When I started my career with the City of Foley in job analysis, I naturally gravitated towards technology. I found myself doing more and more with IT, and by 2011 I became the IT Services Coordinator. It was a natural evolution for me since I love improving how our city operates by getting creative with technology.

Every year, our city gets a collection of grants from the federal government, which allow us to maintain important programs. We can get up to 50 grants each year across our 15 departments, supporting everything from historic preservation of our city to projects for the police department. It is essential that we track and manage the allocation of the funds accurately.

For years, we used a paper-based system. If a department needed access to one of the records, it would be copied and couriered to them through interoffice mail, which could take three to four days. In addition, we had one Excel spreadsheet to track how the grants were allocated. The problem was that not all departments could get access to the spreadsheet, making it difficult to monitor and update information. The whole process was outdated and time intensive.

In 2010, the City made the switch to Google Apps. Almost immediately, I helped create a spreadsheet for each department to track their grants. With Google Docs, spreadsheets live in the cloud, so our department heads could update them at any time. Now our grant managers can see the status of each grant in real-time. The best part about Google Docs is that we can share important grant information electronically and no longer have to rely on interoffice mail. This has saved time and money as well.

With Google Apps, we have improved the way we track the resources that are truly the backbone of our city.