A mid-sized coastal city in California recognized that its technology environment had evolved organically over many years, resulting in a complex mix of legacy systems, modern cloud tools, and department-specific applications.
The challenge
While many foundational technologies were in place, city leadership lacked a unified, long-term roadmap to guide technology investments, align initiatives with organizational priorities, and ensure systems could scale to meet future service demands.
The city also faced increasing expectations from residents for digital access, transparency, and efficient service delivery, alongside growing cybersecurity risks and operational pressures on a small information systems team. Leadership sought a comprehensive, forward-looking Technology Modernization Plan that would balance innovation with fiscal responsibility, support day-to-day operations, and provide a clear framework for decision-making over the next five years.
Our approach and methodology
BerryDunn partnered with the city to develop a thorough Technology Modernization Plan grounded in collaboration, transparency, and practical execution. Our structured approach included:
- Citywide technology discovery activities: BerryDunn conducted interviews, workshops, surveys, and on-site sessions with departments across the organization to understand current systems, operational challenges, and future needs.
- Current-state assessment: We evaluated the existing technology environment, governance practices, staffing capacity, and use of enterprise applications, infrastructure, and data.
- Identification of challenges and opportunities: We synthesized discovery input and assessment findings into a clear set of technology challenges and improvement opportunities.
- Collaborative initiative development: We worked with city stakeholders to define a portfolio of modernization initiatives addressing governance, core infrastructure and applications, cybersecurity, resident services, and smart city capabilities.
- Prioritization and roadmapping: We applied a structured prioritization framework to assess and sequence initiatives based on city input on priority, organizational impact, relative benefit, implementation effort, and maturity.
- Implementation planning: We developed a five-year implementation roadmap and a detailed two-year work plan to support informed decision-making, sustainable resourcing, and phased execution.
The outcome
The finalized Technology Modernization Plan provided city leadership with an actionable roadmap to guide technology investments over a five-year horizon. The plan established a strong foundation for improved governance, clearer prioritization, and more predictable budgeting, enabling the city to move from reactive technology decisions to a coordinated, strategic approach.
Key outcomes of the engagement included:
- A structured governance framework to improve transparency, accountability, and cross-departmental alignment
- A prioritized and sequenced list of technology initiatives addressing cybersecurity, core systems, data governance, collaboration, and resident-facing services
- An implementation plan that balanced ambition with realistic staffing and financial constraints
- Increased organizational awareness of technology dependencies, risks, and opportunities
By grounding recommendations in industry best practices while tailoring them to the city’s specific environment and capacity, the plan positioned the organization to modernize at a sustainable pace while minimizing disruption to essential services.
About BerryDunn
BerryDunn’s local government consulting team has the experience to lead technology planning initiatives and develop actionable plans that help you think strategically and improve service delivery. We partner with you, maintaining flexibility and open lines of communication to help ensure that your team has the resources it needs. Learn more about our services and team.
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