Microsoft Announces New E-Government Platform to Put Technology to Work for Governments...

Microsoft Announces New E-Government Platform to Put Technology to Work for
Governments and Citizens
Citizen Service Platform will enable greater responsiveness to citizens'
needs, efficient delivery of services and cost-effective offerings via the
Internet.

BERLIN, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced
a new strategy that will make it easier for governments to interact with
citizens, streamline processes and, as a result, save time and taxpayer
dollars. At the Government Leaders Forum-Europe in Berlin, Microsoft unveiled
the Citizen Service Platform (CSP), an approach to help governments of all
sizes more responsively deliver services to citizens via the Internet.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)
From London to Stockholm, from Porto, Portugal, to Aalter, Belgium,
governments of all sizes are communicating with citizens in a variety of new
and innovative ways. Even with the diverse needs of these cities, many of
their government agencies deliver a common set of services to citizens. A
culmination of Microsoft's partnerships, programs and projects conducted with
governments over several years, the CSP has been developed to answer the needs
seen across diverse government offices and help deliver the best of these
services across different regions worldwide. Initial offerings include a suite
of online services that will be available for customization and integration
into existing government solutions for their citizens later this year.
"Governments need to respond to the growing needs of their constituencies
and modernize the way they conduct business and engage with their
stakeholders," said Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft
International.
"Technology can help local and regional governments increase efficiency
levels and offer modernized services, but many are ill-equipped to meet
citizens' needs due to a lack of funding, technical expertise or other
resources," Courtois said. "CSP arose from a series of projects among
Microsoft, our partners, and local and regional governments. By incorporating
past lessons and achievements, we will be able to provide these governments
with technologies they can cost-effectively and easily deploy for the direct
benefit of their citizens."
CSP is Microsoft's strategy to support governments as they develop
sustainable, flexible and extendable IT infrastructures with citizen service
in mind. A recent report conducted by Capgemini, on behalf of Microsoft, found
that although 80 percent of services to the public happen at the local level,
the governments responsible for delivering those services have found it
difficult to keep up with effectively increasing the efficiency with which
they respond to citizen needs. The goal of the CSP is to close that gap
through rapid solution development, customizable applications and the industry
knowledge to keep pace with the sophisticated expectations of citizens in a
technology-driven world.
Graham Colclough, global vice president of Cities & Regions for Capgemini,
said that solutions such as CSP can play a central role in helping governments
as they transform services. "There is clear evidence of, and need for, root
and branch public service reform -- citizens are demanding this so tax
revenues must be stretched further. Public service providers must lead change
by building a bridge of trust with their communities -- and they are already
starting that process," Colclough said. "Technology that is flexible,
affordable and scalable can go a long way toward minimizing costs and ensuring
that more of the resources make it through the pipeline to the people who need
it the most."
Microsoft has engaged partners to develop applications that sit on
existing technology platforms used by local and regional governments. Features
such as citizen portals, case management, intelligent forms, community Web
sites and document management emerged as strong priorities for governments to
focus their IT spending on, according to research conducted by Capgemini.
Examples of existing field solutions that will now be housed under CSP
include the following:
-- Impacting more than productivity. The Porto City Council, the second
largest in Portugal, needed an efficient solution to internally manage
city council meetings, which generate hundreds of thousands of pages
of documents each year. The Executive Portal project, which will be an
element of CSP offerings based on Microsoft SharePoint Portal 2007
technology, computerized meeting documentation and streamlined the
entire preparation process. The result was simplified meeting
logistics and bureaucracy, a better integrated document management
system, reduced paper use by the equivalent of 300 reams of paper or
11 trees a year, and also allows for future scalability.

-- Providing a framework for medium-sized governments. Another element of
the CSP will be tools that allow small and medium-sized governments to
create and manage their own online services and content designed
around Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. In the municipality of
Aalter, Belgium, the former Digital Town Hall offering -- planned to
be integrated into CSP -- is operating with great success. The
municipality is enacting a set of online services that deliver content
to citizens, tourists and political interest groups as well as
providing productivity tools for case management. Aalter's offering
has also been shared and used by four other governments across Europe,
and has been translated into French, German and Italian.

-- Deploying a citizen alert system. To allow small agencies to deliver
basic services via SMS messaging without the need for on-site
information and communication technology (ICT) hardware, Microsoft
worked with partners to develop an alert system for storm warnings.
The town of St. Mary, Jamaica, deployed it in 2007 as a mechanism to
help warn citizens of storms and hurricanes, a common hazard in the
late summer season. The solution was developed for Microsoft by
Spanish partner Spenta Consulting, and uses Microsoft Office Live and
the Virtual Earth platform. The solution was built in less than eight
weeks using Web services in response to a request from local
government leaders who challenged the ICT industry to do more to help
small governments keep pace with technology developments.

-- Enabling a single view of the citizen. Many government agencies that
are modernizing often start with the need for a single view of the
citizen, or single citizen record, to provide a comprehensive view of
community needs. The CSP will include templates built around Microsoft
Dynamics CRM to ensure a consistent view of the citizen's information,
whether accessed over the Internet, by telephone or at the town hall.

More information on CSP can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/industry/publicsector/government/csp.mspx.

Microsoft Contributes to EU Services Directive
Microsoft today also announced a partnership with the DStGB (German
Association of Towns and Municipalities) and the Fraunhofer-Institute FOKUS to
develop and distribute a documented prototype solution needed to implement the
EU Services Directive. The Project ServiceLine 115 program is equivalent to
the 311 number in New York -- one consistent service hot line for all
citizens. The technical offering from the partnership will also include a
spatial data system of municipal geographies, an electronic trade register, an
online system of business registration and a set of Internet portals.
Governments, organizations and agencies can both contribute and take existing
knowledge and solution sets from a Solution Sharing Network (SSN) portal as
needed.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their
full potential.
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

pr.mspx./ /CONTACT: Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide,
+1-503-443-7070, rrt@waggeneredstrom.com, for Microsoft Corp.