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Connected Government in a Connected World

The rising tide of technology is carrying the world commerce and governments—national,

regional, and local—into new and uncharted territories. What this means in today’s era of cloud

computing, open data, and the consumerization of IT is that the dynamics between governments

and users of public services are transforming. Critical issues such as service delivery, efficiency,

transparency, and quality of service are under greater stress than ever before in light of higher

user expectations. As technology is evolving, the associated costs and deployment risks are

declining while capabilities continue to advance, making it easier and less expensive for

governments at all economic levels to leverage technology and lay out new modern services.

However, all governments are grappling with the challenges of this ever more connected world.

With the increasing amount of data governments manage come complex responsibilities

regarding how that information is accessed, stored, and used—including sovereignty, security,

and privacy. As they move to embrace the advantages afforded by new technology, governments

must first address how they can leverage technology to meet the above challenges—in a way

that adheres to standards of compliance and security.

According to Gartner1, “technology trends and the pressure for financial sustainability will lead

government organizations toward greater levels of choice in how technology is sourced across

their entire value chain. Gartner offers an analysis, key findings, and recommendations for

government CIOs and key IT leaders."

At Microsoft, we see these issues as dimensions of a single theme: Connection. Connecting

government to citizens, connecting information to government workers, and connecting

government agencies together—all in the interest of achieving higher levels of service, efficiency,

and accountability for this and the next generation of citizens. Governments that transform

connections to information and people can create a real impact for better government.

1 DiMaio, Andrea, “The Key to Smart Government Is Choice,” Gartner Industry Research, June 20, 2011

(ID:G00213803).

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Connected Citizens for Improved Service Delivery and Engagement

The explosion of smarter devices and pervasive Internet services means many consumers have

new levels of access to information and methods to connect with government services and fellow

citizens. These always-on, technology natives include a younger generation of tomorrow’s active

citizens who have high expectations of their government agencies—such as on-demand services

with native integration to social media and smart devices. The appetite for government

information is now such that social tools and open data applications, such as those enabled by

the cloud, are often the only viable solution to provide these richer, and more personalized

experiences. The result is better served and more engaged citizens.

Cloud Solution Promotes a Cleaner London in Build Up to Olympic Games

Today the citizens of London, England, can report and comment on environmental issues through a

cloud-enabled Microsoft® Solution built around Windows Azure®. This reduces the cost and

massively expands the availability of a critical application. The combination of the transactional

and social aspects of a service has led this solution to be adopted by the city in their preparation for

the 2012 Olympic Games under the brand “Love Clean London.”

Connected Workers Enabled by a Modernized Workplace

Years ago, the advent of personal computing created a disruptive effect on technology in the

enterprise. Today, consumerization of IT is having the same effect on government agencies.

Gartner coined the phrase “Employee-Centric Government”2 to describe the challenge of

integrating information around government employees, just as governments strive to do for their

citizens. This involves not just connecting applications but also connecting knowledge—from

data sharing to social connections—as agencies take advantage of technologies that can help

foster a culture change toward collective knowledge and expertise through empowerment.

German State Government Increases Productivity 66 Percent with Unified Interface

The state of Hesse in Germany employs 90,000 workers and supports an infrastructure of 1,800

servers and 60,000 computers. Employees were using more than 400 applications with different

user interfaces and no standard mechanism for exchanging common data between standard

applications and customized software. Data had to be entered multiple times. The government

solved this problem by using a partner solution that leverages Microsoft Biztalk Server and

Microsoft Office to connect these different applications—improving case processing productivity by

2 DiMaio, Andrea, “Why Government 2.0 Is Not Government 1.1” March 8, 2011.

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66 per cent, as documented in a study by the German Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und

Organisation (IAO).

Connected Information for Improved Insight and Accountability

While providing technology to better support citizens and workers is a significant step forward

there still remains the challenge of how to connect information across government agencies.

