Author Archive

Posted by Joe Kraus, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Joe Kraus, the Chief Information Officer of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993 as a result of legislation unanimously passed by the U.S. Congress. The Museum’s employees went live with Google Apps for Government this Tuesday.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide and promote human dignity. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanent place on the National Mall, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by the generosity of donors nationwide.

To fulfill this mission, the Museum employs technologies that promote online collaboration for its teaching programs and uses crowdsourcing to expand and make more accessible its collections relating to Holocaust survivors and victims. Our migration to Google Apps will enable closer collaboration with teachers, universities and institutions that are engaged in teaching the lessons of the Holocaust, preventing genocide and conducting research on Holocaust history.

This week, the Museum launched Google Apps for Government for our 500 staff and support personnel. We chose Google Apps because of its ease of use and extensive collaboration and sharing capabilities. Our educators in Holocaust programs will use Google Docs to support online development of lesson plans. Our researchers and scholars will use Google Apps to develop their material on Holocaust history and the lessons learned. The general public, youth groups and teachers will be able to easily register for our many programs using Google Forms. Our staff will use Google Sites to collaborate on the multitude of cross- departmental programs and projects that we run each year to advance Holocaust understanding.

Our transition to Google went very well. We conducted a three-month pilot with staff from across the Museum followed by a three-month transition period. Our final switchover was done overnight on October 31. The transition required a rigorous communications and training program, with about 70% of our staff participating in classroom and webinar training led by our project integrator, Onix Networking. One of the key aspects that enabled our smooth transition was the identification of “Google Guides,” people from across the Museum who volunteered to help their colleagues with the new Google Apps environment. Now that we are in the cloud we will be able to take full advantage of a dynamic ecosystem of new functionality that continues to provide our employees new and innovative ways of doing the important work of the Museum with very little additional support required from my IT team.


The Museum's Google Guides mark Tuesday’s switchover.

Posted by Brad Robinson, Information Security Manager

I’m proud to announce that my alma mater, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, is the first service academy to move to Google Apps. Founded in the late 1800’s, the Academy is one of the oldest federal service academies. Its small campus on the banks of the Thames River, flanked by Connecticut College and the Groton Submarine Navy Base, is home to 1,100 students — called “cadets.” The Academy trains these bright young people, more than a third of whom are women, for positions of leadership in the Coast Guard.

Last January, all of the cadets migrated to Google Apps. The cadets have been really pleased with the new tools they use for email, coursework, collaboration with other cadets on a range of projects and even video chat with their families and friends.

The Academy started piloting Google Apps in early 2010 with 100 staff members from various departments. That spring, a faulty electrical transformer on campus knocked out power to the Academy for well over a week. Worse, it was the week of commencement, and they were quite literally powerless to do anything about it. The Academy had a catastrophic loss of email during that span when the on-premise email servers reached capacity. The only people who didn’t lose any email was the pilot group on Google Apps.

Between academics, military training and extracurricular activities, the life of a cadet can be pretty demanding. These “mobile warriors” are always on the go and need to access their email, class work and other information whether they’re on or off campus. Google Apps has helped the Academy meet the cadets’ needs for mobility.

The cadets are also using these tools to improve collaboration on team projects. One group of four cadets created a Google Site for their capstone project designing a mini gas turbine engine. They could simultaneously edit spreadsheets, use video chat to share ideas, and even work together with students and professors from other universities to gather input. The cadets are a driving force of change across the campus. Today, nearly half the faculty and staff have converted to Google Apps and that number continues to climb.

As a former cadet, I congratulate the Academy on this milestone. I could not be more pleased that the work we do at Google is helping current cadets.

Posted by Kennith Jackson, Deployment Manager, Google Apps

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is ringing in the new year with a new email and collaboration system for its 25,000 employees, contractors and associates. They have all successfully moved to Google Apps for Government, making NOAA the largest federal agency to complete the switch to cloud-based email and collaboration tools.

NOAA employees work with the latest technologies like environmental monitoring satellites and high-tech weather forecasting tools. Now, they have cutting-edge email and collaboration tools to match.

According to NOAA CIO Joseph Klimavicz, the speed and ease of moving to Google Apps was an important factor in the agency’s decision to select Google. Moving 25,000 people to a new system is no small task. To move a group this size to a unified email platform in just six months is a remarkable achievement.

The rapid deployment resulted from a well-coordinated effort by NOAA employees, prime contractor ERT Inc., and Google partners Unisys and Tempus Nova. NOAA issued a request for proposals in January 2011 and made the award to ERT in June. The team put in place an aggressive schedule to have the system implemented by December and delivered on the plan. NOAA staff now have a set of modern tools like instant messaging, video chat, and real-time, multi-user document collaboration to help the people of NOAA work together more effectively. What’s more, NOAA estimates the cost to the taxpayer is approximately 50% less than developing a solution in-house.

With operations around the nation, in the air and on the sea, NOAA needed applications that work anywhere without the hassle of managing hardware in all these locations. Many members of the workforce spend time outside the office collecting data on weather, climate, oceans, and coasts. As a result, access to work information on mobile devices is critical. Google Apps allows NOAA’s scientists and staff to get their email and other information wherever their work may take them.

