Challenges
- •IT team spending more time coordinating between staff and vendors than improving the system
- •A time-and-materials (T&M) support model that made every small fix a budget decision
- •A growing backlog of configuration updates with no structured way to address them
- •Unpredictable timelines and tickets that sat open for months or over a year
Solutions
- •GovPath SideKick+ managed services with SLA-backed response and resolution times
- •A structured monthly release cadence replacing unpredictable T&M delivery
- •Biweekly department meetings and monthly governance for clear prioritization
- •A dedicated partner willing to challenge ideas and share best practices
Case Study
How San Mateo County Brought IT, Staff, and Vendors Together With One Flexible Support Model on Accela
"GovPath unlocked our team’s time to make changes that we knew we needed to make. Everybody has that list of things they know would be so great to fix. Since bringing GovPath on, we’ve been able to do those things a lot faster."
County of San Mateo, CA
IT Supervisor
Meet Jess
An IT leader who knew her team could do more with the right support. Jess Marks Irving supervises a four-person IT team at the County of San Mateo that supports Accela across Building, Planning, Sustainability, and Public Works. When Jess joined, she inherited a complex implementation that needed attention.
The Building module had been overhauled but still needed fine-tuning. The Planning module hadn’t been touched in years. And there was a growing backlog of fixes that staff had been living with for too long. Jess needed support to stabilize the platform, rebuild trust with departments, and find a sustainable way to keep improving.
The Challenge
A growing backlog, unpredictable support, and an IT team caught in the middle Jess’s team knew what had to change, but their support model wasn’t built for the kind of work they needed to do. Their current vendor operated on time-and-materials and focused on large projects, not the steady stream of small configuration changes San Mateo County needed. That left Jess’s team trying to close the gap on their own.
The Solution
A managed services partner that turned Jess’s team into leaders, not middlemen Jess knew her team needed better support, but was skeptical of managed services vendors. She needed a partner she could trust with the following:
Tailored responses based on their actual needs, not the same script every client gets
Someone to share their expertise and help her define best practices, not a “yes man”
Clear SLAs showing exactly what would be in scope and what type of timelines to expect
After a long vetting process, Jess found that GovPath’s SideKick+ managed services was the support model her team needed.
Challenges
- • IT team spending more time coordinating between staff and vendors than improving the system
- • A time-and-materials (T&M) support model that made every small fix a budget decision
- • A growing backlog of configuration updates with no structured way to address them
- • Unpredictable timelines and tickets that sat open for months or over a year
Solutions
- • GovPath SideKick+ managed services with SLA-backed response and resolution times
- • A structured monthly release cadence replacing unpredictable T&M delivery
- • Biweekly department meetings and monthly governance for clear prioritization
- • A dedicated partner willing to challenge ideas and share best practices