SharePoint Key Piece of MS eGovernment Solution

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Jan 29, 2008

SharePoint part of Microsoft's Citizen Services Platform

Microsoft is always looking out for someone aren’t they? This time it’s small, local governments who are responsible for 80% of the transactions between government and its citizens (individuals and businesses). They now offer the Citizen Services Platform, a combination of technologies, which includes SharePoint, and solution offerings designed to put the “e” in local e-government.

Why does Microsoft think local government needs their help? Well they spent some time researching the different pressures that affect local governments today and how these pressures impact the ICT needs. What kinds of pressures you may ask?

The need to better manage resources and develop strategic policies
The expectations of citizens changing with the ever expanding “social internet”
Global demographics
Globalization and population growth into “megacities”
Increasing concerns over security and privacy

Microsoft found that the technology approaches used by various governments varied widely. Add the fact that finances to support these technology solutions was in short supply and Microsoft came up with its solution to the growing problem: SharePoint.

Well no, not just SharePoint, but it’s a key piece of the e-government technology puzzle.

Through it's research partner IDC, Microsoft found that governments were looking solutions for several key service areas including: citizen portals, contact centers, case management and interactive forms.

With this in mind, Microsoft developed a framework built on proven infrastructure technologies that uses an open standards. The solution can be small and grow as the government needs to implement more services. It's based on a set of templates using one or more of 4 key technologies:

Microsoft Windows Live, Office Live and Virtual Earth
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Depending on size and scale of the solution needed, any combination of these technologies may be implemented.

The Four Layer Model for Translating Business Challenges into Technology Solutions

The Citizen Services Platform is based on a 4-layer model - shown in the figure below:

Identifying the key challenges and the people and processes affected are a given for any potential solution to truly work. The hard part comes when trying to identify the applications and technologies needed to support these business challenges.

It could be as simple as going out and purchasing an off-the-shelf software package. But will that software be flexible enough to be able to grow as more business requirements are identified and new people and processes need to be supported/integrated in the solution?

Microsoft's platform is a combination of software + services that work together to provide the best solution to the client. The following is the technology platform solution Microsoft has developed for the Citizen Services Platform:

First they have defined the optimal platform upon which most solutions will be based. This includes Windows Server and SharePoint Portal Server (which provides most of the application functionality required - portal, content management, search, forms, workflow, business intelligence). It can then be wrapped up with Live Services and optionally include CRM and Performance Point Server.