Creating a real impact in this effort is critical, recognizing that successful government operations

depend on having the right information, in the right format, across organizational and

technological boundaries in order to improve efficiency, promote transparency, and enable

business insight. This is especially true as some seek to engage with non-government or

voluntary sector organizations to reduce costs and improve agility. Such models have to rely on

robust, scalable technology such as the cloud to operate effectively, because without them the

best intentions can be undermined by simple breakdowns in collaboration and communication.

European Environment Agency’s Pioneering Online Tools Bring Revolutionary Data to

Citizens

An agency of the European Union, the European Environment Agency (EEA) provides policy makers

and the general public with independent and reliable information on the environment. The agency

is working to raise environmental awareness across Europe by delivering easy-to-understand

information about environmental issues such as water and air quality. Working with Microsoft, the

EEA developed the Eye on Earth platform, based on the Windows Azure cloud services operating

system. Users can view water or air quality from the 32 member countries of the EEA using high-

definition Microsoft® Bing® maps. The EEA has also launched the Environmental Atlas of Europe,

which features first-hand, eyewitness stories about climate change.

Connected Cities for Smarter Living Environments

Cities of all sizes and complexities are the hub of local economic development, and many are

experiencing a surge of citizens moving from the country to towns. As such, there is a concurrent

need to make cities smarter: resources like water, space, energy and clean air are scarce and need

to be used with greater efficacy. Information and communication technology (ICT) provides a

catalyst to help cities transform to smart cities. Cities and metropolitan areas can leverage ICT to

manage urban congestion, maximize energy efficiency, enhance public security, allocate

resources based on real-time evidence, and educate the citizenry through remote learning. As a

result, city authorities can create more livable and economically viable communities for the

citizens and businesses they serve.

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City of Malmö Gains Full Benefits from IT Services*

The multicultural city of Malmö is the third most populated city in Sweden. It employs

approximately 19,500 people, including a 10-people strong IT team. Together, they serve

300,000 citizens who have made this city, with its modern architecture, parks, beach, growing

businesses, and flourishing university, their home. In 2010, the city recognized a need to make

the services it provided more compatible with each other and IT more aligned with the

organization’s business objectives. Together with Microsoft, the city conducted a comprehensive

analysis of their business objectives and existing IT to determine an IT strategy that could help

the city achieve desired outcome. Business objectives, such as continuing to be an attractive city

to do business in and improving levels of environmental sustainability, were linked to the existing

IT strategies to reveal what needed to be invested in and why.

*This case study is available only in Swedish.

Changes Sweep across Today’s Technology Landscape

Consumerization of IT

As mobile devices and social computing continue to improve citizens’ personal lives, people

naturally expect this technology to provide the same advantages at work. Many government

employees want to use consumer devices and social networking for work-related interactions.

According to a recent IDC study, between a third to more than half of devices (including laptops,

mobile phones, and smart phones) used in the workplace are used for both work and personal

purposes. IDC believes consumerization will be an unstoppable trend over the next five years; it

follows that government IT managers must make key decisions and adopt a coherent strategy in

order to best deal with the impact of this trend.

Nitobi Harnesses the Power of Open Government Data with VanGuide

Nitobi Inc. is a developer of mobile and rich Internet applications for the enterprise in Vancouver,

Canada. The developer wanted to create an application using open government data in a way that

makes data more compelling and personable for citizens. Nitobi used the Microsoft® Open

Government Data Initiative together with Vancouver’s open data and the Windows Azure platform

to enable citizens to access government data easily and quickly via the VanGuide mobile and web-

based application.

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Computing in the Cloud

With its ability to reduce IT costs, increase agility, reduce the need for physical IT resources, and

help organizations stay at the forefront of technology, cloud computing is a hot topic at all levels

of government. IDC recently predicted that “Cloud computing will continue to reshape the IT

landscape over the next five years as spending on public IT cloud services expands at a

compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6 percent from $21.5 billion in 2010 to $72.9 billion

in 2015.”3 Cloud computing gives governments the ability to deploy service channels with as little

or as much power from private, public, or community clouds as they need. This flexibility and

choice mean not only tremendous cost savings and more efficient use of resources, but they also

provide governments and political officials with more flexibility in the ways that they access

information.

City Government Improves Service Offerings, Cuts Costs with Cloud Services Solution

The city of Miami, Florida, wanted to develop an online application to record, track, and report on

nonemergency incidents. However, the application’s sophisticated mapping technology would

require significant computing resources. Further constrained by long hardware-procurement cycles,

the city needed a cost-effective, scalable solution that would maximize its available resources.

Miami developed a 311 application on the Windows Azure platform, taking advantage of scalable

storage, processing power, and hosting provided by Microsoft. The city reduced IT costs, improved

citizen services, and delivered those services faster. It now relies on a [cloud-based] cost-effective

disaster-recovery model—an important benefit in this hurricane-prone region.

Cloud Power Delivers New Opportunities

Technology advances have opened new possibilities and raised expectations about governments’

role and how governments should serve communities. These possibilities include:

Cloud computing as a viable ICT provisioning model and a way to reduce costs and deliver

new services.

Social media to enhance and improve levels of participation and citizen satisfaction with

services.

Open data and government data stores to allow much wider access to publishing and

distributing public information.

3 Nathan Eddy, “IT Cloud Services Spending to Reach $72.9 Billion in 2015: IDC Report,” Midmarket News,

eWEEK, June 20, 2011 (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/IT-Cloud-Services-Spending-to-Reach-729-

Billion-in-2015-IDC-Report-547901/).

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By harnessing new technologies, governments can deliver better experiences to communities—

without escalating costs. As this transformation becomes more federated and processes cross

many boundaries—from on-premises technology platforms to web services and cloud

resources—a new set of possibilities emerge.

The cloud provides an exciting platform to develop new applications and new ways to deliver

services and information to communities. At Microsoft, we have already seen various levels of

government take advantage of the power of open data—placing information and services

directly into the hands of citizens. Examples include:

Citizen Services—In the United Kingdom, www.lovelewisham.org has become a shining

example of an open citizen-driven service. Initially designed for one council, this is now being

more widely adopted under the name LoveCleanStreets. This model has inspired many similar

cloud-based examples that extend existing 311 systems.

Open Data Solutions—Services such as www.recovery.gov and www.data.gov leverage the

Windows Azure Data Market at a national level in the United States. At the city level,

examples such as Vancouver Open Data (Canada) allow wider access to public information for

third-party developers to create tools and useful applications, reducing agency costs and

resources.

Online Productivity Tools—In many instances, government agencies are consuming cloud

services, such as Microsoft® Office365 (formerly Microsoft® BPOS), extending collaboration

capabilities to their staff without the capital investment. Agencies in the state of California

and in New York City as well as London, England, and Europe are achieving economies of

scale, lowering costs by up to 40 percent. (See the city of Carlsbad, California, case study.)

The evolution from on-premises to the cloud means governments can change from a capital

investment model to an IT services consumption model. For large central governments, the cloud

offers the possibility to consolidate on a previously unheard-of scale and to use the cloud’s

dynamic capacity to provide resources instantly to accommodate peaks in demand. For smaller

agencies, the cloud provides ready access to services and the ability to pay only for what they

consume—removing the traditionally capital-intensive barriers to acquire new service capacity.

Thus, the cloud has the potential to level the capabilities of agencies, independent of their scale,

and to help enable small agencies to leverage the same ICT capacity as their larger peers.

These examples represent the first innovations in what may be the most significant technology

transformation yet seen. On the other hand, the real world of today’s technology platforms

represents the investment of generations and will not be displaced overnight; indeed, the key to

successfully using the cloud is based on combining the new capabilities with existing legacy

systems that hold data vital to the end user’s experience.

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Connected Government Framework

The advantages of today’s technology trends are undeniable: consumerization enables people to

share rich insightful information more widely than ever before. Cloud computing delivers access

to massive computing resources in a scalable and cost-effective manner, and relieves

governments of day-to-day IT management. Microsoft supports these two trends with tools to

help government agencies improve collaboration and provide widespread access to information

for their workers and their citizens. These tools can fuel better decision making, deeper insights,

heightened accountability, and the delivery of more personalized services. As a result,

governments can connect citizens and workers with services, information, and each other to

jointly build a better future.

