London is a city in Southwestern Ontario with a metropolitan area population of more than 350,000. The innovative municipality prides itself on the strategic use of technology and delivering a high level of core services to its citizens. Facing mounting budgetary pressures, London was looking to update its desktop computing environment in order for city officials to be more responsive to the public. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified partner CMS Consulting Inc., London became one of the first Canadian municipalities to upgrade its desktop computing environment to the Windows® 7 operating system operating system. Employees at the city are now taking advantage of the software’s capabilities to access data more quickly, securely and productively – allowing staff to support more efficient and lower-cost municipal services.

Centre Wellington is the largest municipality in Wellington County and ranks among one of the fastest growing communities in the province of Ontario. To improve its citizen service delivery, Centre Wellington worked with Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner Infusion Development to implement Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM. The customer relationship management (CRM) solution helps to develop a foundation for user information that more easily integrates with existing business systems. The Windows-based solution allows the municipality to enhance information access, deliver deeper business insight and meet its goals to serve its citizens more efficiently and effectively.

London is a city in Southwestern Ontario with a metropolitan area population of more than 350,000. The innovative municipality prides itself on the strategic use of technology and delivering a high level of core services to its citizens. Facing mounting budgetary pressures, London was looking to update its desktop computing environment in order for city officials to be more responsive to the public. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified partner CMS Consulting Inc., London became one of the first Canadian municipalities to upgrade its desktop computing environment to the Windows® 7 operating system operating system. Employees at the city are now taking advantage of the software’s capabilities to access data more quickly, securely and productively – allowing staff to support more efficient and lower-cost municipal services.

Dawson Creek is located in the northeast corner of British Columbia in the centre of the Peace Region. A recent surge in population and business activity related to the region’s oil sector has put growing pressure on municipal services. To accommodate new residents and plan for future growth, city officials embarked on a strategy to build a stronger and more flexible service-delivery model. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner ITnorth.ca, the city upgraded its data centre to Windows Server® 2008 with Hyper-V, Exchange Server 2007 and SQL Server® 2005. With a flexible and more secure server environment, the City of Dawson Creek is well into its five-year IT modernization plan that will ultimately give it the infrastructure it needs to strengthen connections with residents.

The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) stands precisely at the crossroads of politics and dental plans for some 450 members. SUMA represents the political and operational needs of hundreds of cities, towns and villages throughout the area as it interfaces with the provincial government and a myriad of product and service providers. However, because there are only 13 fulltime staff, productivity and efficiency become critical to SUMA’s operation. With the IT expertise of Lexcom, a Microsoft® Certified Gold Partner, the association is discovering a variety of features in the Windows® 7 operating system that are having a positive impact on productivity.

The City of Langford, British Columbia, was looking to enhance employee productivity and increase computer security. The city deployed the Windows Vista® operating system as the first step in a wave of new technology to support municipal operations. Today, Langford has more reliable, security-enhanced systems that employees can use to provide better service to Langford’s businesses and citizens.

With a strong history of providing superior municipal services, the Town of Kirkland, Quebec, wanted to offer its residents a simpler, more efficient service-request system. The municipality wanted residents to be able to make requests online, and provide them with follow up reports. It didn’t take long for Kirkland to find the solution – in fact, it was already in place. The municipality had installed Microsoft® SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, and knew from its features that SharePoint would fulfil the service-request requirement as well. With help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Techtra, Kirkland implemented the latest version, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Now citizens can make requests online, and follow the progress of their requests through the municipal service departments all the way to resolution.

Canada’s sixth-largest municipality and home to 1 million residents, Southern Ontario’s York Region relies on its law enforcement agency, York Regional Police, to keep the community safe. As a public agency that deals with emergencies and distress calls, network security is a top priority. York Regional Police (YRP) needed a centralized IT solution that would automatically push the latest applications and security updates to workstations, police cruisers and the region’s 911 emergency call center, ensure uptime, and help IT staff maximize its resources. In 2008 YRP deployed Microsoft® Forefront™ Client Security, which helps protect IT systems against security threats. The agency now has better system security, simplified administration, and improved visibility into its environment. The solution's automated features have also helped YRP make better use of its 35-person IT department.

Service Alberta needed to deliver enterprise-class operations management and move away from a reactive environment where IT outages were fixed as they occurred. To monitor service level agreements between IT and business, Service Alberta turned to Microsoft Services and deployed Microsoft Services Service Level Management for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. As a result, Service Alberta can improve alignment between IT and business by enabling staff to make decisions and set standards based on quantifiable data.

The Government of Alberta wanted to determine the health of its thousands of workstations and establish a faster way to deploy server computers. The organization worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Compugen to upgrade nine computers to the Windows Server® 2008 Standard operating system to effectively meet its multiple needs. The government is enhancing security and expects savings in server deployment time next year.