• Shares critical information with citizens using familiar Google Maps interface

• Develops and posts informational Google Maps within one hour

• Focuses on developing tools and features rather than having to manage security

“While we can publish lists of resource information on the web and push all sorts of text messages out to people, it’s much easier to convey information visually,” says Ted. “I felt one of the best ways to prepare residents for storms was to bring the essential information together into one picture—a map. Then, add layers like evacuation shelters, sandbag stations, local hardware stores, and real-time weather.”

Using Google Maps Platform along with data from Google business databases, The National Weather Service, and other sources, ITA published layers of information on the City of Los Angeles El Niño Watch page. The page features a Google Map of the region. Residents can select information layers to display on the map. For example, on a map, residents could view public alerts, flooded streets, landslides, power outages, and traffic, plus get turn-by-turn directions to needed resources, such as evacuation shelters.

“For our El Niño map, we leveraged additional non-geographic information from Google, like the locations of local hardware stores,” Ted says. “We put ourselves into the shoes of homeowners. What they would want to prepare for the rains, such as stocking up on sandbags, caulking, wood, and other supplies, as well as, what resources they would need during a heavy rainstorm, including evacuation shelters for people, animals, and so on.”

Late last year, a completely different climate-related event, epic wildfires, swept across the metro area. Los Angeles grappled with the worst fire season in California history. The Creek and Skirball fires required the quick evacuation of more than 150,000 people.

The City of Los Angeles was prepared. Using a Google Map on an ITA-produced web page for residents, Angelenos could quickly locate the wildfires and nearby evacuation centers and other resources and navigate to those resources. The traffic spoke for itself. The Skirball Fire map alone received 3.5 million views within 36 hours of going live.

“Government websites often have a difficult time getting attention,” Ted says. “The heavy volume of traffic we received in such a short time told us we were pushing out useful information in a highly consumable way.”

More recently, as rainstorms threatened to cause post-wildfire mudslides and flooding, ITA developed and posted a new Storm Watch web page within one hour. Similar to the El Niño page, Storm Watch uses a Google Map interface with clickable layers of information.

“By only offering the essential key layers of information on Google Maps and making it easy for residents to access, we can deliver what people need to know, when they need to know it,” says Ted. “We considered other mapping systems but chose Google Maps because of its wide public acceptance. We wanted to give residents a familiar map that they could access on a wide variety of devices to get the information they needed.”

In 2009, the City of Los Angeles became one of the first governments to use Gmail and Calendar. Currently, the city has about 30,000 users of Google Workspace including Drive and Google Meet.

“City departments ranging from human resources to emergency planning have created robust, terrific-looking sites using Sites that didn’t require IT involvement,” Ted says. “We can focus on programming, and employees are empowered to generate good content as needed.”

Google Meet is also a critical tool for city employees. The City of Los Angeles has about 48,000 employees located in various spots across the city’s 469 square miles. With Google Meet, employees can meet with colleagues without having to drive 20 or more miles through Los Angeles’ constantly clogged traffic. Along with playing its part in reducing Los Angeles congestion, the city is leveraging Meet for communications in case of a disaster. “Using data to communicate via Google Meet is more effective than cell phones, as wireless carrier network circuits tend to get overwhelmed during an emergency. It also allows us to get messages out faster,” says Ted.

Most recently, the City of Los Angeles launched a homeless shelter map that leverages Google Maps and Sheets. Using the map, police officers can locate the nearest shelter. Clicking on the shelter’s blue dot on the map tells them if beds are available at that location, to prevent police officers from sending the homeless to shelters that can’t accommodate them.

“For an organization of our size, the ease of use of Google tools is opening up tremendous opportunities,” says Ted. “We can try new things and rapidly deliver information or new digital services in a matter of hours.”

The city has also standardized on Google Chrome because of its integration with Google Workspace. Some employees are beginning to use Chromebooks, too. “Chromebooks are highly mobile, they boot up immediately, and they give us the ability to roll out functionality that’s browser-based and highly secure,” says Ted. “Chromebooks get to the heart of how people are working in a modern environment—by accessing applications and digital services from a browser.”

As with any large organization, security is always top of mind at ITA. “With Google Workspace, our email, forms, and docs are hosted in the Google Cloud, which has highly robust security built in,” Ted says. “It allows us to be more focused on how we connect and interact and less focused on securing applications and servers. We can rely more on Google for that.”