Top 9 Local, Municipal & State Government Software Solutions [Checklist Included!]

Adnan Olia , Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Intradyn

Top 9 Local, Municipal & State Government Software Solutions [Checklist Included!]

Like any modern organization, government agencies at all levels rely on software systems and tools to store data, manage operations and complete key tasks. However, unlike organizations in the private sector, government agencies are meant to serve the public, which means they’re subject to certain requirements that can make it challenging to find optimal solutions.

In this article, we’ll not only discuss some of the top-rated local, municipal and state government software solutions on the market today, but also what government agencies need to look for in both a solution and a provider.

What is Local, Municipal & State Government Software?

“Local, municipal and state government software” is really a catch-all term used to describe any system or solution used in the day-to-day operations of a government agency at the local, municipal or state level.

Some common examples of software for local, municipal and state government include:

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems: Don’t be fooled by the word “enterprise” — ERP systems play just as important in the public sector as they do in the private sector. ERP software is designed to help agencies aggregate data across multiple departments and gain visibility into everything from how government resources are allocated to how different teams manage administrative processes.Armed with this information, government leaders can engage in more strategic decision-making, develop standardized core processes that enhance efficiency and support public policy, and then manage those processes on a day-to-day basis.

Performance Management Tools: This is a fairly broad category that encompasses any software government institutions use to track their progress against established goals — for example, a 10% reduction in crime rates or a 7% increase in high school graduation rates.Many performance management tools leverage reporting and analytics to provide agencies with an accurate, data-driven picture of where they stand relative to their target outcomes and business intelligence to deliver insights on what measures they can take to achieve those outcomes.

Accounting Software: From processing payroll, to managing loans and grants, to ensuring that government funding is appropriately allocated, government institutions are responsible for a wide variety of financial processes and procedures.Accounting software makes it easier for agencies to stay on top of financial reporting by generating financial statements and balance sheets for each department; serving as a general ledger for accounts payable and payroll management; recording grants, programs and funding sources; and more.

Archival Software: Though government agencies are typically the ones responsible for enforcing different laws and regulations, they’re also subject to them, too. From the Freedom of Information Act and other public record laws to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, many of these regulations come with strict data retention requirements.Archiving solutions provide institutions at the local, municipal and state level with the tools they need to securely store and manage public records, as well as rapidly search through thousands of files and reproduce documents upon request. This not only enables agencies to comply with applicable regulations, it also supports transparency, which is incredibly important in the public sector.

Work Order Systems: Given the vast number of buildings and public spaces government agencies are responsible for managing, they need an easy way to monitor and manage licensing, permitting and repairs. Work order systems do exactly that, providing a portal through which government employees can submit work order requests and track their status in real time; automate components of the permitting and licensing processes for greater efficiency; and gain visibility across all government assets.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: CRM software enables government agencies to track interactions with customers — or, in this case, citizens — collect their data and store it in a secure, centralized location. This provides agencies with a holistic view of each citizen, which helps them develop a better understanding of the public’s needs, make more informed decisions, form stronger relationships and better serve the community.Certain “citizen relationship management” platforms can even be configured to offer self-service capabilities, which empower citizens to fill out forms, provide public comment, submit applications and more, all from the device of their choosing.

These are just a few examples of the many kinds of local, municipal and state government software and how they’re used.

What to Look for in a Local, Municipal or State Government Software Solution

What type of software your government agency needs depends entirely on the problem you need to solve.

For example, let’s say that your agency’s procurement process is manual and largely paper-based; this not only slows down procurement, but also introduces the risk of human error and makes it more challenging for your employees to keep track of important paperwork.

To resolve this issue, you might consider investing in multiple solutions to automate different components of the procurement process and better manage the associated paperwork — solutions such as an automated bidding platform, contract management software, a requisition purchase tracking system and/or an expense reporting system. You might even consider investing in all of the above and working with an experienced implementation partner to ensure that all systems are tightly integrated and can easily communicate with one another.

Regardless whether you need a communications platform, an archiving system or something else entirely, there are a few common criteria to look for when evaluating different solutions:

Security: Local, municipal and state government software typically houses confidential, classified or otherwise sensitive data, including both employees’ and citizens’ personally identifiable information. Should any of this information fall into the wrong hands due to a data leak or data breach, it has the potential to cause substantial harm to individuals, threaten public safety and lead citizens to distrust the very institutions intended to serve them.Given what’s at stake, it’s imperative that you thoroughly vet each solution’s — and solution provider’s — cybersecurity systems and protocols to ensure that they’re up to standard. At a minimum, these cybersecurity measures should include anti-virus and anti-malware protection, firewalls, access controls, 24/7 system monitoring, two-factor authentication (2FA) and encryption.

Ease of Use: Training government employees on new internal systems is not only time-consuming — it can also be expensive. Look for solutions that offer an intuitive, user-friendly interface to encourage user adoption and streamline onboarding and training.Keep in mind that ease of use is just as important — if not more important — for external-facing systems as it is for internal ones. Government websites and citizen self-service portals should be clean, easy to navigate and designed with accessibility in mind to best serve the needs of the public.

Mobile-enablement: Not all government work takes place in an office setting, and employees in the field require access to mission-critical systems just as much as those sitting at a desk. When evaluating local, municipal and state government software, be sure to look for solutions that are mobile-enabled, so that employees have the ability to log in and do their work, regardless of their location and whether they’re using a desktop computer or government-issued device.
Compatibility: There’s a software solution to solve almost every government issue under the sun. While that’s great news, it can also lead agencies to adopt more and more platforms over time. If these platforms are not tightly integrated, you run the risk of developing data silos and sprawling software ecosystems. This can, in turn, lead to miscommunications both internally and externally, make it more challenging for citizens to access important information, slow down core processes and prevent you from gaining a complete view of operations across your institution.

Before implementing any new technology, first ask prospective solution providers whether their software is compatible with your existing systems and whether they can be configured to communicate seamlessly with one another.

9 Popular Software Solutions for Local, Municipal & State Government

Searching for the ideal software solution for local, municipal or state government? Presented in no particular order, these are some of the leading systems in the field:

EnerGov by Tyler Technologies
EnerGov is an enterprise permitting, licensing, planning review and asset management solution designed to help government institutions make more informed decisions using data analytics, eliminate departmental and agency silos, maintain open lines of communication with the public and empower workers in the field.

Key features include:

Esri GIS mapping technology for real-time spatial analytics
Centralized database for easy information sharing
Specialized apps for citizen use
Personalized reporting via open data sourcesMobile capabilities to support field work
Centralized workflows to unify data across the organization
Customized reporting for more accurate forecasting
On-demand views and performance filters