How many IT systems does it take to run a city?
For a small city, at least one.
For a city like Los Angeles, it takes 1,337 systems — more than any county.
San Francisco, a consolidated city-county, has the most systems of all counties, 442. That’s according to a Techwire analysis of nearly all California cities’ and counties’ reported enterprise systems.
In October 2015, California amended its Public Records Act to require all local agencies to publish an annual catalog of enterprise systems of record. Any system that collects resident data, save for IT security systems, is required to be reported. (IT security information could pose a threat if it’s made public.)
Techwire has identified and compiled all lists available online, covering 440 of California's 539 cities and 58 counties. That analysis provides a general representation of the number of systems used to run a California city or county, and their most common vendors.
For counties, the average number of systems reported was 89. Three counties only use nine. Cities, on the other hand, reported an average of 19, with a minimum of one.
The number of enterprise systems used by a city or county government generally relates to the population size and number of employees.
Former San Diego County CIO Harold Tuck, a senior fellow with e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government, was not surprised by the large number of county enterprise systems.
Counties, he explained, are a “conglomerate” of government services — such disparate functions as voter registration and elections, health and human services, agricultural services and animal care. This wide range of services often requires disparate systems that collect and rely on different types of data.
Offering myriad services requires pulling funding from myriad sources. This, said Tuck, further increases the number of systems. Each source of funding will have its own set of data collection and maintenance requirements, resulting in multiple systems designed to address multiple policy and regulatory requirements (e.g., CalPERS, Medicare, Medicaid, Medi-Cal).
Tuck suggested that vendors with enterprise system offerings work with county and regulatory officials to better coordinate their efforts. Consolidating systems to fulfill multiple regulatory data collection and maintenance requirements, he said, would save taxpayers money.
Cities that have fewer systems seem to have consolidated services. In terms of the number of systems operated, cities cluster generally into three groups: minimal, moderate and robust. Minimal cities run 10 systems or fewer, while robust cities run between 21 and 38 systems. Cities running more than 38 systems — like Los Angeles’ 1,337 — are statistical outliers and not your average, or even above-average, city. Of the cities examined, 151 qualified as minimal; 140 were rated as moderate; and 71 were considered robust.
To quantify which vendors were most commonly used, Techwire took a small subset of cities and analyzed the reported products (localities are required to report seven attributes, including product and vendor). In total, 2,484 systems were compiled.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft was most widely used vendor. Its products showed up in 35 of the 49 cities (71 percent) and all eight counties examined. Such products were usually part of Microsoft Office Suite. After Microsoft, jurisdictions turn to targeted products like Esri, a GIS service provider used by more than half of the cities, or Active Network, an activity and participant management software for registration and event management. Other popular products came from public-sector-oriented vendors like Tyler Technologies, Superion and Granicus.
Seth M. Vaughn is a Research Analyst for the Center for Digital Government with a background in data analysis. He has an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago.
