General Treasury of the Republic innovates in the cloud and transforms its organizational culture
About Tesorería General de la República
The General Treasury of the Republic (TGR) is the institution responsible for collecting, distributing, and managing the resources of the Public Treasury in Chile, through a modern, efficient, and secure management, which facilitates interaction with its users and citizens, thus contributing to the country’s development. It has 2,013 employees across 48 offices from Arica to Porvenir.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Tigabytes
Tigabytes is a Google Premier Partner in Latin America and supports companies in their digital transition through SaaS services, thus ensuring a real change in the work culture of organizations.
Thanks to Google Workspace, TGR began the transition to the cloud, promoting a culture of collaborative work, efficiency, and security.
Results
- Widely consolidated use of Google Workspace tools among employees
- 2,200 Google Workspace licenses
- 11,377 virtual meetings held in one month
- 100% of employees use Gmail
Handles more than 20,000 transactions per day
At the end of 2018, the General Treasury of the Republic of Chile (TGR) began a comprehensive modernization process, seeking to make its management more accessible to the public. To reach this goal, the organization started from a central premise: understanding that change is mainly cultural rather than just technological. This required a commitment from all its employees.
"We focused on three aspects: citizenship, technological tools, and committed employees. This path is irreversible and has allowed us to provide more accessible, user-friendly, efficient, and secure responses to our users."
—Ximena Hernández, General Treasurer of the Republic, TGRThis was no small challenge. It required strengthening the sense of belonging of its teams and breaking through the fears generated by such a powerful change as moving from the old system to a management of daily processes, supported by a suite that most had only used as personal email up to that point.
At the end of 2018, the institution began a journey to ensure greater speed and efficiency, more secure and robust processes, and to establish a more accessible government for the public. For that purpose, it needed to have better work tools and, at the same time, people who were innovative, mobilized, and constantly learning.
TGR incorporated cloud technology in all areas of its work, and Google Workspace for all its employees for internal communication and coordination tools, backed by a solid marketing and internal communication campaign to motivate all its members.
As Soledad Zamorano, Head of TGR's Institutional Communication Unit, points out: "We were very concerned about appealing to the teams with this challenge, especially the older generation, debunking the myths about our move to the cloud, and that is why we ran a colorful and accessible campaign, based on the idea of attracting digital ambassadors and leaders. We were well over the 10% required for the start-up, engagement was very high, and it was those employees who spent time helping their colleagues adapt to these tools."
"It was clear that there was a need to start working collaboratively, but I think Google Workspace exceeded all expectations of what initially emerged as a need."
—José Manuel Valiente Wittver, Head of Digital Transformation Unit, TGRThe first steps of an ongoing process
After analyzing several market proposals and establishing the need to leave behind analog processes, TGR migrated all of its email accounts to Gmail.
To do that, it needed to share with its employees the tools, benefits, and potential for expansion and productivity that Google Workspace’s solutions could provide. Although the trust placed in the change was genuine from the start, the institution encountered certain concerns due to the previous lack of knowledge about the cloud. These were addressed with the participation of digital leaders and the support from Tigabytes, a Google Workspace partner, who trained the teams to incorporate the solutions.
The first step was migrating the data employees stored on their computers to the cloud, together with an adjustment in the internal information-security regulations that defined this tool as the official tool for backing up institutional computers. By doing this, TGR went from under 30% of the computers backed up to 100% of them in the cloud.
Then, local file servers were replaced by Drive folders, so all internal processes storing information gained more flexible storage. TGR's processes adapted quickly to this scenario and, as a result, remote working is now a secure and efficient reality.
The institution has 33 TB of information available in Google's cloud, 14.3 of which are email data. In addition, TGR has a total of 2,200 Google Workspace licenses and maintains physical servers, in its own and external data centers, to host critical data, forming a hybrid multicloud architecture.
"In the previous platform, support tickets associated with email, network drives, or information recovery were permanently being handled. Since the transition, we immediately noticed a positive impact with the elimination of this type of operational tasks. In line with the new challenges, we currently also have added institucional cell phones to Google Workspace management," says Fabián Jaque, Head of the Computer Support Unit.
