How Can iPaaS Help State and Local Governments?
What is iPaaS? In general terms, iPaaS is an integration platform as a service, a single platform that agencies and companies can use as a central hub of systems interoperability.
The platform connects applications, providing seamless business process integration. For organizations, iPaaS allows you to bridge different applications, cloud, and on-premises solutions. You can see how this would be advantageous for businesses. It's also highly effective for state and local governments.
For Government IT managers, iPaaS offers integration services that mirror enterprise solutions. This streamlines workflows for internal staff and citizens who need government agencies to answer their questions and fill their needs at the same speed as their usual APIs.
What Is iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)?
An iPaaS solution is a platform that allows you to integrate the software and applications you use in various environments. The solution will enable you to use the data from the software you have on your premises and different cloud applications. This gives you one consolidated hub and lets your team use automated tools that streamline workflow.
Your iPaaS provider can help you integrate legacy systems, APIs, custom solutions, and newer applications so that everything works together and no data or communication falls through the cracks. Your team can access the platform through online portals or mobile options, making it far more efficient when you have staff working remotely or in different locations.
With an iPaaS solution, your IT department might take the lead and handle all integrations in-house. This gives them the ability to add custom-built solutions that are unique to your organization. Many state and local government agencies use third-party iPaaS providers that specialize in working with government technology solutions.
How Does Integration Platform as a Service Work?
Often, iPaaS vendors are referred to as middleware. These hosted platforms help your team use all of their tools together. Consider the different applications, APIs, and software solutions staff and citizens use to communicate with your agency. The platform allows you to manage all of these different environments and channels of information through cloud integration.
This means that your data can be used universally and easily. Staff members using one application will have access to the central database, so they don't have to manually input information that already exists in the system somewhere else. This data integration ability streamlines the workflow and allows you to manage all of the solutions through the cloud. Users will find that it speeds up development for in-house custom solutions so that you can test and deploy more efficiently.
How a Government iPaaS Solution Can Help
Integration platform connects all government organization's technologies, from the cloud to on-premise solutions. This is especially important for the public sector because legacy and internal systems are often used, and it's difficult to integrate these programs with third-party solutions. An iPaaS gives you one hub to help transfer data seamlessly. This means improved efficiency for the internal staff and increased ability to meet the needs of the citizens within your community.
For government or state agencies, security and cost are heightened issues. An iPaaS solution gives you a unified solution that allows you to maintain legacy systems, add custom solutions, and integrate with newer APIs, making it more cost-efficient than other methods. At the same time, it's a more secure solution because it gives your team one platform that can be more easily monitored and secured. You're less likely to experience data loss than when using separate platforms. Users can share information seamlessly to meet customers' or citizens' needs, and data management is more efficient through one iPaaS platform.
What Is iPaaS? Key Functions of the Solution
What is iPaaS? integration solution for your organization? To start, you need to understand the critical functionalities of the solution and what benefits it offers.
Here are some of the functionalities that can benefit any government organization.
Data Sharing
An iPaaS solution offers excellent B2B data exchanges. It also works well in the public sector; government agencies need access to real-time data and sharing options. The improved communication method is one of the functionalities that your team will appreciate.
Managing Data Mapping and Governance
With access to every data point throughout your organization, the iPaaS solution allows you better oversight and the ability to manage data more comprehensively and efficiently. This means you can map data from one platform or solution to another, eliminating errors and allowing for more automated processes.
Agility
To deliver on agility, iPaaS offers low-code and no-code solutions so that your team can easily simplify integrations and add new applications to your process.
Workflow Management
This solution allows you to configure custom workflows. This is ideal to meet the individual needs of your departments while mapping to the solutions your team uses for their protocols.
Availability of Developer Tools
Whether you contract a third-party provider specializing in government organizations or rely on your in-house IT department, the integrated platform as a service solution allows you to access developer tools and customize solutions specific to your needs.
The Challenges of Government Integrations
Government agencies face numerous challenges as technology continues to evolve. Many agencies use legacy systems, which can be challenging to integrate with newer APIs. Government agencies also need to be highly vigilant in terms of cybersecurity. They need cost-effective solutions that integrate well with legacy software and allow their team to efficiently marry data from different environments.
An integrated platform as a service solution solves the integration challenges for government agencies. The platform gives them one hub and a central location for moving and synchronizing data, documents, and workflows. Communications are streamlined, and legacy systems can be integrated with the organization's other applications to drive productivity. However, traditional iPaaS platforms are built for programmers and don't meet all the needs of today's government.
For government use, the best iPaaS platforms now provide low-code tools and readymade end-points to prevailing government technologies, removing the need for programming, building, and maintaining the actual end-point connections to the various solutions in use.
Further, as government embraces cloud and pre-built solutions, their needs are often changing from development tools to business tools, where more time is spent on improving digital services, efficiencies, and user experiences with business tools, and less time programming. Today's government needs iPaaS for business users.
The new breed of iPaaS is built for government business users, with pre-built integration connectors explicitly built to government systems and use cases. These enable government business users to set up and maintain more integrations without coding quickly. By utilizing these new off-the-shelf integration connectors, government is no longer burdened with development and maintenance and instead can enjoy same-day benefits of peace of mind, lowered costs, increased agility, and delighted staff and citizens.