As the Gmail contract ends, is L.A. done with Google?
The original story: Los Angeles stepped way out on a limb in 2009, becoming the biggest city in the nation to move its entire email system — used by 30,000 municipal employees — to Google’s Gmail service. The city’s massive shift to the cloud would become one of the most closely watched IT deployments in local government over the next several years. Los Angeles CTO Randi Levin told Government Technology in 2010 that using Gmail to replace the city’s in-house GroupWise email system would let her eliminate 92 servers and reassign nine employees responsible for maintaining that equipment. In addition, city workers would get more reliable email and a suite of new features.Project Update: Four years later, the project never exactly delivered on its promises and never was completely finished. Although the city moved email for 17,000 employees into the cloud, it could never transition police and other public safety personnel to the hosted system, leaving about 13,000 employees on the GroupWise platform. The city formally abandoned plans to move cops into the cloud in 2011, citing security concerns.
Now Steve Reneker, who replaced Levin as city CTO last year, is prepared to rebid the contract. Los Angeles’ five-year contract with Google ends in a year, and Reneker said he has no preconceptions about what the city will do next.
"We are at a juncture right now," he said.
Reneker said the next contract will be 10 years long and split into three parts: email, applications and security. That will give Los Angeles flexibility. His sense is that city employees are comfortable with Gmail and don’t want to switch away from it, but he says "conversion issues" between Google Docs and Microsoft Office have made life difficult. Most city departments still prefer Office.
The Los Angeles Police Department will continue to use an on-premises email system, Reneker added, to ensure compliance with California Department of Justice requirements.
Reneker credits his predecessors in the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency for making a bold move, even though there were unforeseen obstacles and some erroneous assumptions. He said Gmail "significantly" reduced total cost of ownership for the city’s email, even though the extent of the savings hasn’t been what was forecast in 2009.
This article was originally published by Government Technology.
