How Collier County modernized budgeting to uncover $40 million in savings with AWS and Tyler Technologies

Between rising operational costs and a population surge, Collier County, Florida, found itself facing serious budgetary pressures. For 13 consecutive years, the county had raised property taxes to keep up. But by 2023, residents were growing fatigued, and county leaders knew they needed a different solution.

Traditionally, governments respond to budget gaps in one of two ways: raise taxes or cut services. But neither option aligned with the goals of county officials, including Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall. “The real challenge was to stop the bleeding. We had to do something radical to begin the process,” he said.

That radical change began with a conversation with Tyler Technologies, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner whose end-to-end solutions support more than 37,000 installations across 12,000 government sites. With Tyler’s Priority Based Budgeting solution, which is powered by AWS and enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI), Collier County uncovered $40 million in cost savings and revenue opportunities while aligning spending with what matters most to the community.

Understanding Collier County’s fiscal landscape

Operating a $2.2 billion annual budget, Collier County serves one of Florida’s most desirable regions. The Naples area continues to attract new residents, driving increased demand for county services. But as Chris Fabian, senior director of Priority Based Budgeting Strategy at Tyler Technologies, explained: “With inflation, without even increasing its service level, programs tend to cost more to deliver because costs go up.”

Traditional incremental budgeting, which simply adjusts last year’s numbers, couldn’t address these structural challenges. County leadership wanted to understand what specific programs they were funding, whether those programs aligned with community priorities, and where opportunities existed for partnerships or alternative revenue. As Fabian noted, their primary goal was ambitious, as they aimed to discover opportunities to save money and generate new revenue without starting with reducing services at all.

This entrepreneurial mindset—a word county officials used repeatedly—set the tone for what came next.

Choosing a solution to align spending with priorities

Collier County’s search for a solution began with the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), the predominant educational resource for local government finance professionals. GFOA has been leading the industry push for budget transformation through what they call the “rethinking budgeting” movement, with Tyler’s Priority Based Budgeting serving as a centerpiece of this approach.

Because of the county’s size, it was important to find a partner that had government experience with similar-sized markets. “We also wanted to know how engaging the vendor would be with our county staff and how influential they were going to be in encouraging staff to move beyond the status quo,” said Commissioner Hall.

After interviewing three to four large companies, Collier County chose Tyler Technologies because their solution included both software development and management consulting capabilities. “They saw our offering as a best of both worlds,” Fabian said.

Using AI to implement Priority Based Budgeting

Tyler’s Priority Based Budgeting solution runs on AWS infrastructure, leveraging Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for scaling and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for data storage. This foundation provides the computational power the solution requires.

The implementation took 90 days and was carried out across four phases:

• Phase 1: Use AI to identify county programs
  The process began with AI producing a list of programs that each department offers. “We cross-reference our masses of data from other local governments to tease out what programs they probably offered based on staffing and line-item data,” Fabian explained. The AI identified between 500 and 600 specific programs across all county departments, with generative AI automatically creating descriptions for each program to streamline onboarding.
• Phase 2: Allocate costs to programs using budget data
  Once programs were identified, the system predicted how the budget should be allocated across them. “We apply their budget and try to say, okay, you not only provide parks maintenance, but here are the line-item costs that we predict you would allocate to that type of program,” explained Fabian. Departments then refined these predictions through a human in the loop process.
• Phase 3: Score each program against county priorities
  Each program was evaluated against multiple criteria: impact on community outcomes like safety and economic vitality, mandate requirements, availability of other providers, cost recovery potential, and population served. This scoring revealed which programs were most closely aligned with county priorities.
• Phase 4: Surface savings and revenue opportunities through benchmarking
  Tyler’s AI analyzed Collier’s programs against its extensive database, which Fabian calls “the most unique set of data on the programs that local governments provide.” By comparing costs and funding models across hundreds of jurisdictions, the system identified specific savings opportunities, like switching to a different type of mulch for median maintenance to save $50,000.

The initial analysis identified approximately $150 million in potential savings and revenue opportunities, which Collier County narrowed down to $40 million in actionable, near-term solutions.

“The reason why the budget increased every single year was because staff and leadership didn’t know any other way,” reflected Commissioner Hall. “To take our whole budget and break that down and look at every service that we provide was just something that was beyond their scope. But Priority Based Budgeting’s use of artificial intelligence streamlined the process and allowed us to move forward fairly rapidly.”

$40 million in savings from the new budgeting approach

The solution was complete in October 2023. Just five months later, Collier County had achieved the full $40 million in savings and revenue opportunities. An additional $123 million remains under active consideration for future years.

Because of this new process, the county achieved a rolled-back millage rate for the second consecutive year and maintained services without dipping into reserves. This approach also transformed how the county makes decisions. “The Priority Based Budgeting AI and probing questions have provided insights that we normally would not have thought of,” said Commissioner Hall. “Now, if we have to close a service, we have the data to prove it and to show why.”

Similarly, Hall said, if they needed to increase a service somewhere else, they might consider charging a fee, using tax dollars, or funding it with a grant. “It would be those kinds of ideas that were coming to us from the data that empowered us to make such decent decisions so fast.”

Built for scale: Well-Architected and secure

Tyler’s Priority Based Budgeting solution exemplifies modern cloud architecture principles, leveraging AWS’s managed services such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) to deliver a platform that scales seamlessly from small municipalities to the largest county governments. Built on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, the solution aligns with AWS best practices for operating production workloads for jurisdictions of all sizes.

The cloud-native architecture provides multiple layers of security, including encryption at rest and in transit using the AWS Key Management Service (KMS), role-based access controls through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), and compliance with government standards. This robust security foundation protects sensitive data while maintaining the accessibility that county staff need to perform their analysis.

Scalability comes naturally through AWS’s elastic infrastructure. During peak budget planning periods, the system automatically scales compute and storage resources to handle increased analysis workloads.

“The AWS cloud fundamentally transforms how counties can approach their budgeting processes,” said Arun Krishnaswamy, principal solutions architect at AWS public sector. “By leveraging AWS’s scalable, secure infrastructure, counties can focus on making better budgeting decisions rather than managing infrastructure. The elasticity of AWS allows even the smallest counties to access enterprise-grade capabilities that would have been cost-prohibitive with traditional self-hosted solutions, while our largest customers benefit from virtually unlimited scale during their most demanding budget cycles.”

Setting an example for modern fiscal management

For Collier County, this transformation represents just the beginning. “We’re more than two years into it now, and we are just now getting into the real meat of the benefits of what these processes are going to be,” reflected Commissioner Hall. “I know that we’ll be able to really change the culture of our budgeting process, the way that we do business as a county, and the way that we make decisions.”

The county’s success is already inspiring other local governments to adopt similar approaches, demonstrating that data-driven budget transformation powered by cloud technology is both achievable and sustainable. For governments facing similar pressures, Collier County proves you don’t have to choose between fiscal responsibility and community service. With the right tools and mindset, you can achieve both.

Learn how AWS helps local governments modernize essential services. Contact us today.

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