Digital systems are the lifeblood of state and local government operations, from issuing business licenses to processing tax payments or delivering emergency alerts. When these services fail, the impact is immediate; services grind to a halt, resulting in an erosion of trust between agencies and the public.
Resilience has become a national priority. The White House’s 2025 Executive Order, Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness, mandated the creation of a National Resilience Strategy that shifts more responsibility for risk management to states and localities. This puts tremendous pressure on state and local governments to build and maintain complex IT systems that both deliver and protect essential services, because resilience is not achieved through a single project or investment. It requires ongoing attention, with tools and practices that can adapt as threats and demands evolve and escalate. Automated testing, continuous quality assurance and a culture of preparedness all play central roles in this critical effort.
Automation is the Backbone of Resilience
An often overlooked element of resilience is simply the automation of key processes. Automation allows state and local agencies to keep services running reliably with minimal human oversight. Time-consuming tasks like monitoring systems and running software tests can all be automated, eliminating the need for developers to hunt for coding errors continually and freeing IT teams to focus on larger strategic needs.
The National Resilience Strategy promises the creation of a National Risk Register, which will identify and quantify threats like wildfires, cyberattacks and infrastructure failure. Automated testing tools that monitor software and systems in real time and stress-test systems will be especially important for agencies to respond rapidly to entries within this Risk Register.
Consider a scenario where a city rolls out an updated property tax portal. Automated testing can validate new features before launch, ensuring residents can make payments without disruption and on time. Similarly, automated monitoring can catch abnormal activity on a 911 dispatch system in real time, helping IT staff act before it escalates into a complete outage.
Automation also enables rapid scaling. During emergencies like wildfires or hurricanes, demand for relief portals or public alert systems can spike dramatically. Automated processes ensure that systems expand capacity quickly, preventing delays and downtime when citizens need help most.
The Value of Continuous Testing and Quality Assurance
Citizens expect their interactions with state and local agencies to be as seamless and intuitive as ordering a product online or chatting with a customer service representative at a major retailer.
Unfortunately, local governments aren’t Amazon. They are under pressure to deliver applications and services under tight budgets and with limited IT resources. This situation often leads to rushed deployments, as agencies try to roll out new digital services quickly to meet public demand.
The benefits of automation apply across all types of software testing. Regression testing checks whether previously working features still function after new updates and verifies that existing functions continue to work after teams add new features. Furthermore, stress testing ensures that critical systems can handle heavy traffic, like an unexpected surge of unemployment or insurance claims. Automated security testing identifies weaknesses before attackers can exploit them.
Automation is complemented by embedding testing earlier in the development cycle (i.e., adopting a “shift-left” mentality), agencies can catch issues before they reach the public. Shifting left also helps agencies save time and money and avoid the erosion of public trust by preventing the need to rework software flaws that developers could have seen early in the development process.
Creating a Culture of Preparedness
Technology alone does not create resiliency. A culture that values readiness, collaboration, and learning is equally important. Establishing a culture of preparedness begins with leadership but must extend across departments, especially in smaller governments where roles overlap and resources are tight.
Under the National Resilience Strategy, state and local leaders are explicitly tasked with taking the lead on preparedness, supported by streamlined federal policies. This means agencies may need to adapt by upskilling their teams for cyber risk management and interagency coordination — not just reactively, but proactively.
Key cultural practices include:
- Facilitating cross-department collaboration: IT, public safety, finance and administrative teams working together to identify risks and prepare response plans.
- Implementing training and skills development: Equipping staff with the knowledge to operate new tools and react effectively to cyber incidents or system failures.
- Maintaining clear communication channels: Establishing reliable ways to share information quickly between departments or even neighboring jurisdictions during crises.
- Learning from past events: Routinely conducting post-incident reviews, such as those conducted after cyberattacks or natural disasters, helps agencies identify vulnerabilities and strengthen their processes so they can be well prepared for the future.
A Framework for Trust and Reliability
Agencies must continue to practice resilience if they are to continuously deliver the services citizens have come to expect, especially during times of crisis. Automation, rigorous testing, and a culture of preparedness form the framework for dependable, resilient state and local government operations.
This framework strengthens the ability of agencies at the federal, state and local levels to deliver reliable, trustworthy services and strengthens community confidence in the government’s capacity to serve effectively.
Ben Baldi is Senior Vice President of Global Public Sector for Tricentis. Ben has spent more than 15 years delivering solutions to federal and state government agencies to help them achieve their mission through IT modernization. He currently leads Tricentis’ public sector team, working closely with DOD and civilian agency customers to provide automated low code software testing.
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