In order to accomodate the county’s needs, forward-thinking then-CIO Sherry Swackhamer was determined to move the county to the cloud. Her goal was to support an increasingly mobile workforce with access to email, calendars, and work documents from wherever they were—not just when they were connected to the county network.

The county evaluated two cloud platforms and Google Workspace was the standout choice. “All paths led to Google,” recalls Tracey Massey, Deputy CIO of Multnomah County. “Google was selected for its winning features and as the most cost-effective platform for the future.”

The county moved on a “fast and furious schedule to get it done,” according to Dan Cole, the IT project manager who managed the initiative back in 2010. The county switched to a “big bang” deployment, migrating more than 4,000 accounts in just two days.

When attending county meetings today, it’s routine to have employees sharing a file in Google Workspace and viewing it on their devices rather than using the whiteboard. They talk, share the file, edit it, and brainstorm in real time. Entire teams can attend meetings and fully participate using enterprise-grade video conferencing with Google Meet. “This represents a huge change and is delivering tremendous benefits, even though we didn’t have our sights on collaboration when we began the project,” says Chris Clancy, one of the county’s IT managers.

Former CIO Swackhamer agrees. “Transitioning to Google Workspace accomplished most of our original goals—access to email and information anywhere, anytime, as well as cost savings,” says Swackhamer. “The successful implementation of Google Workspace gave Multnomah County the confidence to be innovative and early adopters of the cloud. We were ready and able to embrace the cloud to solve a variety of technical and business issues.”

Wider adoption solves more complex business challenges

Because the initial project was only focused on Gmail and Calendar, the shift to Docs has been transformational for the county. Just five years ago, only 20% of county employees used Google apps outside of Gmail and Calendar. Adoption has steadily grown, however, and as more employees embraced Docs, the training department added courses and support.

“And then we got to the tipping point where people started understanding the value of Google Workspace for collaboration—even though that wasn’t part of the original project—and suddenly nearly everyone was on board,” says Clancy.

Today, county employees routinely use all the tools available in Google Workspace to help them solve more complex business problems.

For example, case managers in the county’s Aging and Disability Services division and Veterans Services division use Google Workspace to send alerts when clients under their supervision engage in risky behavior. Previously, they had to copy and fill out a document template, then download and email it to a distribution list. It was a slow, cumbersome process. And the after-hours emergency support team would still need to manually search a database for notes on the client. Now, with Forms, case managers simply fill out and submit a form that automatically sends an alert to a Google group and populates a spreadsheet in Sheets for the teams providing 24-hour support. In Sheets, the spreadsheet also has a filtered view of daily reports, which provides a quick view of alerts that require special attention.

The county is also discovering new ways to use Google Workspace when interacting with external entities. For example, when building a new headquarters for its health department, the county needed a way to communicate with the numerous contractors involved. Google Workspace proved to be the answer. The county set up a folder in Drive as a cloud repository for shared documents, established workflows using Forms, trained the contractors, and “everything went very smoothly,” says Manuel Cuevas, IT project manager. The county took the same route when building a new courthouse. “Our project partners were big companies and were standardized on another platform, but we had no issues connecting and collaborating through Google Workspace,” says Cuevas.

Keeping the county connected and working—from anywhere

The fact that the Google Workspace deployment went so smoothly was a big win for the IT staff. Five years prior to the Google Workspace deployment, IT had attempted to deploy a major new system—and users had rejected it. The successful deployment of Google Workspace changed the attitudes of employees toward IT, according to IT project manager Dan Cole. “And that it continues to go well is a strong point of pride for us,” he says.

Deputy CIO Tracey Massey was recently on a business trip and was able to remain productive during her flight by using Google Workspace apps, even while 37,000 feet in the air. “I worked on a multifactor spreadsheet in Sheets and on a presentation deck in Slides, it all worked seamlessly, and it was just great,” she says. Another added benefit? Because its cloud apps and services automatically update, her team will never face an IT upgrade for Google Cloud products. To sum up, Massey says, “At this point in time, I can’t imagine ever going back to anything else.”

Google Workspace also played an important role in helping Multnomah County adjust to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We knew that while many organizations would face a daunting challenge at the prospect of transitioning hundreds of employees to remote work, we were ready,” said Bob Leek, former CIO of Multnomah County.

Google Meet allowed county employees to see each other and collaborate in real time during meetings, despite no longer being in the same room. Multnomah County's Meet video meetings increased from 35 per day to 1,200 per day when employees began working from home.

In terms of the county maintaining continuity of services to the public, Google Workspace proved essential. “Forms, Docs, Sheets, and Slides allowed our teams to continue providing services to our constituents,” said Leek. And the simplicity with which Google Workspace updates are pushed out weren’t lost on Leek either. “The ease of rolling out updates, especially the most requested feature—tiled layout in Meet—means that we can keep improving the tools everyone uses.”