For agencies like the city of Fort Myers, Fla., and the South Carolina Department of Commerce, the solution to this challenge wasn’t finding more money or people; it was changing how they worked by utilizing an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform that enables automated workflows and AI, expands visibility for resource capacity planning, and helps maximize efficiency across agency departments through enterprise service management (ESM).
BUDGET PRESSURE AND STAFFING CONSTRAINTS
The city of Fort Myers provides a stark example of this reality. Richard Calkins, the city’s IT director, requested 15 new employees to fill critical gaps and meet the demands of a growing city. He received budget approval for one.
“Do more with less is the new normal; that is the way everyone has to operate,” Calkins said. “There’s escalating budget pressure, and everything is more expensive now.”
With a team that wasn’t growing, Calkins still had to manage over 200 vendor contracts and meet strict new compliance demands, including NIST standards and efficiency verification for the Florida Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE).
THE “AMAZONIFICATION” OF GOVERNMENT
Citizens don’t compare government services to other agencies; they compare them to their best consumer experiences. They expect to pay bills, request permits and report issues online with zero friction.
“Everyone expects things to be online and easy to do, so we are working through how we can accomplish that,” explained Calkins.
However, meeting this demand often leads to application sprawl. As agencies add more software-as-a-service tools to meet specific needs, integration becomes a nightmare and security risks increase.
That’s why using an ITSM tool that can properly integrate with systems and automate workflows is critical. By connecting systems through an integration hub within your ITSM platform, you gain better security and governance.
WHERE TO START: AUTOMATION QUICK WINS
When resources are tight, you can’t afford to overhaul everything at once. The most successful agencies start by automating high-volume, low-value tasks (think password resets, name change requests, etc.). Onboarding and offboarding are also popular candidates for automation.
Employee onboarding is often a manual, disjointed process involving HR, IT and Facilities. When it goes wrong, it kills morale.
“You want these new employees to be happy with their choice to come work for you,” Calkins said. “There’s nothing more deflating than showing up on day one, and the place isn’t ready for you.”
Fort Myers automated their entire onboarding workflow with TeamDynamix. Now, when a new hire is approved, the system automatically provisions laptops, software and access rights. The employee arrives at a fully ready workspace.
Conversely, automated offboarding is a critical security measure and one that is often heavily audited for compliance in the public sector.
Doug Foster, CIO at the South Carolina Department of Commerce, notes the risk of former employees retaining access, “It’s not a good thing if people are carrying credentials that no longer work for the organization. It’s really simple for something like that to fall through the cracks, so for us, automating that offboarding process has been a massive benefit.”
INTEGRATING SYSTEMS FOR IMPROVED ASSET MANAGEMENT
Manual data entry is a massive time sink for technicians. To save technicians time on tickets, the South Carolina Department of Commerce integrated Microsoft Intune with TeamDynamix.
As Foster explained, during the agency’s TeamDynamix implementation, the team was able to use the prebuilt Intune connector to populate all assets, serial numbers, makes and models within TeamDynamix in just five minutes, cutting a huge chunk of implementation time.
Technicians can now even restart devices directly from a service ticket, streamlining support significantly.
BEYOND IT: ESM EXPANDS VALUE
IT isn’t the only department drowning in email requests and spreadsheets. HR, Facilities, Legal and Marketing face the same workflow challenges. Enterprise service management takes the principles of IT service management and applies them across the agency.
WHY ESM MATTERS FOR GOVERNMENT
“It didn’t take much to implement, but the benefits were a game-changer for these departments,” Foster said regarding his agency’s expansion of TeamDynamix beyond IT.
By bringing other departments onto a unified service management platform, the agency gained:
- Consumer Visibility: Employees know exactly where their request stands.
- Workload Management: Department heads can finally see who is working on what.
- Data-Driven Justification: HR used real request data to justify a new position, moving from anecdotal complaints to hard evidence.
“Moving to ESM has been phenomenal for us,” Foster added. “We’re looking for more and more opportunities to roll this out further within the agency.”
AI TAKES IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
While automation handles the back end, AI can transform the user experience. But for government agencies, you need AI that actually works. This can help government agencies provide an “Amazon-like” experience without bogging down limited IT resources.
One example of effective AI combines a conversational interface with back-end automation, in the form of a virtual support agent. It doesn’t just tell a user how to reset a password; it triggers the password reset from within the chat window. By handling these interactions without human intervention, agencies can see a 30-70 percent reduction in tickets.
For the tickets that do reach the service desk, TeamDynamix’s AI Service Assist can surface contextual insights and suggest resolutions instantly. This can lead to a 40-90 percent reduction in resolution times, and technicians can save 4-7 minutes per ticket.
In addition, with AI Service Assist, AI can give knowledge base article suggestions to keep your content fresh, highlight outdated content that needs to be updated, and even auto-create article outlines from tickets if there’s a knowledge gap.
ITSM WITH A LOWER TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP
With efficiency mandates in place across the country, finding the right ITSM tool to modernize service with a limited budget can prove challenging. No-code ITSM tools can be a great option for public-sector agencies, as you don’t need a team of developers to implement and manage the tool.
“What we’ve found with TeamDynamix is that there’s not much care and feeding needed,” Foster said. “The pieces all fit together and are extremely well integrated.”
By eliminating the need for complex coding, agencies reduce the ongoing maintenance costs associated with legacy tools.
This also allows teams like HR and Facilities to build their own forms and workflows. IT sets the governance guardrails, but stops being the bottleneck for every minor change. This empowers departments to adapt their processes in real time.
MEASURABLE ROI IN MONTHS, NOT YEARS
In the public sector, long implementation timelines are often the norm. But modern platforms are breaking that cycle.
The South Carolina Department of Commerce implemented ITSM, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and ESM quickly and achieved measurable ROI in just 10 months.
“We were really naïve, walking in, to just how quickly you can get benefits from a system like this,” Foster said. “We could have done this a year or more ago, and just think of all the benefits we could have reaped in that time frame.”
Similarly, Fort Myers met all compliance and efficiency requirements while operating with a fraction of the requested staff, proving that the right tools can bridge the resource gap.
“If you’re not there yet, that is your job — to get everyone else on board,” Calkins said. “You have to do the sales pitch and help people understand you are going to save money, you are going to reduce tickets, and you are going to save resources.”
GETTING STARTED: PRACTICAL ADVICE FROM PEER AGENCIES
For CIOs and IT leaders ready to modernize, Calkins and Foster offer practical advice:
1. Start With the Right Mindset
“You can’t do process and automation correctly if the organization isn’t ready for it,” Calkins said. “You have to all want it, and you have to understand it.” Success requires buy-in from city or county management, not just the IT department.
2. Get Your Foundation Right
If you don’t have a centralized ticketing system, get one immediately. “You can’t manage what you don’t know when it comes to things like time spent on tasks, cost and lack of efficiencies,” advised Calkins.
3. Start Small, Build Momentum
Don’t try to automate everything at once. Target the most painful problems — like onboarding — that frustrate both staff and management. “We implemented some basic workflows, and the cost/benefit was insane,” Foster said.
To learn more about modernizing with AI ITSM, check out the latest e-book from TeamDynamix: The AI Service Desk Advantage