The Microsoft® Connected Government Framework uses a foundation of interoperability and

standards embedded in Microsoft products to provide a platform for governments to better

serve and engage their citizens, modernize the government to be more efficient and effective,

and help governments be more open and transparent. The Framework aims to facilitate the

conversation between Political Decision Makers and the IT department, showing the way to

leverage infrastructure investment and make smart steps for efficient policy changes. It consists

of four layers:

Layer 1: Government outcomes and aspirations—key policy goals and objectives, such as:

• Improved services and quality of life

• Economic prosperity and sustainability

• Safe and healthy communities

Layer 2: Government Services—the people and processes required to implement the agency

services that are citizen-facing, policy, planning, or resource management.

Layer 3: Solution Areas—Microsoft and partner solutions that fill a particular role in:

• Service Delivery and Engagement

• Workplace Modernization

• Insight and Accountability

• Partner-delivered solutions

Layer 4: ICT infrastructure—the Microsoft suite of products, from Microsoft Office to

Windows Server® to Windows Azure in the cloud and more, that enable government

solutions:

• Core infrastructure

• Business productivity

• Application platform

These four layers are designed to align with the government agency’s business and technology

architecture.

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To help visualize scenarios, Microsoft provides an online demonstration network that showcases

examples of government solutions in action and helps to envision what is possible. These solution

demonstrations were created by Microsoft partners who have deep knowledge and expertise in

the business of government and have worked closely with Microsoft to create a solution that

captures the imagination.

Here’s what industry analysts are saying and customers are experiencing in three main areas of

emphasis for Microsoft Connected Government:

Government Service Delivery and Engagement

Microsoft solutions are designed to combine personal citizen information with cloud-sourced

data and services.

“Interoperability is literally the hinge on a door that opens a completely new era of interaction

between government agencies and the citizens they serve. Through our [Microsoft and HP]

partnership, agencies can provide citizens with an integrated, single point of access for government

services while at the same time obtain an integrated view of the data they need to deliver those

services more efficiently and cost-effectively.”

—Enrique Barkey, Worldwide Director of Civilian Agency Solutions, HP

The City of Milan is “Easier” Thanks to Citizen Relationship Management Platform

The contact center created by the city of Milan, Italy, receives almost two million calls per year. In

order to streamline call processing and deliver better municipal services, the city set up a dedicated

phone number for city services and deployed Microsoft Dynamics® CRM as part of the Microsoft®

Citizen Service Platform solution. The system is the first of its kind in Italy, and it simplifies

relationships between local government and city service users. The City of Milan can now better

track service requests, plan assistance interventions, cope with internal production peaks, eliminate

queues at front offices, and reduce costs.

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Government Workplace Modernization

Microsoft solutions aim to improve information workers’ productivity through innovative

technologies and optimized process management.

“...In order to meet evolving citizen demand, governments must shift from a citizen-centric to an

employee-centric paradigm, which depends on how government employees change the way they

work and collaborate inside and outside government.”

—Gartner, Inc., “Why Government 2.0 Is Not Government 1.1,” March 2011 (G00210927)

City Government in the US Uses Online Services for Messaging, Saves 40 Percent Annually

In California, the city of Carlsbad employs 1,100 people who rely on up-to-date technology to help

them serve more than 100,000 local citizens. The city’s workforce devotes a lot of time to team-

based projects that require efficient communication and collaboration tools, yet the city had an

aging email service and no collaboration solution. Faced with stringent budget limitations, the city

chose a Microsoft® Online Services solution that provides hosted communication and collaboration

services. The new solution delivers the security and functionality the city needs for desktop and

mobile email, online collaboration tools, and web conferencing. In these tough economic times,

Carlsbad is saving approximately

40 percent annually opting for a hosted solution that provides more productivity-enhancing tools

for its workforce compared to an on-premises solution.

Government Insight and Accountability

Microsoft solutions transform governments through state-of-the-art technologies necessary to

help ensure compliance with laws and regulations, as well as become a more open and

transparent government.

