From Legacy Systems to Connected Government

ERP Becomes a Platform for Public Service

Government ERP is expanding beyond finance and accounting. Modern platforms are bringing budgeting, procurement, human resources, utilities, infrastructure, permitting and grants into a connected operational environment.

AI Starts With Trusted Data

AI can help public sector teams work faster, identify issues earlier and make better-informed decisions. But its value depends on reliable data, clear permissions and strong governance with people remaining accountable for every outcome.

In this ERP News Q&A, Eric DiProspero, Chief Revenue Officer at OpenGov, explores how connected ERP, trusted data and responsible AI are modernising government operations and strengthening public service.

Eric DiProspero

Chief Revenue Officer, OpenGov

Eric DiProspero is Chief Revenue Officer at OpenGov, where he leads the company’s sales organisation and go-to-market revenue strategy. In this role, he works with government leaders as they modernise legacy systems, connect data and workflows, and adopt technology designed specifically for the public sector.

Before joining OpenGov, Eric served as Sales Director of Digital, Mobility and IoT at AnyPresence. His experience spans enterprise technology, digital transformation and connected platforms, giving him a broad perspective on how modern systems can help organisations operate more effectively and deliver better services.

ERP modernisation has gone from being an IT project to becoming an operational and leadership priority.

Q: OpenGov now has an ERP presence across 38 states. From your conversations with government leaders, what has changed in the market to make ERP modernization a more urgent priority today?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: The cost of standing still has gone up.

For a long time, governments could live with disconnected systems because their people found ways to work around them. They reconciled data, moved information between systems, and carried the burden themselves. That doesn’t scale anymore.

What we hear consistently is that leaders and the public are not willing to accept a collection of disconnected systems that require employees to reconcile information manually and work around the technology. They want a modern operating environment that connects the organization and helps their people execute. ERP modernization has gone from being an IT project to becoming an operational and leadership priority.

We’re seeing this urgency reflected in market momentum, our ERP footprint now extends across 38 states, with new deployments this year in eight states including Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, and others. That expansion reflects governments moving from theory to action.

Q: You’ve said that the era of ERP being primarily a transactional financial system is ending. What does the next generation of government ERP look like, and how different is that vision from the systems many public-sector organizations are still operating today?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: ERP has always been an important financial backbone. But government is much bigger than finance. Government is people, infrastructure, procurement, permits, utilities, grants, and service delivery. The next generation of ERP has to connect the heartbeat of finance to all of that real, meaningful work happening across the agency and in the community.

That is a very different model from the systems many governments are still using today. Finance and HR should be in lockstep. The back office and the field should be connected. Leaders should be able to see what is happening and act on it without stitching together information from five different places. Government doesn’t run in silos, and its software shouldn’t either.

Q: OpenGov is bringing finance, budgeting, procurement, HCM, utilities, infrastructure, permitting, grants and other functions together around shared data and workflows. Where do governments typically see the greatest operational benefit when these previously separate functions begin working as part of one connected environment?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: The biggest benefit is connection. When every department has its own system, employees spend too much time acting as the integration layer, finding information, reconciling it, and handing it from one team to another.

When the environment is connected, the work starts to move differently. Finance can connect dollars to outcomes. HR and finance can plan together. Procurement can see budget context. Public works can connect infrastructure decisions back to financial priorities. The back office and the field get in lockstep. That is where the real operational value shows up: not simply in having fewer applications, but in helping the government operate as one organization.

Q: Many governments have accumulated disconnected applications and legacy systems over decades. When an organization begins consolidating that environment, what are the hardest barriers to overcome, technology, data, processes, organizational change, or something else?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: Technology is rarely the hardest part. The bigger challenge is usually unwinding years of processes, workarounds, and organizational habits that developed around old technology.

Every department may have its own way of doing something, its own source of truth, and sometimes its own definition of the same data. Modernization creates an opportunity to address that, but it requires leadership and collaboration across the organization.

The agencies that are most successful treat modernization as an operating transformation, not simply a software replacement. Technology is the enabler. The real objective is creating better ways for people and departments to work together.

Q: ERP implementations in the public sector have traditionally been associated with lengthy transformation programs. OpenGov says some deployments can now be measured in months rather than years. What has changed in the implementation model to make that possible, and where should government leaders be cautious about pursuing speed at the expense of successful transformation?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: Government should not have to choose between speed and quality. Modern cloud platforms have changed what is possible. Organizations no longer need to treat every implementation as a massive custom technology project. When the technology is purpose-built for government and the implementation starts from proven processes, agencies can focus their energy on the decisions and workflows that truly differentiate their organization.

We’re seeing this play out with customers like the Town of Frederick, Colorado, which expanded to a full enterprise platform, adding Financial Management, Budgeting, Utility Billing, and Grants Management, and the City of Plattsburgh, New York, which launched a citywide transformation across financial management, payroll, permitting, and utilities. Both are examples of how a purpose-built approach gets agencies live faster.

