The City of LA's story

The City of Los Angeles -- in a decision unanimously approved by the Los Angeles City Council -- recently selected Google Apps to replace its current email system for all 34,000 city employees. Los Angeles Chief Technology Officer Randi Levin and Kevin Crawford, Assistant General Manager of LA's Information Technology Agency, discuss the reasons behind the city's decision.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Los Angeles
• Google Apps
• government customer

[chr1shunter]

This is great! I hope they are successful enough in L.A. to persuade more organizations to use Google's services.

[mtgentry]

A wise decision by the city of L.A. It's about time.

[SagaciousSilence]

I'm a life-long Californian and have lived in the LA and Orange counties. To know LA, ask a native. LA is a disaster. The LA county is filled with poverty and crime. It has the worse effects of ethnic diversity, with whites forming enclaves in the few nicest parts (Brentwood, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Calabasas, and Westlake all have a white pop. of >85% with at most 5% black & hispanic) while all other cities being crime/gang infested (with hispanic pop. of >85%). LA is rotten.

[Stevenx01]

Gale Beggy became the CTO of Los Angeles!

[shahinkohan]

"CSC and Google's behavior goes beyond a mere failure to communicate in a timely manner and instead, on several occasions, has risen to the level of misrepresentation," the memo from city technology chief Randi Levin said. "These failures are wholly unacceptable to the city of Los Angeles."

[shahinkohan]

This is a disaster. They have failed and city has lost millions of $ ... this was a mistake they should have got a different system.

[bagoona]

Can it detect welfare fraud?

[rehndawg]

They did it because of the price so don't get your hopes up. Not too long ago a client of mine dumped google apps before it went fullblown. Why did they do it...because almost all of googles interfaces are ugly...sorry google but its true...yes it can be customized but usually the young adults do that not baby boomers or people in their 30s or 40s...dont expect us to make it look good...microsoft's online services are sleek...thats all google lacks a better first impression then thell flourish

[ak99372]

"The data will never change the ownership it will be always owned by city of LA" ... try to explain that to someone who steals the confidential information. How can city trust Google with their data? Any pissed Google employee will know the back end door to the system... next thing you know we will be "googling" LA confidential online.

[8035155]

24,009

[daftrok]

@krabadie How will this put people out of work? You could just work as IT support for companies that provide cloud computing. It's like the automatic check outs in grocery stores; instead of being constantly understaffed like what most stores do on purpose, you now get breathing room.