Oakland County, which sits in the southeast corner of Michigan, includes 62 cities, villages and townships and 1.2 million people.
Many of the municipalities were not able to afford certain software or procure workforce management technology to help improve employees’ and residents’ lives. In response to the problem, the county implemented the cloud to provide technological services to all of its municipalities. 
Oakland County created government-to-government platforms, including G2G Cloud Solutions and G2G Marketplace, which bring innovative technologies to small and midsize governments. G2G Marketplace is designed to simplify the purchasing and licensing process so government agencies are able to access technologies and services more quickly.
Oakland County discovered many small governments can’t use big-system services because of cost. G2G Cloud Solutions provides larger-enterprise technologies at lower cost to smaller agencies. The innovative cloud-based software marketplace creates a situation where small governments don’t have to pay setup or upfront costs.
By creating this more accessible software marketplace, more municipalities have access to shared cloud services. Since the initiative began, more than 30 agencies have accessed G2G Marketplace’s solutions, according to Oakland County’s Optimas application.
The initiative also gives human resources managers the power to control and make better labor decisions, such as making sure employees are only taking time off that they’ve earned. Human resources managers also can use the technology to help them comply with federal regulations.
Oakland County used the cloud to solve its problem at no cost to any other governmental agency. G2G Cloud Solutions and G2G Marketplace, government-to-government platforms bring innovative technologies to governments that might not be able to afford lengthy procurement.
Since the initiative went into effect, Oakland County has been working on how its initiative can cross state lines and aid other state governments.
For using the cloud to make packaging and access of big technologies more affordable to small governments, Oakland County, is the gold 2015 Optimas Awards winner for Innovation.
Andie Burjek is a Workforce editorial intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.
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