Even greater challenges
For the organization, Google Workspace came at the right time. The comprehensive digital transformation process allowed them to gain agility in their employees' tasks, spend more time on complex procedures, and improve service quality for their users. Before implementing this project, TGR had only digitalized 60% of its procedures. As an indirect result of the change required by the process, that figure is now 80%.
However, TGR would have to face even more and contingent challenges, first after the social unrest in October 2019, which practically paralyzed the country for several weeks. And then, due to the coronavirus pandemic, which required the service to maintain operational continuity from Arica to Porvenir with practically 70% of its staff rotating between on-site and remote-working shifts.
The process helped improve services and the ability to respond to the public, since the employees had consolidated the paradigm shift into their way of working, which became more collaborative and innovative.
Almost naturally, the teams began to explore and expand their use of Google Workspace tools. At the same time, TGR had to respond to the needs of families and SMEs, which were immersed in a difficult economic situation, by making the payment of bonds and benefits of the government's Emergency Economic Plan. In just four months in 2020, this plan required massive transfers equivalent to almost three income operations, the most demanding annual process for the Treasury up until that point.
In parallel, the service promoted innovative practices to strengthen the sense of belonging of the employees who were working remotely due to the pandemic. Sharing documents and projects collaboratively, as well as the challenge of staying connected to the institution and being able to respond to citizens' demands in times of economic crisis, nurtured a spirit that the teams still value today.
Workshops and talks on operational and psychosocial support topics, with a high level of views—about 45% of the total internal audience—through the YouTube channel, have been major milestones of the positive cultural change that this process has allowed.
Holding online meetings or sharing conversations through Chat has become part of the daily dynamics of being more connected. Here, employees themselves create their own rooms to address each project or topic, incident management, committees, among others, which are backed up and available for consultation at any time.
This largely facilitated remote-working practices, without losing the permanent link with the organization, as well as creating sites for each division, incorporating document search engines, and other tools that allow digital roles to be prioritized.
"In 2018, TGR, as part of the technological strategy, began the gradual transition to a hybrid architecture, powered by the cloud, with the aim of improving security, providing flexibility, and reducing the costs of our technological ecosystem. Months later, this decision allowed us to be well prepared for the challenges of remote working."
—Cristián Céspedes, Head of Information Technology, TGRThe use of Google Workspace tools has increased considerably among TGR employees. The most representative case is the use of Google Meet, which went from 7% in March 2020 to 84% in June 2021, with 11,377 virtual meetings held in one month. Another aspect of particular relevance has been the ability to connect an institution with more than 2,000 employees, not only to provide them with technical tools, but also to encourage self-care against COVID-19.
The change in user experience
The appropriate change management implemented by the service's management and shared and communicated by the headquarters centrally and in each region had an undeniable impact on the ability to provide a response to citizens. Incorporating interoperability practices with other services, and integrating Chile’s Internal Revenue Services’ unique and tax codes to ensure greater security in the procedures were necessary for the most complex days of the lockdowns imposed by the authorities.
The institution was able to make progress in the design of a model that arose almost spontaneously and that, gradually, also took shape in the cloud: the creation of a Virtual Office, which has enabled users and taxpayers to send documents for procedures that, until then, were exclusively in person since June 2020. Although the migration to the cloud was only part of the comprehensive TGR transformation, it undoubtedly activated and facilitated other processes, such as the integration of new payment services for public institutions, or more flexible and remote procedures.
In future, TGR plans to continue incorporating more Google Workspace tools to improve the quality of its service to Chilean citizens. In fact, the institution is already working on a pilot to incorporate video calls as an alternative service for procedures requiring more employee engagement.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Tesorería General de la República
The General Treasury of the Republic (TGR) is the institution responsible for collecting, distributing, and managing the resources of the Public Treasury in Chile, through a modern, efficient, and secure management, which facilitates interaction with its users and citizens, thus contributing to the country’s development. It has 2,013 employees across 48 offices from Arica to Porvenir.
About Tigabytes
Tigabytes is a Google Premier Partner in Latin America and supports companies in their digital transition through SaaS services, thus ensuring a real change in the work culture of organizations.