Gmail Becomes City of Edmonton’s Email Provider

By: Kuljit Grewal  |   June 13th, 2012   |   News, O Canada

The Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta has made what should be applauded as a progressive and forward thinking move, switching their city employees’ email and office applications to Google. The municipality becomes the first in Canada to make the move, and will be rewarded with an estimated cost savings of $6 million by the end of the 2018 fiscal year. This estimate is based on the difference between a payment of $3.2 million to Google and the elimination of the city’s current $9.2 million dollar IT budget. A further $4-5 million in savings is expected annually between 2018 and 2023.

 

The city’s 3,000 some workers will now be able to access the web based applications and email systems to conduct their work, allowing them the flexibility and ease of using their own personal handheld devices and laptops. This not only provides them with an unlimited level of mobility, it also gives them exclusive access to Google docs, spreadsheets as well as their own internal YouTube. Another added feature is Google Data, which allows for real time collaboration between various employees, something that had not been available prior to the transition.

 

The full transition is expected to be phased in completely by the end of 2013, with the content and data being hosted in the United States as Google does not currently have any data centres north of the border. The agreement with Google allows Edmonton to maintain ownership and full access to their data with the peace of mind in knowing that Google will not access said data unless prompted to do so by the city itself.

 

We have little doubt that if this transition works out well not only financially, but in terms of increased accessibility and overall effectiveness that other major cities will follow suit in 2014 and beyond.