Accela announced a new offering, Managed Application Services. These services provide government agencies with day-to-day system administration and proactive optimization of Accela solutions. With Accela Managed Application Services, Accela technology experts ensure government agencies improve how they deliver essential community services and achieve maximum value on tech investments with less effort and reduced resources. 

Between IT talent shortages and a majority of public sector employees considering leaving their jobs, government technology teams are being challenged like never before. But with more residents preferring online, "consumer-like" services, agencies do not have the option to pause or cut back on critical IT efforts. Increased resident demand for digital services is driving agencies to seek outside expertise, enabling them to align available agency resources with strategic priorities and reduce the time staff spends on redundant or tedious administration duties and system maintenance. 

"Hiring, training and retaining IT staff is one of the biggest challenges facing local government," said Brenda DeGregory, vice president of service delivery at Accela. "Our new Managed Application Services provides an extension to in-house IT teams - freeing up agency leaders from basic administration and optimization, so they can focus on the transformative initiatives that will deliver the best services and experiences for residents."

Accela Managed Application Services helps government agencies experience increased flexibility and reliability when it comes to managing their IT staffing needs. The subscription-based offering empowers agencies to tap Accela's experts and realize the full benefits of Accela's flexible, unified platform - now, and with any future growth or functionality requirements.

"Accela Managed Application Services is the logical complement to our IT team," said Anthony McPherson, CIO of DuPage County, Illinois. "With this service, our team is freed up from monotonous administration and instead freed up for more strategic projects. By tapping in the expertise of Accela experts, we are able to ensure our solutions are delivering the best results - for our county and our residents."

By extending agency IT staff with Accela experts, Accela Managed Application Services assists customers with day-to-day system administration, proactive continuous service improvement, periodic production releases of configuration enhancements, and rapid response times.

Accela Managed Application Services can take on many administrative tasks and ongoing functions critical to agency IT operations, including:

• Testing new major releases, service packs, and fixes
• User account administration and permissions management
• Forms modification and deployment 
• Report creation and testing 
• Functionality augmentation and scripting 
• Troubleshooting conditions 
• Configuring new features.
  

Government agencies have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use federal funds available through the American Rescue Plan to accelerate their digital transformation, including associated staff augmentation like Accela Managed Application Services.