Provide personalized up-to-date information services

With the increased availability of information, citizens are learning how to gain more insight into government resources and policies. They are leveraging this knowledge to demand more personalized service from their governments.

Microsoft solutions help government organizations connect users to citizen-friendly points of access, to services on any device from any location. Providing a single citizen experience also requires direct integration with back-office applications for automated process and task completion. And these solutions use social tools - putting government services at people's fingertips when and where they need them: online, in libraries, on mobile devices, or at kiosks.

Invite citizens to participate in government activities

With greater access to government information, citizens can convert knowledge into action by responding and making their voices heard.

Social tools can enable citizens to express their views, politicians to canvas opinions, and government agencies to conduct surveys, all to increase the level of community participation and involvement. Additionally, governments can analyze public opinion in new and cost-effective ways through live video feeds, wikis, blogs, and interactive maps, reinforced by the security-enhanced tools your government already uses. Such interactivity helps enable governments to build and encourage public and private partnerships, facilitating government modernization and economic recovery.

Citizen portals

With Microsoft SharePoint Server, governments can create a central online resource where citizens can address a wide variety of needs at their convenience.

These include finding information about services and events; applying for permits, jobs, and licenses; paying bills and fines; logging reports and requests; and expressing opinions and interacting with policymakers.

Additionally, Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps agencies organize, store, and track electronic communications from citizens. With a comprehensive trail, services' outreach awareness can be improved, specific needs of groups within the community can be met, costs can be lowered, and citizen satisfaction can be increased. Citizens can also have the flexibility of filing applications and obtaining services using their PCs, PDAs, or phones.

Contact centers

​Once you provide a platform that improves citizens' ability to interact with the government, you will need a robust solution to help your workers respond quickly to citizen needs.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps improve citizens' ability to contact your agency and cut your response time by integrating your call center, routing, and CRM. The faster your response, the greater value your agency can deliver to the communities you serve.

You can also use electronic tools, such as interactive voice response (IVR) in combination with contact-center agents to speed issue resolution of phone inquiries. Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office 365 give knowledge workers the ability to work within Microsoft Office Outlook to review prior contacts and update records when responding to email requests. This enables your organization to take advantage of a reporting dashboard to sort and report incidents by contact type (web, phone, or email) or by case type, case severity, or other key data to help ensure timely service.

Mobile applications

​The way citizens interact with government agencies is changing rapidly. Today, mobile applications make it easier for citizens to report on community concerns, receive government feedback on progress, and help save the government money. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM in combination with .NET and Windows Azure, governments can now improve tracking and help ensure timely responsiveness to businesses, citizens, and their requests. And, they can even help enable citizens to create and track cases and search knowledge bases for information potentially resulting in improved service quality and increased citizen satisfaction.

Citizen identity

​With all of this information sharing and data access to government sites, security is more necessary than ever. As government services move to cheaper online channels, efficiencies stem from using one or more Identity Providers as a shared service rather than building those efficiencies repetitively into each application. Trust is built by applying common definitions of multiple identity assurance levels, and allowing for the diversity of external Identity Providers with the appropriate authentication methods for each level.

Governments can stimulate citizen uptake based on online trust frameworks, by putting users in control of their personal data, by managing their minimal disclosure of personal data for each service, and by providing a consistent user experience during the log-in process. For your developers, this means simplification will come from standards-based identity federation, allowing flexibility for future architectural changes, and to move services between on-premises and the cloud.