• 90% adoption rate among employees.

• Migration of 4TB of data in two months, covering a total of over 3.5 million institutional files.

• More flexibility for remote workers.

• Easier document sharing among teams and external entities.

• Higher governance over data stored by the agency.

Ministério Público do Estado do Amapá - MP-AP (Public Prosecutor’s Office for the State of Amapá) is an institution committed to defending the law, democracy, and the interests of individuals and society as a whole. Based in Macapá, the State’s capital city, the agency operates across the 16 municipalities of the State of Amapá and has 833 public employees.

Its IT department is key for the delivery of services. Data analytics and information technologies are behind all the entity’s activities, including basic tasks, such as performing out-of-court and administrative processes, as well as complex ones, such as supporting investigations.

However, the infrastructure used, featuring on-premises servers and directories, failed to meet a series of challenges. The agency suffered from various phishing attacks, which put the institution’s information at risk, and also email downtime events.

MP-AP’s IT team then started to consider how to improve operating efficiency and security around the agency’s data: prioritizing the use of cloud services was the ideal. In 2018, Google Workspace collaboration and communication tools were adopted. Once employees had become familiar with this solution, MP-AP decided to expand its use with the support of partner Safetec.

“We were able to solve many of our problems when we first deployed Google Workspace in 2018. With the basic plan, we intended to provide users with more security and stability. In 2022, we decided to expand this plan and its related licenses to explore more tools,” says Marcéu Farias, Information Systems Manager at MP-AP.

Initial decisions were taken after the project alignment meetings between MP-AP and Safetec. By expanding its Google Workspace plan, the agency intended to migrate all its files to the cloud. Another important factor was related to carrying out an endomarketing strategy to strengthen the use of these tools among public officers. Safetec was also a key participant in this process.

In two months, the team managed to migrate 4TB of data to Google Workspace, covering a total of +3.5 million institutional files. MP-AP now offers both Business Starter and Business Standard licenses to all its officers.

Gmail is used for general email communications among employees, and Google Meet has become an essential tool for video conferencing, hearings, and remote meetings. Using Calendar, teams can organize and schedule institutional tasks; they also leverage Docs to create and edit text documents, and Sheets is key to work collaboratively on spreadsheets.

“Especially in relation to MP-AP’s electronic processes, Google Workspace has widely increased collaboration efficiency among employees, positively redefining the institution’s daily activities,” says Paulo Celso Ramos dos Santos, Public Prosecutor at MP-AP.

For Safetec, the improved productivity of MP-AP’s employees is noticeable. “By incorporating in their daily routines features such as simultaneous collaboration on documents between teams and third-party entities, MP-AP’s employees have become more productive,” describes Thawmy Vagner, Customer Success Analyst at Safetec. “Information security was also enhanced by leveraging advanced features against data breaches and leaks,” he adds.

MP-AP currently relies on a robust platform that has enhanced the way teams work. This has strengthened employee synergies and the delivery of added value to public officers. Cloud-based tools have also provided more flexibility to remote workers, as they can now work from anywhere.

Expanding the use of Google Workspace has improved operating efficiency, scalability, and governance over data stored by the institution. Services now offer 99.9% uptime, meeting compliance and privacy requirements, following the rules of Brazil’s Oversight Council (known as the CNMP) and other regulations. Teams have managed to reduce software licensing and on-premises infrastructure costs.

But these are not the only benefits achieved. Google Workspace has enabled teams to create digital transformation projects, which has led to significant improvements in citizen services. Google Meet has simplified remote support in administrative processes and hearings, as well as citizen interactions, and expanded collaboration between members and commissions. Streaming events and hearings through Meet has also improved transparency and driven integrated, collaborative work among employees.

MP-AP launched a campaign to raise awareness on the use of Gmail’s two-step authentication to further strengthen data security. The agency established deadlines and relied on the participation of all employees to meet this goal. However, development projects, based on the support of collaboration solutions, go much further than this.

“We’re implementing our electronic judicial system, integrated in the system used by the Courts of Justice through Brazil’s Interoperability Model (MNI), supported by Google Docs’s text editing features. It will be incorporated into MP-AP’s new e-processing system, which is currently under development. We will also promote new training sessions and workshops so that users can get the most out of Google Workspace tools,” adds Rodinei Paixão.

The migration to Google Workspace has also served to prepare MP-AP’s internal users to start leveraging public cloud solutions. The agency is planning to adopt Google Cloud solutions to further optimize collaboration, productivity, and the use of computing resources, as well as to accelerate digital transformation within its legal department. And this may entail the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions.