The Monterrey Government digitalizes citizen services for better management
About Gobierno de Monterrey
The Monterrey Government handles the local population's basic needs. Employing 7,800 staff, it also organizes and plans the territory's economic, social, and environmental development.
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About Xertica
Xertica is a technology consultant driving digital transformation processes using cloud technology.
Supported by Xertica, the government transitioned to a hybrid model built on Google Cloud to streamline citizen services.
Google Cloud results
- Participatory Budget involvement has quadrupled with no platform disruption
- New applications deployed for services and procedures
- Ongoing support to spot anomalies
- Freed-up storage resources
- Improved collaborative work
Management tasks automated to free up resources
The Monterrey Government is responsible for the planning and organization that ensures the economic, social, and environmental development of the city of Monterrey, Mexico, as well as promoting citizen participation within the municipality.
As of 2023, the government employs 7,800 staff, and has 11 secretariats and three decentralized agencies. Its IT team operates across two strategic lines: the Office of Support and Infrastructure, engaged in hardware and telecommunications, and the Office of Digital Government, responsible for data governance and software.
The government recently created a Secretariat of Innovation and Open Government to streamline procedures and access to municipal services. This involved a firm commitment to technological innovation, that the Monterrey Government decided to carry out with the help of technology consultant Xertica and Google Cloud.
A cloud-enabled hybrid model
In 2021, the government's human resources and infrastructure budgets were running tight, which led to the need to provide its citizens with digital services in the near future.
For the Monterrey Government, service interoperability was a crucial factor when it came to investing in digital transformation. However, a full renovation of its infrastructure was out of reach.
Google Cloud's managed services were considered an excellent option to preserve the government's existing on-premise infrastructure within a hybrid environment, projecting scalability simply, quickly, and safely.
Human-driven digitalization
Together with Xertica, the Monterrey Government assessed the feasibility of adopting Google Cloud solutions. The consulting firm explored the government's original architecture and planned the migration process in stages.
"We followed Google Cloud's best practices and recommendations for deployment. For digital transformation projects, we used methodologies we developed and tested. We have the support of a large, certified team with ample experience in public sector projects in Mexico."
—Yuri Revilla, Presales Specialist, XerticaMigration posed several challenges: training staff on how to adopt new technologies; implementing new cybersecurity measures; and achieving interoperability between the services the municipality offers.
"One of the main difficulties was generating tangible results in a short period. I believe one of the project's success factors was that the Monterrey Government acted as a real driver of change within the municipality. Citizens secured concrete benefits from technology," explains Héctor Emmanuel Rodríguez Carvallo, Public Sector Leader at Xertica.
As Xertica knew how to address these challenges and the government's plans for the future, Google Cloud solutions were set in motion, and in 2022 the Monterrey Government was able to take its operations to the next level.
"The professionalism and human touch of Xertica's and Google Cloud's contact and technical support are exemplary. They're always on the lookout for project implementation needs, providing customized, 24/7 assistance."
—Cintia Smith, Secretary of Innovation and Open Government, Monterrey GovernmentStreamlining municipal services
The Monterrey Government's early achievements after adopting Google Cloud solutions included implementing a citizen participation platform and a content management system to publish websites owned by the municipality. A single digital window is also being deployed in a short amount of time, widely benefiting local residents.
"The citizen participation platform allowed us to transparently execute initiatives such as the Participatory Budget, which is highly complex for citizens to understand. We have executed it twice already and had no significant issues. The system ran well in the cloud and was stable. In the second iteration, we quadrupled participation with no setbacks," says Cintia Smith.
The Director of Digital Government, César Benjamín García Martínez, also emphasized that the possibility of scaling as needed was a huge benefit. "When loading times are long, we can adjust and calibrate to support the impact on traffic using all of our resources to avoid negative repercussions. We can scale as needed, and when the critical moment comes to an end, we can go back to using as few resources as possible," he explains.
Thanks to tools such as Cloud Storage, the Monterrey Government managed to free up storage resources in static files, and with AlloyDB, inquiries are now replied to in milliseconds.
In addition, Cloud Monitoring allows the team to track the use and performance of active services to make instance sizing decisions, optimize costs, and save resources.
"When we administer public resources, which stem directly from real estate taxes, the efficiency element becomes more significant. Doing more with less is a learning exercise that proves useful to any government aiming to develop state-of-the-art technology models in a municipality," explains the Secretary of Innovation and Open Government.
The time invested in infrastructure design has also been considerably reduced, freeing up energy to focus on deploying applications that improve citizens' daily lives.
"Google Cloud features comparative advantages that help create collaborative solutions between several government agencies. It enables interoperability, facilitates the deployment of digital solutions, and it's trustworthy."
—César Benjamín García Martínez, Director of Digital Government, Monterrey GovernmentWhen handling large volumes of sensitive information, data security cannot be taken lightly. The Monterrey Government must therefore have constant, automated backups should it need to recover from a loss. The event log allows for low-level activity and interaction tracking that makes it easier to respond to unwanted events.
The institution is planning to adopt a resilient, self-scalable scheme in the future, supported by Google Kubernetes Engine and serverless services, and is considering migrating its entire municipal historic archive to the cloud. Its Google Cloud journey is just beginning.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Gobierno de Monterrey
The Monterrey Government handles the local population's basic needs. Employing 7,800 staff, it also organizes and plans the territory's economic, social, and environmental development.
About Xertica
Xertica is a technology consultant driving digital transformation processes using cloud technology.