managed IT support services
To meet a tribe’s unique needs, it takes a managed IT consultant who can envision strategic possibilities through three critical lenses: tribal, technical, and business.

Managed IT support services can help Native American tribes achieve a variety of technology-driven goals, from increased cyber security, to increased funding, to creating a long-term IT roadmap.

Native American tribes operate in a unique hybrid form. A tribe is part town, part organization, part government, part family, part modern, and part traditional. Tribes have their own healthcare entities, police departments, and court systems.

Within a tribe, the board of elders assesses the needs of each of these departments, and sources solutions as necessary, with the primary goal of improving the lives of tribal members. Their goal isn’t to maximize profits or disrupt an industry.

Because of this, tribal boards can become extremely insular, skeptical of outside advice, and wary of predators. Yet tribal leaders who make technical decisions on behalf of their community may not always have the experience or technical knowledge when it comes to the realm of IT.

To meet a tribe’s unique needs, it takes a managed IT consultant who can envision strategic possibilities through three critical lenses: tribal, technical, and business.

Managed IT support services can be a tremendous asset to tribes and their leaders. Here’s how.

Table of Contents:

1.      Increasing Cyber Security

2.      Creating a Long-Term IT Roadmap

3.      Hiring the Right Partners

4.      Securing More Funding

5.      Managed IT Support Services in Action

Increasing Cyber Security

managed IT support services
Vudu's managed IT support services help tribes modernize cybersecurity protocols across numerous tribal departments and entities, for a unified approach to safeguarding your community. As a tribally owned business, Vudu understands what's at stake.

When tribes unintentionally allow their cybersecurity postures to deteriorate over time, they become vulnerable to bad actors. In recent years, tribes in Oklahoma, North Dakota, North Carolina, and elsewhere have lost irreplaceable archival data, put members’ private information at risk, shut down casinos, and lost millions of dollars due to cyber attacks on their IT infrastructure.

A vast majority of organizations—a whopping 93%--are vulnerable to cybercriminals breaching their networks. The more efficient your cyber security infrastructure, the less likely you’ll end up joining those statistics.

As a tribally owned business, Vudu’s team of IT specialists understands what’s at stake. We help tribes modernize cybersecurity protocols across numerous tribal departments and entities, for a unified approach to safeguarding your community.

In addition to ensuring your infrastructure is secure, we’ll make sure your staff is trained to guard against potential cyber threats.

Creating a Long-Term IT Roadmap

managed IT support services
Managed IT support teams like Vudu help tribes prioritize their most pressing issues and find solutions to lift the entire infrastructure.

When an inefficiency or pain point exists in one place, it creates ripples throughout an entire organization. While some of the damage done will be visible, some will remain hidden until it creates further harm later on.

The ad-hoc application of single-point solutions creates a patchwork system that is unsustainable long term and undermines efficiency.

Managed IT support teams like Vudu help tribes prioritize their most pressing issues and find solutions to lift the entire infrastructure. With a broader IT roadmap, all stakeholders can make the best possible decisions. This helps them optimize and adapt to meet their future goals.

Hiring the Right Partners

managed IT support services
Vudu’s Managed IT support services offer tribes a straightforward, honest partnership to build optimized, scalable technology solutions.

When you invest in a new IT project, you may need to hire several outside vendors to see it through. This can quickly become cost prohibitive, as outsider bidding for tribal contracts can be a minefield of bid manipulation, among other underhanded tactics to manipulate tribes and their leaders.

You need a managed IT partner who won’t take advantage when seeking a contract.

Vudu’s team offers tribes a straightforward, honest partnership to build optimized, scalable technology solutions. Not only that; we can help you spot red flags in the bidding process and vet and manage any additional vendors required to execute your IT efforts.

Securing More Funding

There are millions of dollars available in federal funding in order to support tribal technology projects. Yet the grant-writing process can require time and effort, and there may not always be a dedicated grant-writing team in place to acquire these funds.

A few examples of the grants available to tribes include:

·        Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (Department of Justice)

·        Indian Community Development Block Grants (Department of Housing and Urban Development)

·        Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program (Department of Agriculture)

·        Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (National Science Foundation)

·        Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (Department of Commerce NTIA)

Vudu offers managed IT support services with a deep understanding of the grant-writing process, and how to maximize your chance to receive federal grants for new technology projects for tribal departments and entities.

Not only does a long-term IT plan service the strategy of the technology, it can also build use cases that facilitate the grant-writing process and help garner more resources for the tribe.

Managed IT Support Services in Action

The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Central Oklahoma, boasting 4,500 members, first teamed up with Vudu in 2009 to help digitize their tribe’s many physical housing authority records.

In addition to upholding their heritage and preserving the Shawnee language, the tribe’s government provides services in many areas such as real estate, finance, and healthcare. Yet tribal IT tends to be notoriously underserved and a target for cybercriminals and other bad actors.

Vudu worked with the Absentee Shawnee Tribe to digitize their records, storing and indexing them in a searchable form that followed the housing authority’s regulations.

Vudu later helped the tribe modernize their healthcare infrastructure into a digital format that complied with high-HIPAA regulations.

By creating a digital healthcare infrastructure, Vudu helped the tribe expand that to meet the regulatory compliance of other departments, while eliminating the risks of using different servers, hard drives, and processes for each department.

Vudu helped the Absentee Shawnee Tribe:

·        Virtualize electronic health records, software, and infrastructure, and roll its physical server into three virtual hosts, removing the tribal healthcare system’s dependence on hardware.

·        Improve backup practices with system snapshot protocols and backup software.

·        Create a fail-safe site at a separate location.

·        Optimize onboarding and training to acclimate other departments to work on the new infrastructure.

·        Increase tribe-wide access to core services through universal IT infrastructure.

For Absentee Shawnee, Vudu serves as a true strategic voice at the leadership table, advising the tribe’s executive committee on what projects to pursue next, as well as coordinating the many vendors under contract with the tribe.

Vudu’s IT specialists are business-minded technology wizards. We work with tribal leaders to earn their trust and show we solve problems as if they are our own. We move beyond the normal realm of managed IT to convert data into insights, insights into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. With that wisdom, tribes can make better decisions and achieve supernatural transformation for their members.

At Vudu, we are technology wizards who want to bring IT magic to your organization and achieve supernatural results. Want to know more about how our managed IT support services can benefit your tribal leadership? Tell us more about your goals.

Start making IT magic

Schedule a Call