We often consider states like New York, California, Nevada, Texas, Illinois and even Washington State to be the ones on the cutting edge of technology. However when it comes to implementing Google Apps for state government Wyoming and Utah are the first two states to do that.
Utah has become the second state to announce that they are switching all government employees from their former suite of productivity tools to Google Apps.
More after the break
They didn’t say what Utah would be transitioning from but said their old email system was “aged”. By the end of 2012 all 22,000 Utah state employees will switch to Google’s Gmail and other collaborative tools like Google Docs and Video Chat.
Google and the state of Utah have enlisted the help of Tempus Nova to make the transition.
The state of Utah released this statement:
Information technology consolidation has long been a top priority for Utah to improve accountability, reduce costs, and increase services to taxpayers. Its legacy email system was unable to keep up with the increasing demand from staff to access information anytime and anywhere. The Department of Technology Services (DTS) started looking for a cloud solution that could address those challenges in 2010. Through a comprehensive and competitive bidding process, DTS received six proposals. Google Apps premier reseller and implementation partner Tempus Nova was selected to bring Google Apps to state employees.
Utah will have all employees transitioned over by the end of 2012 and has said that switching to Google will make Utah FISMA compliant and will have a more efficient way for the government to meet e-discovery requirements as well.
source: 9to5Google via TDG