Fire and police departments are exploring new staffing strategies today to ensure they field the right personnel to keep their communities safe - while working within budget constraints. This can even mean combining hiring authority departments that were previously separate.

Communities across the country are dealing with the troubling rise in opioid addiction, resulting in higher numbers of drug overdoses. For example, officials in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, recently found that drug overdoses in the first seven months of 2016 have already surpassed those reported for the entirety of 2015.

While major cities rely on full-time, professional EMS departments for their emergency response services, smaller municipalities in less populated areas are more likely to depend on volunteers. Unfortunately for them, there aren't as many signups as there used to be.

In theory, privatizing public services to reduce costs makes sense. But such a dramatic shift in operations can lead to drops in service levels that the public may not tolerate. Before any municipality goes through with a privatization plan, it is imperative to evaluate its cost-effectiveness. After all, a private company focused on profit can erode accountability and potentially drive governments deeper into debt.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the government is persistently behind the private sector in information technology — especially on the local level. But this doesn't have to be true for every city and town. With the right software, public departments can match the tech-savviness of their private counterparts, and build efficient organizations as a result.