Even in the most ordinary of times, state and local governments are under constant pressure to meet their core mandates—better serving constituents—while finding ways to do the most good possible despite chronically lean budgets and resource constraints. But when such daily demands are tested by a once-in-a-century crisis, resources and tools can be stretched to the breaking point.
The COVID-19 pandemic generated massive, rapid disruption in every aspect of life in every country on earth— and governments scrambled to respond. Almost every public agency was urgently pressed to deliver massively increased services in radically different, and more difficult or dangerous, conditions.
The need for services increased just as tax revenues plummeted, leaving city and local governments struggling to do more with less. Amid the upheaval, many quickly realized that the massive shift to remote work and delivery of services made their outdated paper-based and manual procedures nearly inoperable.