Legacy ERP Systems Get Upgrades Amid the COVID Pandemic
Enterprise resource planning systems are foundational to efficiently run government organizations. Here’s how three jurisdictions navigated their modernization plans through COVID-19. Shutterstock.com
It’s no small feat to overhaul a major government system. And an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is at the heart of an organization’s operations, fundamental to smooth day-to-day functioning. An ERP upgrade can take six months to a year, Oracle reports. It requires significant time and resources to modernize systems that bring together financial and human resources information from across disparate sources.
COVID-19 makes it all the more difficult. Just at a time when it is essential to get functions such as finance and budgeting onto cloud-based platforms, government IT hasn’t been able to collaborate shoulder to shoulder. Tech leaders have had to balance the urgent need for change against the
Four innovations state and local governments spawned during the pandemic
Over the past nine months, the pandemic required state and local governments to quickly transition the services that they normally provide in-person including social services, health care, hearings and city council meetings to virtual events and digital interactions. Under time constraints and financial duress, their IT departments launched new, innovative solutions to provide new functionality, transparency and support to residents who needed it most.
Fighting back with data
In August, officials in St. Louis estimated that the pandemic had cost the city at least $21 million in lost revenue. But the city has also kept track of every penny spent to slow the spread of the virus using a new open data portal.