While the number of full-time IT staff members varied among survey respondents, the results show that local governments often rely on lean IT teams. More than half (56 percent) of city respondents and 41 percent of county respondents said their organization has 10 or fewer full-time IT employees.

Those lean IT teams are struggling as the growing adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications increases IT workloads and complexity. According to the survey, 49 percent of respondents said their organization manages 51 or more applications and services, while 1 in 10 (11 percent) manages more than 300 applications.

“A decade ago, a government was more likely to manage about 10 applications,” CDG* Senior Fellow William Rials, a former government CIO, CTO and CISO who is now a professor and associate director of the IT and cybersecurity program at Tulane University’s School of Professional Advancement, said in the report.

“With the advent of specialized, cloud-based tools, it’s easier to acquire applications as a service, and there are lower hurdles to deploying them,” Rials said. The extent of management needed for cloud-based solutions varies, but internal IT teams remain the first line of support.