Los Angeles supports its citizens thanks to a digital transformation

A global city
The City of Los Angeles is one of the most diverse and multicultural in the world, home to four million people and half a million businesses. On any given day, you can hear 124 different languages and dialects being spoken by its citizens. And it’s a city on a huge scale, the second largest in the United States, occupying more than 450 square miles, with its world-famous sights and sounds drawing 48 million visitors every year.

A platform for speed and innovation
The City’s decision to embrace digital technology, with ServiceNow as a core platform at the heart of its digital transformation, proved to be visionary when COVID-19 presented unique and urgent challenges, requiring fast and innovative solutions. Digital technology enabled it to fight back on two essential fronts, maintaining vital services that millions of citizens rely on every day—and launch new services within hours, to inform and protect vulnerable Angelenos from the gathering health and economic storm.

Getting the job done
Within days, LA had enabled 18,000 City employees to work from home. “Highly configurable SaaS platforms, like ServiceNow, provided incredible tools for the City of Los Angeles,” says Chief Information Officer, Ted Ross. “From building a fully functional COVID test appointment app within 72 hours to a robust rent-relief system when Angelenos needed it most, these platforms provided the digital tools we needed, when we needed them.” By the end of 2021, the City estimates that it will have made almost $350 million in emergency rent payments to landlords.

Supporting Angelenos
ServiceNow tools have also played an important role at the City’s Emergency Operations Center, which was tasked with distributing millions of pieces of PPE such as masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer, to locations throughout LA.

Investment pays off
“The COVID-19 pandemic not only required us to continue our existing operations to keep the City of Los Angeles running, but it required an entirely new set of digital services for our COVID-19 response,” explains Ted Ross. “Our investment in agile cloud platforms really paid off.”

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