7 Reasons Why the City of Los Angeles' Move to Gmail Scares Me

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Comment by Jon Lee on July 30, 2010 at 6:08pm

Hi Dan, nice to talk to someone from Google's side. Yes, there are counterpoints for the ones that I made, and in the end, I'm sure the City of LA will be just fine. To clarify, and sorry I didn't mention in the post, what scares me is just in the beginning when new users are getting acclimated to the new system. During this time, I believe there will be a good deal of frustration, but in the long run, I think it's a win for everyone involved.

I've been a heavy Gmail and Google Apps user since 2004 and I still remember being frustrated for the first week before it all clicked.

Thanks for mentioning the event next Thursday. Will definitely try to be there.

Comment by Dan Israel on July 30, 2010 at 5:36pm

Hi Jon,

Interesting post. Your headline is a bit misleading -- it should be 5 things L.A. users need to know when moving to Google, plus 2 things that scare me. : ) (Full disclosure, I work for Google.)

It looks like you've now heard about the nested labels in Gmail. And as Scott points out, administrators have control over whether Chat history is saved or not, or saved at the discretion of the employee. In fact, admins can turn of Chat entirely, if an agency really doesn't want their employees to have it.

So, it sounds like the one remaining thing that scares you is giving employees a 25GB inbox. Think of how much time government employees spend today cleaning out their inboxes -- time that could more productively be spent on whatever they've been hired to do. Google has tools that allow administrators to create email archives & enforce retention policies to ensure that emails are handled appropriately. As for attachment overload -- Google's shared Docs mitigates that. You no longer need to attach a document -- simply point people to the URL where that document lives.

One final thought: we announced this week a new version of Google Apps -- called Google Apps for Government -- with additional measures to meet the needs of government employees. In addition, we've completed FISMA certification & accreditation for Google Apps. I'm participating in a live chat on GovLoop next Thursday to help answer people's questions about this new edition & how government agencies can put Google Apps to work. Please join in.

Comment by Jon Lee on July 30, 2010 at 11:00am

It's definitely tricky, Scott. Security is just one of those things that often gets a bad rep when it inconveniences business operations. People take security for granted until something happens, then the security people can say I told you so, then spend the next 72 hours fixing it.

I'm all for consolidation because theoretically, I believe in the benefits. But so far, we've seen some failures with gov running it's own data centers, so it makes sense from a business perspective to let the private sector handle it. I do like the idea of moving bits and pieces at a time, though this can be inconvenient for the employees that work with the data.

Good discussion, thanks.

Comment by Scott Horvath on July 30, 2010 at 7:36am

@Jon: Hard to really say. I think there's a definite need for moving some things to the cloud. But we really need to be picky about what, exactly, is moved. Moving entire agencies, I think, has unforeseen complications. Moving bits and pieces of agencies over time...probably fine.

Comment by Jon Lee on July 29, 2010 at 6:04pm

Thanks for your comment, Stephen. I had IM at my prior job and some of the stuff people said could probably get them fired so I'm with you.

Comment by Stephen Peteritas on July 29, 2010 at 11:21am

I mean I love my gmail so as an experienced user a lot of the above points are easily overlooked by me. BUT point 6 is extremely valid. I know the things I say on IM and if my boss was someone beside Steve I don't think I would want to hand over those convos.

Comment by Jon Lee on July 29, 2010 at 11:08am

Scott - Do you think current trends of government using third party SaaS like Salesforce and other open data related applications is less risky than using Google's cloud?

Chris - I don't know all that much, but from what I've gathered, it seems like the City is doing away with basic Microsoft Office products completely, unless your job requires advanced features not available on Google. But as far as email, I think Outlook is going out the door. So, it would be a great work around to IMAP your Gmail into Outlook, but my guess is its not an option. Maybe there's someone that works for the City that can weigh in?

Comment by Chris Bennett on July 29, 2010 at 10:23am

Great post Jon.

Counter point to consider: The experience/transition can be guided a number of ways by the city, even to the point where email doesn't look different at all. For example, with IMAP through Google Apps, employees could continue to use Outlook to manage email and contacts the same way they've always been able to. Chat can be disabled for everyone if desired. Blackberries will sync just as well using Google Sync, not changing the mobile experience any.

Now of course they could do none of that and hope everyone like the Gmail interface :) I believe the deal was more about wanting Google to manage it and saving money in the long run than a desire for a richer feature set.

Regarding storage, like it or not it seems the government is being forced to move to cloud solutions to save money. Personally I trust Google, Microsoft and Amazon more with keeping up on server security than I think I would most agency server admins (blatant assumption that those are often small IT teams and not 24x7 managed operations)

Comment by Scott Horvath on July 29, 2010 at 5:22am

Yep, I did see that Google/FISMA announcement which is certainly a boon for them. I think what offers is an excellent option to traditional client-based products. For the majority of users it will be slight transition and learning curve but they'll pick up on the differences quickly. However, it's only when you start getting very specialized uses of the tools that some people have done in the past with software products (but they can't do with the cloud ones...yet) that makes the transition difficult for a few.

But again, outside of the learning curve and differences in functionality...the bottom line is whether you put your full trust of government information, and keeping it secure, to a non-government entity that depends on revenue to keep afloat.

Thanks for the post as well...great thoughts!

Comment by Jon Lee on July 29, 2010 at 12:52am

Wow... thanks Scott for your review. Have you seen Google's recent announcement that it's launching a cloud catered to government? It's supposedly the first private offering that's FISMA certified http://www.govinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=2785. I don't know if that solves all security issues but I think it's success is more determined by large agencies taking the plunge and others following moreso than meeting security requirements.

Regarding your comments:
1) Yes, there are additional ways to move email out of your inbox, such as drag and drop. I didn't mention that because my point was to differentiate the nature of folders in Outlook vs labels in Gmail. Thanks for mentioning, though.

2) I just discovered that a few months ago, Google labs released a nesting labels feature to get the hierarchy in labels. It's probably easier and more stable than greasemonkey. I gave up on Better GMail a while back because it crashed too often.

3) I agree with your chat and capacity comments.

Overall, what makes Gmail even more fascinating are all the hacks and easter eggs that people have developed over the years. There certainly are ways to get around or enhance basic features, but I didn't want to get into them in this post because I'm talking about new users who are trying to understand the basics.

I think my personal position is I would rather go to Gmail for email but definitely Office over Google Apps.

Thanks for posting.

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