In the past, government organizations have kept technology and processes in silos, making for operational inefficiencies and "sub-optimal" service quality. To help address this problem, Microsoft offers a Citizen Services Platform (CSP), also known as the Connected Government Framework (CGF). This is essentially a rethinking of the public sector service delivery model to help governments better manage their business processes, delivery channels, and enabling technologies. CSP is a next-generation framework, which was developed and refined over hundreds of customer implementations. It promises to help citizens interact with their governments when they want and how they want, and find the information they need with ease.

CSP leverages the latest technologies from Microsoft to help solve challenges facing governments such as:

1. Improving service quality
2. Increasing operational efficiency
3. Improving compliance and accountability
4. Leveraging the power of technology
5. Caring for the environment
6. Sustaining the local economy

How does CSP solve these challenges?

1. There is no wrong door anymore; citizens can find the information they need at any time and on any device.
2. Services are delivered more efficiently and at a lower cost.
3. Public funds are transparently managed, which helps to establish trust within the community.
4. Services and infrastructures are shared between agencies, making communication and work flow more efficient.
5. Less paper is used; technologies are reused and shared more openly.

As highly visible organizations in the public domain, governments have an opportunity – perhaps even a responsibility – to be a source of innovation to their communities. By partnering with Microsoft, my company Infusion helped the City of Lethbridge, Canada, take this mission to a new level using CSP. The city wanted to design and build a leading-edge corporate and public portal to serve its citizens, employees, and business partners more efficiently. In addition, Lethbridge wanted this portal to align with its internal and external web presence using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Using the CSP model to help the city modernize its web platform, Infusion developed a hyper-efficient website that is now the first line of information for citizens. The project has also resulted in real financial savings for the city. Check out our video case study for more information.

There are three key things to consider before starting a project like the City of Lethbridge:

1. Understand and refine your service catalogue, building a comprehensive list of the services and information to be delivered. Begin to identify candidate services for initial CSP phases.
2. Identify the performance metrics that will be used to measure the effectiveness of the new model. Remember qualitative as well as quantitative indicators.
3. Think "big picture," but start small. Start with success, build momentum, and communicate wins at regular intervals. “Intranet, internet, then extranet” has worked for a lot of organizations.

To learn more about Infusion, please visit www.infusion.com.

Have a comment or opinion on this post? Let me know @Microsoft_Gov. Have a question for the author? Please e-mail us at ongovernment@microsoft.com.