But speed should never become the objective by itself. The goal is successful adoption and better outcomes. You still need strong executive sponsorship, clean data, engaged employees, clear decisions, and disciplined change management. Moving quickly is valuable when it removes unnecessary complexity.

Q: AI readiness is a central theme in OpenGov’s ERP strategy. In practical terms, what needs to be in place before a government organization can move from experimenting with AI to embedding it meaningfully into day-to-day operations?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: The foundation matters. AI becomes much more useful when it has trusted data, clear permissions, connected workflows, and the right governance around how it is used.

That is why the platform conversation and the AI conversation are becoming the same conversation. If your information is fragmented across dozens of systems, AI has limited context and employees still have to piece the answer together themselves.

The organizations that will get the most value from AI are the ones that connect their data and workflows first, establish clear accountability, and then introduce AI directly into the work employees are already doing. That is when AI moves from an interesting experiment to something that can meaningfully improve day-to-day government operations.

Q: OpenGov argues that fragmented systems and disconnected data limit the value governments can derive from AI. Is the current AI conversation therefore exposing weaknesses in legacy ERP architectures that organizations may previously have been able to tolerate?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: AI is shining a very bright light on a problem government has dealt with for years.

You cannot expect AI to provide a complete answer if the underlying information is spread across disconnected systems, spreadsheets, and manual processes. In the past, organizations could compensate for that fragmentation with more manual work. Employees became the integration layer.

AI changes the equation. It makes the value of connected, trusted data much more obvious. The agencies thinking seriously about AI are quickly realizing that modernizing the underlying technology and data foundation is a prerequisite to getting the results they want.

Q: With OG Assist, AI operates within existing OpenGov workflows, permissions and controls. As AI begins to surface information, assist with decisions and complete more tasks inside ERP environments, how should governments think about governance, accountability and human oversight?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: Government has a higher bar for trust, and it should.

AI should make public servants more effective, but it cannot remove accountability from the people making decisions. Human judgment remains essential, particularly when those decisions affect public resources, services, employees, or communities.

That means AI needs to operate within clear permissions, security controls, transparent processes, and appropriate human review. The important distinction is that AI can increasingly prepare work, identify issues, surface information, and recommend actions while the government employee remains accountable for the decision.

That combination, more capability with clear human control, is how governments can adopt AI responsibly and at scale.

Q: The Frederick and Plattsburgh examples in your announcement highlight very different modernization needs, from reducing time intensive financial work and managing hundreds of grant opportunities to replacing paper-based and fragmented citywide processes. How important is flexibility when building a government ERP platform that must serve organizations with very different operational structures and levels of digital maturity?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: It is critical because there is no single starting point for modernization.

One government may have a strong financial foundation but need to connect grants, procurement, or operations. Another may still be replacing paper processes and disconnected departmental systems. Their starting points are different, but the destination is similar: better information, simpler processes, and a more connected organization.

A modern platform needs to meet governments where they are while giving them a path to expand over time. They should not have to modernize everything at once to start seeing value, and they should not have to replace the platform again every time they are ready for the next step.

Q: Looking three to five years ahead, how do you expect the definition of government ERP to change? Will we still think of ERP as a distinct category of software, or will it increasingly become the underlying operational and data layer through which government employees, and eventually AI agents, interact with the organization?

ERIC DiPROSPERO: I think the category gets much broader.

We will still have financial management at the core, but the idea that ERP stops at finance will feel increasingly outdated. The real value will come from connecting the people, dollars, assets, services, and operations of government on a common foundation.

And as AI becomes more capable, that foundation becomes even more important. Employees, and increasingly AI agents working alongside them, will need trusted context across the organization to take meaningful action.

That is where government technology is headed: away from a collection of applications employees have to navigate and toward a connected operating platform that helps people understand what is happening, decide what to do next, and execute. For us, that is the promise of the Public Service Platform.

Editorial Takeaway

Government ERP is evolving from a financial system into a shared foundation connecting budgets, employees, procurement, infrastructure, utilities, permits, grants and public services.

This matters because fragmented technology places an invisible burden on public employees. When information is scattered across applications, spreadsheets and manual processes, people must find, reconcile and transfer data themselves.

Modernisation should therefore be treated as an operational transformation, not simply a software replacement. Connected platforms can simplify processes, improve visibility and help leaders understand how financial decisions translate into public outcomes.

AI makes this foundation even more important. Its effectiveness depends on trusted data, connected workflows, clear permissions and strong governance. Without them, AI may accelerate fragmentation rather than improve decisions.

Government also carries a higher standard of accountability. AI can prepare work, identify issues and recommend actions, but responsibility must remain with the people making decisions.

The next generation of government ERP will be defined by how effectively it connects people, data, assets and services while supporting both public employees and intelligent agents.

CONNECTED GOVERNMENT BEGINS WITH TRUSTED DATA, HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY AND ONE OPERATIONAL FOUNDATION.