252 Marchh 2021
CITY OF MEMPHIS
above all the users are all appreciating the
benefits of a communications structure that is
fit for purpose
So, nothing had to stop because of
Covid, though budgets were hit across all
departments. “We had to save money,” Bailey
admits, “but I think we have managed to find
ways to scale back. I was glad not to let go of
any of my staff as some departments may
have had to: we just looked at how we were
doing things and how we could do them
differently. Remember that saving time always
saves money.”
Her readiness to listen to her team’s
suggestions was demonstrated when her
security team suggested an upgrade of the
security platform. They brought a convincing
business case for introducing an endpoint
security platform that would give better
antiviral performance than the legacy
Symantec software – they also wanted to
start compliance training for the staff to
minimize the vulnerability of the system with
so many people working from home. “They
found a great program in CrowdStrike: it is
trackable and user-friendly, it's a lot better
for our purpose and we get to push it out to
more endpoints in different divisions.” At their
instigation, they started a monthly security
newsletter to keep employees aware of issues,
and started compliance training with the help
of Infotech.
Post-Covid, many efficiencies that have
been introduced will continue to yield benefit.
Nevertheless she looks forward to the day
she can return to normal levels of spending
allowing her to bring on more transformational
ideas, “Innovation is always in my sights. We
have a three-pronged approach, infrastructure,
implementation, and innovation. We had to do
so much infrastructure and implementation
work in that first year, but now we can start
to look at ways we can bring in automation,