Learn how municipalities across Massachusetts can leverage state grant funding for records management, cybersecurity, and document digitization projects.
The Massachusetts Community Compact IT Grant is a competitive state program administered by the Executive Office for Administration and Finance. It provides funding to municipalities that have signed the Community Compact — a voluntary agreement between the state and individual cities and towns to pursue best practices in local governance.
Through this program, municipalities can receive grant awards to implement technology solutions that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and modernize operations. The IT Grant specifically targets projects involving technology upgrades, cybersecurity improvements, and digital transformation of municipal services.
The Community Compact IT Grant covers a broad range of technology and records management initiatives. Eligible project categories include:
Many Massachusetts towns have decades of paper records stored in basements, closets, and offsite storage. The costs of maintaining, protecting, and retrieving these records add up quickly. Digitizing active records and securely destroying those past their retention period is exactly the kind of modernization project the IT Grant was designed to fund.
Valley Green Shredding works with municipalities across Western Massachusetts to support records management projects that align with Community Compact IT Grant objectives. Here is how your town can put grant funding to work:
Our document scanning services convert paper records into searchable digital files. We handle everything from standard office documents to large-format maps, engineering drawings, and architectural plans. Digitized records can be organized, indexed, and stored in your municipality's document management system or secure cloud platform.
Once records have been digitized and verified, or once they have exceeded their Massachusetts retention requirements, they need to be securely destroyed. Our NAID AAA Certified shredding service provides a documented chain of custody and a Certificate of Destruction for your records — exactly the kind of audit trail grant-funded projects require.
Cybersecurity grant projects often involve decommissioning old computers, servers, and storage devices. Our hard drive destruction service physically destroys drives so data cannot be recovered, meeting NIST 800-88 guidelines for media sanitization.
Not sure where to start? We can help your municipality inventory existing records, identify what needs to be retained, what can be scanned, and what is eligible for destruction. This assessment can serve as the foundation for your grant application.
While Valley Green Shredding does not write grant applications, we can provide detailed project scopes, cost estimates, and timelines that your grant writer or town administrator can incorporate into a Community Compact IT Grant proposal. Our experience working with municipal records gives us a clear understanding of what these projects involve and what reviewers expect to see.
If your municipality has signed the Community Compact and is considering a records management or cybersecurity project, we encourage you to explore the IT Grant as a funding source. Here are the steps to get started:
Ready to discuss how VGS can support your municipality's records management project? Contact us today or call (413) 461-3333 to schedule a free consultation.