable to, to get there because you're worried about COVID or you're far away or you have a disability and it's hard to travel a place in person. It really just opens the door to more equitable public services because agencies are able to be more creative. But I also want to put in a note about security, right? So often we've thought about this, this tension between you can have something very convenient and very easy, or it can be very secure, but you cannot have both. And that, now we know, is untrue, right? So because Google Workspace in particular is zero trust, which I'm sure you guys have talked about, on this program before, it's very secure, but it's also very easy to use. You can have both. So you can have that great customer-facing experience where they're able to interact with the government online, but they know their data is being— is secure, right? And they know that not only is it stored in a secure place, but the employees, regardless of where they work, whether they're in the office or at home, whether they're on government-furnished equipment or if they're using their own laptop or phone, it is still very secure and you're not relying on, uh, you know, someone with a 16-digit password they have to change every 6 weeks and they really just put on a Post-it note under the keyboard. Uh, not that I've ever done that. Um, you know, it's very secure, um, and that just builds trust for the public so they feel more confident in the services they're, uh, they're having from their government. Uh, you know, it's, it's a better user experience, it's a It's more efficient, and then also it's very secure. So everybody wins.

Hey, thanks a lot for that. And I'm glad you brought up security because we've also noted, just talking with, you know, chief information security officers, for example, that the security conversation has changed, that, you know, some people do have those very real concerns about security in this hybridized workforce environment. Could you talk a little bit more about some of the foundational elements that basically play into what you're talking about that does make these things secure? Like, what are the elements that every agency needs to feel that security?

Absolutely. So if you were in the audience and you just heard me say zero trust and you shuddered a little bit or your eyes glazed over and you thought, oh no, she's going technical, let me explain what that means in a way that I've explained it to my parents and they got it. So I believe in you too. So if you think of your traditional security, your username and password, If you were trying to— if you're a teenager and you're trying to sneak into a disco, that would be like— or a club, if we're not in Europe— that'd be like having a fake ID. So you show up at the club with your McLovin ID and you're like, this is me. And if you have that fake user, and if you have the, you know, the breached username and password, like the fake ID, they'll let you in. And then you can have your drinks and you can go dancing and, you know, all is lost. Or zero trust is you show up with your fake ID and the bouncer is like, I see that you have an ID, right? I see that your username and password are there, but you are here at a really weird time, right? Aren't you normally in school here? Also, that's not your car, that's not your girlfriend, you're wearing a different outfit. Something is suspicious here, right? So all of these different factors are at play. And then even if you manage to trick You get into the club, you can't drink, right? Like, the bartender is like, yeah, you're suspicious. I'm not going to give you any drinks. You try to hop on the dance floor and bust a move. Oh, the music stopped, right? So even if you breach the perimeter, you still can't have any fun. And that's what zero trust is, right? And so it's looking at a myriad of factors. And once you're in, you're not really in, right? And so that's what makes it So secure. So now you know what zero trust is. Congratulations. And so that's really the paradigm that we should be seeing now. And the good news is this is not difficult. It gets built in with Google Workspace. So you— the burden is not on the user. You know, I don't have a technical background, liberal arts school, and the burden is not on me, which is great. Yet I can do all of my work and I don't have to worry about being that weak link that ruins things for everyone. And that is such a relief. And I hope that all of our public servants can also be in a world where they're focused on getting their job done, not on also being an expert in spotting a phishing attempt or coming up with the most secure password again and again. And then that way also the admins, they know that it's a very secure system and they can And they can focus on other things. Like, good thing about Google Workspace is it just makes it easier for everyone in a really user-friendly way.

I love that. I never thought I'd hear disco with zero trust in the same sentence, but that was a beautiful way to actually describe it. So I love that. And hopefully that makes this clip go viral too, because that was such a great way of explaining it. So staying productive and, you know, having meaningful collaboration and real collaboration is really top of mind for a lot of agencies that are out there. as they try to navigate this hybrid reality. Do you have any tips or tactics that our audience can leverage to really maximize their productivity?