“It’s nearly impossible for agencies to make sense of disparate silos of information. If combined,

however, the data could dramatically improve decision making and save money and resources.”

—Information Week Government Analytics Report, “Government 2.0: Technology Leadership

Redefined,” September 2009

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Mexican Statistics Agency Coordinates Data Collection Using Collaboration Portal

When the Mexican Congress passed legislation in 2008, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y

Geografía (INEGI) became an autonomous agency, responsible for coordinating and managing the

production of statistical and geographic information about the country, including population

figures, economic data, and geographical facts. Because this information is produced by several

different governmental agencies, it was necessary for INEGI to create a way to collaborate and

coordinate with these other agencies. Working with a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, INEGI used

Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2010 to create a collaboration portal in just two months. The portal

provides an easy way for Mexican governmental agencies to interact and collaborate on common

projects that affect the way statistical information is gathered, processed, and published.

Microsoft Supports Interoperability and Standards

The evolution from existing technology to cloud computing is built on existing standards.

Companies, research institutions, and government programs are evolving and adapting existing

technologies to the cloud computing pattern.

At Microsoft, we are focusing on adding value through enhancements to our core technologies

and working to help ensure that all the services in our cloud can be accessed via open protocols

and data formats from any operating system or programming language. Furthermore, we are

supporting a variety of other languages, run-times, web servers, databases, and so forth on our

cloud platforms, just as we do today on-premises. We want to bring our popular Windows®

platform to cloud application development, while increasing openness and interoperability to

meet the needs of our customers.

Microsoft continues to enhance its products with new capabilities that can help reduce the cost

of running a mixed IT environment. For example, the Windows Azure platform is an open, web

addressable platform that supports a host of Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages, open

protocols, popular standards, and technologies. This support enables Microsoft partners and

customers to develop and deploy services quickly and easily by capitalizing on the same skill sets,

development tool investments, and knowledge.

Breadth of Technology Platform

The breadth of the Microsoft platform spans business and consumer applications—from

developer technologies and business computing technologies to the home office to consumer

technologies—including games. This breadth of platform provides governments the capability to

reach citizens and users across multiple devices in a very consistent way. Platform choice is key

for governments doing business on the web; it will have a direct impact on how well they can

take advantage of new opportunities moving forward.

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Microsoft Understands the Cloud

Governments’ ability to deploy service channels with as little or as much power from private,

public, or community clouds as they need is what gives the Microsoft cloud story its unique

power. Whether in the cloud or on-premises, Microsoft understands both worlds. With a diverse

portfolio of solutions for private, public, or community clouds, Microsoft and government

agencies can partner to architect a unique strategy to optimize citizen service delivery, as well

provide technology that will be fast to adopt and easy to configure. Microsoft can also work with

governments to understand how the incorporation of the cloud affects their budgets, as well as

ways to financially maximize their cloud investments.

A Strong Partner Ecosystem

For virtually all Microsoft products, there is a broad, global ecosystem of diverse and specialized

partners who can build value-added solutions to government specifications (when necessary) on

top of Microsoft products and then work with government internal IT teams to deploy these

solutions. The Microsoft public sector partner ecosystem boasts an extraordinary quality of

products, solutions, services, and expertise.

Conclusion

While delivering an expansive choice of platforms and scenarios, Microsoft offers a simple vision

of what ICT can do to help governments promote engagement, efficiency, and insight: In an

increasingly connected world, governments need to provide information that follows the user—

be it a citizen, worker, or politician. The Microsoft Connected Government strategy helps enable

better service, greater productivity, and deeper insights—all in an effort to provide more

responsible, efficient, and transparent services.

Governments continue to evolve with the changing dynamics between government entities and

users of public services. By connecting systems, processes, and people, governments not only

better serve and engage their citizens—they help make the business of government more

transparent and accountable to its constituents and modernize the government workplace itself,

thus creating a real impact for better government.

© 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Bing, BizTalk, Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, Windows, Windows

Azure, and Windows Server are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.