Information Strategies - Microsoft Citizen Services

Microsoft has announced a new software platform for public sector, based on Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and other Microsoft client and server products.

The Citizen Services Platform has been used to build public sector solutions worldwide, including implementations by Information Strategies in the United States, and implementations by other partners in Europe and the Caribbean.

For more details, see:

http://www.microsoft.com/industry/publicsector/government/csp.mspx

From the Microsoft press release:

The Platform is an extensible package that enables fast, repeatable implementation of local and regional government solutions. It leverages existing investments and easily growg as new business requirements arise. Built with market-proven Microsoft infrastructure components, it uses open standards and includes a set of common transactions that enable delivery of critical services to citizens, businesses, and civil servants, as in these examples:

1. Very small agencies can deliver online presence and basic services using software-as-a-service tools and also via SMS messaging without the need for onsite ICT hardware. The reference solution, built in less than eight weeks using Office Live platform and Virtual Earth, was deployed in St Mary Jamaica to help warn citizens of incoming storms and hurricanes.

2. Medium-sized governments can create and manage their own online services using Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server to deliver content to citizens, tourists, and political interest groups as well as providing productivity tools for case management by civil servants. This solution—formerly known as the 'Digital Town Hall'—also features the use of an e-agent service, which enables citizens to query the local government through a natural language interface using Windows Live Messenger. Also featured is a video streaming service to enable citizens and municipalities to share and stream video segments for public information or community event sharing. Some of these components are already featured in the Belgian cities of and Waterloo and Aalter.

3. Larger cities and regional governments benefit from supported components to facilitate the demands of modern contact centres, complex case management needs, document workflow and agenda management and other advanced Citizen Service Applications ,as deployed at the City of London , City of Porto and Municipality of Cascais in Portugal. These features make use of Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server in conjunction with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to enable fully integrated Web-Telephone-Counter based Citizen Service Applications to be built.

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