Accela takes top honors for fourth year in a row as industry moves toward cloud solutions and off-the-shelf-apps
On Tuesday, Government Technology magazine (Govtech) recognized Accela for its contributions to cloud services and off-the-shelf apps in its annual Govtech 100 listing of innovative public sector IT companies.
Accela is honored to be a part of the Govtech 100, that represents a compilation of 100 government IT companies that have driven modernization and service improvements for state and local governments.
In an accompanying webcast that spotlighted the companies, industry trends and the factors driving the selection, Govtech subject matter experts credited Accela for its ongoing cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) development as well as its effort to make enterprise solutions more accessible via simple, off-the-shelf cloud applications.
Dennis McKenna, the CEO of e.Republic — Govtech’s parent company, said the emergence of such cloud services are not unlike software’s impact on state and local government in the 1980s, where there was massive evolution in technological innovation that produced a new market of services. Today Mckenna said the shift is the result of both technology and a demand to scale services.
“There are structural problems that governments are facing with pensions, aging demographics that are driving serious price pressures on what government can spend money on, and because of that, these new technologies are driving government as never before to look at new kinds of solutions and approaches,” McKenna said. “That’s why you see so much adoption of SaaS, cloud and services that are built around that.”
In 2018, Accela launched its applications for planning, building and cannabis regulation — with more slated to launch for 2019. Accela also launched Version 10 of its Civic Platform, that equips state and local governments with a faster, easier-to-use interface to manage services. Compared to on premises enterprise solutions, these come at drastically lower costs tied for maintenance, hardware and cybersecurity. In terms of deployment time, they have shrunk installation times from years to months.
e.Republic Chief Innovation Officer Dustin Haisler said findings from the Center for Digital Government, the media company’s research wing, indicate there are number of factors driving what he dubbed as “government’s App Store moment.” Haisler said these catalysts include an unbundling of capabilities, where the cloud allows localities more solutions for specific services, the cloud’s power to enable affordable and expandable infrastructure, the use of data analytics and the government IT industry’s rapid investment growth— activities Haisler and McKenna said are now mirroring private sector markets.
“We’re seeing this exponential shift from making things accessible, to making things transactional. This is the govtech [industry] of today,” Haisler said. “The platforms are emerging, the platforms are coming … companies are creating these platform dynamics that bring governments new capabilities in a one-stop shop.”
In September 2018, Accela announced a partnership with Microsoft that further enhances its suite of Civic Solutions, affording government customers to pair solutions with Microsoft Azure, and its enhanced features in cybersecurity, interoperability with other apps and scalability. Further, Accela has improved its customer resources and leadership, a move that includes the hire of the industry thought leader Gary Kovacs as CEO. Previously Kovacs served as the CEO of Mozilla and AVG Technologies where he led the development of multiple innovation efforts in open source technologies and product expansions.
At Accela, Kovacs said his decision to lead the company was driven by what he sees as an inflection point in the govtech industry, or “shift.”
“I’m inspired by the work our customers do every day to create communities that are thriving, safe and inviting. This is an exciting time to join the company and I look forward to working with our customers, partner community, employees and investors to lead Accela on its continued path of being a world-class technology provider for governments of all sizes.”
