Microsoft Office 365: A new way of work in Government
You’re probably hearing a lot about digital transformation these days, but it’s not happening only in garages in Palo Alto or at hip tech companies in Brooklyn or Berlin. When you think about where digital transformation is happening, you may not think about government—but you should. Governments worldwide believe digital transformation can help them empower citizens by providing innovative services and reaching populations they couldn’t before. A 2016 Gartner survey shows that government CIOs worldwide believe that within five years, 80 percent of government business processes will have undergone significant digital transformation. That’s a game changer. But digitally transforming government is not without its challenges: older IT infrastructures, constrained budgets, or security and compliance concerns. Many governments see the cloud as a way to overcome these challenges and drive innovation. We’ve built Microsoft Office 365 to accelerate their journey to the cloud. How?
- By offering accessible communication and productivity tools designed for employees of all abilities to help them work better together to provide citizen services
- By helping governments to reduce infrastructure costs without sacrificing the technological advancements that drive digital transformation
- By increasing operational efficiencies and simplifying the administrative demands on IT while enabling them to maintain very necessary security and compliance
What governments really achieve with digital transformation is more productive ways to engage and interact with citizens, which is critical to helping governments become digital leaders. With Office 365, governments can try new ways of delivering services to citizens because they don’t have to make costly—and possibly risky—upfront investments in software and hardware. They can also provide intuitive, accessible, easy-to-use tools to drive digital inclusion for employees with visual or mobility impairments and help them be more productive at their jobs. A city mayor can use Office 365 broadcast capabilities to reach thousands of citizens through virtual town halls, helping to increase government outreach and transparency. A public works inspector in the field can use her mobile phone to take pictures of potholes, damaged signs, or broken traffic signals and create service tickets in real time via custom intranet portals built using Office 365, helping to improve infrastructure maintenance. A state emergency services agent can use business analytics capabilities in Office 365 to analyze how the agency has performed and gain valuable insights around ways to improve response times.
Digital transformation in government is happening as we speak. The California Department of Social Services (CDSS) recently adopted Office 365 to help it move away from paper processes, files, and memos, improve communications between employees and with citizens, and increase employee mobility. For an agency that offers adult programs, welfare, community care, and children and family services that impact nearly three million residents across the state, enabling mobile employees to provide leading-edge services is absolutely critical. That’s something CDSS couldn’t achieve with paper-based processes, desk-bound employees, and traditional IT solutions.
Of course, we know that for governments, security is always top of mind. Office 365 provides industry-leading physical, logical, and data security for our datacenters and customer data. Microsoft also continually assesses current international government security and compliance standards and updates its services as needed to ensure compliance. We are also committed to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance due to take effect in May 2018.
Productivity, accessibility, and security are all foundational to providing an innovative workplace. This blog kicks off a series of posts about ways Office 365 can help governments worldwide drive digital transformation. In the meantime, you can get hands-on with Office 365 through a free trial.
