How does NOC Technology help Local Governments?

Municipal governments must manage an incredible assortment of services: public safety, parks and recreation, sewage, water, trash, economic development, public records, construction permits and oversight, courts… the list is nearly endless. As a result, municipal and county governments also have to wrangle an equally long list of IT needs. 

Over the years, many local governments have turned to custom software to deal with the challenge. Others have hired IT departments. Still others have outsourced their IT to managed service providers. 

NOC Technology considers itself fortunate to serve several local governments across Missouri in their day-to-day and strategic IT needs. As a result of this experience, we have learned to appreciate the complex demands that these institutions face. Today we’re going to discuss a few of the benefits that we provide to these clients and how we address their unique needs.   

1. We eliminate the burden of hiring and managing IT personnel.

The wide variety of departments and programs within a government requires a very diverse workforce and support staff: librarians, civil engineers, trash collectors, lawyers, police, maintenance staff, and commissioners all have to work together in the same system. When a government cannot retain their staff at full capacity, vital services are lost or delayed. 

Since the pandemic, competition for employees has been intense across all sectors, but local governments have struggled to remain fully staffed. In 2022, 81% of local and state governments were hiring and 69% of them reported that despite hiring and retention efforts, even more employees were quitting. During labor shortages, local government faces an uphill battle to retain staff since they must compete directly with for-profit enterprises hiring from the same pool. 

Although most small- to medium-sized enterprises benefit from outsourcing their IT to a managed service provider, local governments have more to gain than most. Due to budget constraints, government-mandated hiring protocols, and a shortage of qualified personnel, staffing a local government’s IT department can be a major headache. By outsourcing IT needs, local government can reduce the oversight burden of an entire department. 

As an added benefit, not only does a government remove the human resource hassle of hiring, retention, and firing, but it gains an entire staff of IT experts and professionals. Contracting a managed service provider like NOC Technology provides experts in every area that a local government could need: help desk, cybersecurity, software, cloud management, VoIP phone systems, IT strategy, hardware and networking, and more. 



Our professional staff has been assembled to retain expertise in every major IT service area, and our experience with government clients means that we understand the challenges that they face. 

2. We know how to make budgets work for local government.

For any organization, for-profit business, non-profit organization, or public institution, the bottom line is almost always the bottom line. However, we also recognize that local government budgets are especially challenging with unique constraints. Due to fixed sources of revenue, policy constraints, and restricted funds, local governments often do not have viable options to quickly increase profits or flex their budgets. 

Working with our county, city, and other local government clients, we have learned how to help them achieve their IT goals while staying within their budgets. We do this in several key ways: 

1. Services bundling:

Through bundling, our government clients can pay a single monthly bill for all their IT needs. NOC Technology can bundle your internet, VoIP phone system, help desk technical support, hardware, and software into a single, stable monthly bill. This is the major financial advantage of working with a managed service provider – and most often where savings can occur. 

Most local governments manage a plethora of line items for IT related expenses: variable costs for salaries and benefits of an entire IT department, the capital expenses of IT infrastructure, and the operational expenses of internet, phone, and other technical services. With NOC, local governments can condense these items into a single, monthly operational line item. 

By providing hardware-as-a-service (HaaS), NOC Technology is able to lease, maintain, and update every piece of IT equipment that you might need – from servers to phones to laptops to printers. HaaS allows local government to move their IT infrastructure from a capital expense to a stable, monthly operational expense and alleviate the concern of constant replacements and repairs. 

2. Budget education:

We work with dozens of clients in Missouri and have a good idea of what a local business or government needs to operate smoothly. We can pass that knowledge along to government officials to make sure that they only pay for what they need. We pride ourselves on never selling a service or product to a client who does not need it. 

3. Awareness of constraints:

Like we mentioned above, we know how challenging it can be for a local government to maintain an adequate IT setup. We’re willing to work through your needs and constraints to find something that will actually work for you within your budget. 

4. Software Optimization:

Through the years, many local governments have been sold “one-off” custom software that is not only expensive, but extremely difficult to maintain and update. NOC Technology has abundant experience in helping our clients migrate to a mainstream option that is flexible enough to meet their needs without all the hassle of being tied to a single bespoke design. This not only improves a government’s IT capacity but gets them on a stable platform that can evolve securely with them at the pace of software advancement. 