We welcome NOAA as the latest -- and largest -- in a string of government agencies from Wyoming to the General Services Administration to Des Moines, Iowa that switched to Google Apps in 2011. We look forward to welcoming many others in 2012.

Posted by Luke Ravenstahl, Mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Editors note: Today Mayor Ravenstahl is announcing that almost 3,000 city employees just started using Google Apps for Government.

People love to work and live in Pittsburgh. It’s ranked America’s “Most Livable City” year after year due to a low, and decreasing, crime rate, a burgeoning arts and cultural scene, and an affordable cost of living that offers families the nation’s largest scholarship program for public school students. Pittsburgh also has a humming high-tech economy that builds off of our manufacturing past. To keep our city at the forefront of innovation, my administration adopts the latest technology applications that modernize our government, while cutting costs and improving our daily operations.

I am pleased to announce that in about four months we successfully retired our Microsoft Exchange 2003 email system and moved almost all 3,000 city employees to Google Apps for Government. This move will save us 25 percent or more in annual email support costs and allow us to deliver better services to our residents. Our employees are working more efficiently because they have 500 times more email storage and no longer need to waste time emptying their inboxes. We’re also able to capture and index all employees’ email and attachments in one centralized and searchable repository, which helps us meet e-discovery needs much more efficiently.

Since 40 percent of our employees already have personal Gmail accounts, the migration went smoothly with the help of Google implementation partner, Daston Corporation. Our employees are excited to collaborate on a single document simultaneously, and participate in video chats with each other no matter where we are. My staff is better able to address the needs of community members by creating a shared document that outlines neighborhood needs and tasks that all can reference and update.

We are also enhancing the security of our data while saving money. Our data now lives in a datacenter environment dedicated to US government entities that has been through the federal government’s FISMA certification process. “While the city still retains full ownership of our data, we can count on Google for data safety and security,” said CIO Howard A. Stern, Ph.D. who spearheaded the transition.“Our data is more secure with Google than with the previous system.”

We're grateful for Google's commitment to the tech sector in Pittsburgh, and we're proud to be using Google Apps in city government. As we kick off the New Year in the “cloud,” we look forward to exploring more ways to improve collaboration and productivity with Google Apps. We believe that this transition will help keep the City innovative.

Posted by Chris Bronk, Senior Advisor, IRM’s Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State

Editors note: We were excited to hear that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself announced to State employees that they would be getting the Chrome browser. Now that they have it, we invited Chris to share some more details.

The State Department gave our employees around the world a special Valentine’s Day gift as we made the Google Chrome browser available to all employees on February 14. This makes us the first U.S. cabinet department to make Chrome available department-wide.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement to a town hall meeting of State Department employees, where it was greeted with rousing applause:

State’s historical approach to browsers is to test compatibility with all corporate, enterprise-level applications and remediate any issues prior to full release. We’ve taken a different approach with Chrome. Offering Chrome as a browser option allows us to take full advantage of Chrome’s speed -- from quick startup to rapid website loading -- plus the ability to access the full range of modern websites, and will allow our employees to be more productive in their work. When a new release of Chrome is made available with enhanced functionality or added security, we can release it into production immediately, bypassing cumbersome testing.

With Chrome for Business, our Information Resources Management (IRM) team was able to deploy Chrome quickly and securely. After two weeks, it has been installed on over 58,000 PCs around the world or around 60% of our enterprise. The administrative capabilities of Chrome for Business will allow IRM to manage the browser going forward, making sure that all employees are on the same version and can take advantage of new features that are regularly made available in new Chrome releases.

We’re enthusiastic to be leading the charge to bring an enhanced web browsing experience to State employees executing the critical U.S. diplomatic mission around the world!

Posted by by Michael Lock, VP Google Enterprise

Earlier in 2012, I became a United States citizen, more than 14 years after moving to the U.S. from my native Canada. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to root for Team Canada when it comes to hockey and Canada will always have a special place in my heart. That’s why I’m particularly proud that the City of Edmonton announced today its plans to move 9,000 city employees to Google Apps. In keeping with its reputation as a forward-thinking local government, Edmonton will become the first major Canadian city to go Google.

Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta, is the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over one million. Its decision to move to Google Apps for email, calendar and other collaboration tools supports Edmonton’s strategic plan, which calls for “finding new ways to become even more collaborative, open, responsive and innovative.”

Google Apps will provide a unified communications platform for all municipal employees, bringing email to roughly 3,000 “deskless” city employees for the first time while providing additional tools to help all employees work together. As a result, the City of Edmonton’s employees will have a more inclusive, collaborative work environment while giving the city more value for its technology investments.

While Edmonton may be the first city in Canada to go Google, it’s in great company with other city governments in North America─like Pittsburgh, Orlando and Zapopan, Mexico─that have already made the move. And personally, I’m grateful to Edmonton for giving me a good reason to visit Canada later this year to check on their progress!