Boy howdy. Actually, going back to your previous discussion about the lonely hybrid worker, I was frantically taking notes because I'm super excited about this one. Okay, so we've all been in the situation where you're in a— it's an in-person meeting. We've all done that. We've all done all virtual. That's what we're doing right now. But what do you do when it's hybrid and how to make it not feel lonely? Because if everyone is hanging out without you, if everyone's in the conference room and they're high-fiving and getting their, their coffee and everything, and you're at home, or there's a couple of you at home, sometimes you can feel disadvantaged, right? Um, because they're— maybe you can't see them, the camera is like zoomed way out. Um, and, uh, and then they're all talking and they can kind of wink and nod and you're like Hi, hand raise. Or vice versa, right? Like, you're the one in the conference room because you went in because you need that. And extroverts, hello. Because you went into the office and everyone else is hanging out hybrid and they're in the chat room and they've got their little hand raise function and you're like, what about me? So what's great about Meet is we have this thing called companion mode. And this is pretty new where you can be both in person and virtual. So when I'm in a conference room, I turn on companion mode and then I am also present in the virtual space. It doesn't double up on the camera, it doesn't double up on the microphone, you don't have that weird echo, but it allows you to, to do all of the things that you could do if you were virtual, which really makes it easier, especially dropping links in the chat and things like that. And then in addition, something that is even newer is so often when we're in a meeting, it's not just to hang out, it's to get something done, right? Like we're working on a document, we need to work on these slides, and how hard is it If you're talking and you want to make eye contact and have all those human signals, but you're also working in the document. So you can, you know, kind of like look back and forth, awkward. You can switch tabs, dangerous. I have so often closed out of a tab by mistake because I was switching tabs. Or you have 2 screens, which I don't. A lot of people don't have 2 screens. And so what do you do? And so now within Meet, you can be in the document and have the faces right next to it and edit the document. And so in real time, just like I see your faces on the side instead of me, picture a document or some slides and you can do it all at the same time, which is just such a relief. No more multitasking. And just like these things come out all the time, right? So I encourage you to go to the website that we're showing on the space so you can get the latest update on all the features. We had a Workspace Summit yesterday, so in case you missed it, yes, you absolutely missed it. It was yesterday. But don't worry, it's on demand. You can learn more about— there's sessions on hybrid work. If you are really jazzed about this topic, as I clearly am, you can get more of it at the Workspace Summit and, and just watch the space because there are new features coming out all the time. And the good thing is, you know, they're super secure, right? So try new things, see what works for you, and then know that better things are always on the way and you can give feedback on them at Public Sector Connect and talk to the developers and say what's working for you and what's not working for you. And that's how we make the tools better for the public servants.

I love, A, the optimism, but B, that you outlined a variety of things that would make my life easier, and I'm sure Dustin's and Jed's lives and many others easier as we kind of embrace this hybrid work moment. But what do you think's on the horizon and what should our audience be prepared for, whether they're a manager, whether they're a CIO or an elected leader?

Oh man, where's my crystal ball? I do think we are going to see people finding their new ways around things. And then now that we're so connected and there's this expectation of being able to, to share things and do things remotely, that the best practices and the creative fixes will just kind of transfer. And so we won't have these silos of people thinking, well, I guess this is the way we do things, which means that hopefully this means that the best ways to work will proliferate. And people just have more situational awareness of the way things could be. And so even if you're in remote Alaska, I actually am originally from Alaska, so the largest state, smallest municipalities, you can find out what's working for people in Florida or Hawaii or Guam and really make it work for you. And so I think the future of hybrid work is something that is not even on my radar right now. But I trust that I will learn about it and that thanks to programs like yours, people will share it and we can just kind of build on each other's goodness and creativity.

Perfect. Speaking of sharing it one more time, where can our audience go to learn more about Google Cloud's approach and solutions for hybrid work?

Great question. So I always recommend Public Sector Connect. You can go to this link for our Google solutions focused on the government. Cloud. And then if you are a government employee or education employee, use your work email address. That's how we validate people to join Public Sector Connect, which is free. And you don't have to be a Google customer. It's really just for people who are interested. And that way you can, you can meet your, your community and, and connect and really learn and ask questions and grow.

Awesome. Well, you know, from Nick Lovin to Discos to hybrid work, you've covered it all. Katie, we greatly appreciate your time. We appreciate you coming on and sharing your expertise with us today. For those of you that took time to listen in, join us every Friday at 12 o'clock Pacific, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter for more In Case You Missed It content. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks again, Katie.

Thanks.