Running Government Finance from Home: Tools to Help You Manage Remote Work
COVID-19 has caused considerably worse problems for considerably more businesses, but the day-to-day impact on state and local governments is no picnic, to say the least.
For starters, 67% of staff have accepted three or more new responsibilities to help manage the chaos caused by work-from-home demands and the inability of aging infrastructure to keep up. This, according to a recent Wakefield Whitepaper and survey of 500 state and local government finance and administrative departments – 88% of whom reported that accessing the information and tools to do their job are the top challenges of remote working.
To put it simply: Working from home isn’t working for many government finance teams. At least not without some high-tech help.
Does any of this sound familiar? Limited remote access to files, limited communication technology, and limited automation of processes are the top challenges for most state and local governments, but predicted average budget shortfalls of 24% for the upcoming fiscal year are a close second. And when you add in the fact that 89% of state and local governments do not have a fully automated platform to track travel and/or expenses, remote fiscal stewardship gets quite difficult. So without an investment in technology to alleviate these information and communication concerns, how can your department – and the citizen who depend on you – get through?
Now the good news. Wakefield reports that 75% of state and local governments say the pandemic has accelerated their department’s decision to invest in cloud-based budget management solutions. This will allow them to:
- Automate expense reimbursement and invoice processes.
- Use mobile tech (paperless expense reports and receipts) to increase adoption and compliance.
- Access real-time expense information.
- Improve visibility into spending.
By giving people easier tools to track and manage their spending, government finance and admin departments will get a better look at the spending that’s happening. And like they say, you can’t control something if you can’t see it.
The whitepaper also suggests that partnerships with the private sector may help speed government’s digital transformation, noting that 31% of officials say private industry could show them how to track process end to end or integrate digital collaboration across departments. One-quarter of government officials said private companies could help them with automation or real-time data analytics.
Think about that for a second: Private industry and the public sector working together to improve processes, increase efficiency, and cut costs. That’s an idea that not only works for your overworked government staff, it works for all of us.
Because anytime the government saves money, everyone saves money.