5. Compliance with transparency laws:

We retain compliance experts on our staff and make sure that we and our clients stay in line with the law according to regulatory experts. Here in Missouri, that includes making sure the IT of our government clients is properly backed-up and accessible to Sunshine Laws if they are ever applied. 

3. We help to develop a solid IT strategy for the years ahead.

Most local governments take a reactive approach to their IT. They wait for a problem to develop and then work urgently to fix it. Our experience allows us to get ahead of that curve. We develop IT strategic plans and hardware roadmaps with our municipal and county clients to understand what they will need when—limiting surprises to the bare minimum. 

This is not to say that problems will never arise, but with a proactive approach to maintenance, we ensure that these surprise issues are quickly identified and resolved. At this point, our processes, technology, and experience often allow us to recognize a problem (and sometimes even fix it) before our client even realizes it. 

We believe that IT systems should be flexible and scalable, allowing a government client to comfortably grow and evolve without being constrained by restrictive systems. Through the years, many governments have been told that they need unique, custom software to meet their needs. Though there are such cases, today they are few and far between. 

Mainstream, modern software built specifically for local governments is now extremely robust and flexible, providing far more function and reliability than one-off solutions ever could. We specialize in helping municipal and county governments migrate from legacy systems to modern systems that will grow with them. 

Municipal governments have opportunities to dramatically improve their services through new technologies. GPS-equipped tablets for snowplow fleets help drivers hit main streets first, take the most efficient routes, and minimize missed locations. Self-serve websites for constituents to pay fines and taxes save residents a trip to local offices. Smart utility or parking meters can facilitate quick, automated payments. 

However, behind these cutting-edge solutions, the core tech that allows government to fulfill its day-to-day functions is often the bigger challenge—which is where NOC comes in. Outdated computers, servers, and software can force entire departments to slowly crawl through their daily tasks—or even bring a day’s work to a standstill. We help governments avoid those efficiency quagmires by keeping equipment in top shape and up to date. 



4. We protect our clients with comprehensive cybersecurity measures.

Hackers know that small city, municipal, and county governments are unlikely to be well-protected against cyberattacks. As a result, without regard to the services that they disrupt, cybercriminals have been crippling dozens of local governments each year through ransomware attacks. As of 2022, the situation had become so severe that the FBI issued a public warning to small local governments about the growing threat of ransomware. 

No level of public institution is safe from these attacks. The entire network of the expansive Los Angeles School District had to be taken offline in September 2022 due to a malware attack. The US Marshals Service themselves had to face down a ransomware attack in February of 2023. 

And its not just large, nationally recognizable institutions that are being targeted. Smaller local governments are under increasing duress. From Bernadillo County, NM the seat of Albuquerque to Pamlico County, NC, population 12,500, municipal and county governments are now frequent targets of efficient hacking groups. 

Due to budget constraints, local governments are often poorly prepared to protect themselves against cyberthreats like ransomware, malware, phishing, business email compromise, and others. Here in Missouri, as the cybersecurity crisis deepens, the Department of Public Safety, working with the Department of Homeland Security has begun to attempt to address this problem through periodic grants that fund cybersecurity improvements in local governments and public institutions. 

NOC has a proven track record of helping Missouri’s city and county governments update their cybersecurity practices. Working together with local governments, we develop plans for how to implement preventative measures and policies as well as response plans if the worst were to occur. 



Our cybersecurity experts help local government improve internal policies, authentication protocols, cybersecurity insurance, firewalls, DNS filtering, dark web scanning, email protection, employee training, and other critical cybersecurity measures that protect government employees and constituents from cybercriminals. 

Is your government institution ready for some IT help?  

Although it might seem like a huge burden to transition your IT to a managed service provider, we have walked hundreds of clients through our transition process. We want the process to be as smooth as possible for everyone involved, which is why we take our on-boarding and transition period very seriously.  

We always start with a free meeting to get an idea of your pain points, then we can discuss some of the ways that we can help take care of them.  

Do you think that your county or city government might be ready for some IT help? Just click the button below to schedule an evaluation with one of our team members. We look forward to hearing from you.