Microsoft offers a very wide variety of technology software products and online services which underpin the Citizen Service Platform. To simplify discussion of these they are grouped into five key areas. The first three areas cover Microsoft's more traditional infrastructure products and are explained more fully immediately below. The other two areas include more recent offerings which extend Microsoft's capabilities in business application software – Microsoft Dynamics - and online consumer services – Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live.

Transformational Government depends on Optimised IT Infrastructure

To support the drive to transform government and enable it to be more citizen-centric it is important for local governments to ensure that their IT investments are really performing cost-effectively for them. Microsoft has developed a model for ensuring this called Infrastructure Optimisation. This model is explained in much more depth elsewhere but a brief explanation is provided here. It separates infrastructure into three key elements :

• The Core Infrastructure optimization model helps customers understand and strive for a more secure, well-managed, and dynamic core IT infrastructure that will help enable them to reduce their overall IT costs, make better use of IT resources, and make IT a strategic asset for the organization. The key challenge in this area is to support IT professionals in the management of servers, desktops, mobile devices, and applications and in achieving efficient resource usage to help local government eliminate unnecessary cost and complexity, ensure that their organization is always up and running, and establish a responsive infrastructure. As an example the City of Edinburgh, by upgrading its Core Infrastructure, generated taxpayer returns of some £15 ($30) per citizen. Typical products within the Core Infrastructure area include Windows Server, Windows Vista, Microsoft SystemCenter.

• The Business Productivity Infrastructure optimization model is a complete set of technologies that helps streamline the management and control of content, data, and processes across all areas of a local government organization. It helps simplify how people work together, make processes and content management more efficient, and improve the quality of business insight while enabling IT to increase responsiveness and have a strategic impact on the organization. Typical products within the Business Productivity area include Microsoft Office System, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft PerformancePoint.

• The Application Platform Infrastructure optimization model enables Microsoft and its partners to provide IT organizations with a tool to help them understand and adopt a more flexible and agile application platform. The Microsoft application platform enables IT to help drive the organization forward by quickly delivering connected, flexible and highly secure applications. Typical products within the Application Platform area include Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Visual Studio. Of particular importance is Microsoft BizTalk which provides the infrastructure to connect existing applications (regardless of the platform) and to compose, expose, and consume new services. This allows you to get more out of the investments that you have already made and minimize the cost of integrating the new pieces of technology that you have acquired.

Within each of these three areas Microsoft has developed a benchmarking methodology that enables organizations to assess what level of maturity and optimization they have achieved and what further benefits could be achieved if they were to move up to a high level.

The Microsoft Citizen Service Platform can start to help you no matter what level your infrastructure is currently running on, however to help you get the most out of your IT investments long term we would recommend that you ask Microsoft and its partners to help you understand how this model can be used to help support improvements in your organization's delivery of IT-based citizen services.

Microsoft Dynamics provides integrated solutions for managing finances, human resources, citizen relationships, funds and grants, and service delivery – all with a low total cost of ownership. Every day, these tools are used by government organizations to provide more effective services with greater accountability.

Microsoft customer relationship management (CRM) solutions help government organizations to improve delivery of information and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government services. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your organization can quickly and accurately respond to internal and external demands, and improve information sharing. It can also help reduce operational costs by automating business processes, improving staff productivity, lowering labor costs, and freeing time for other government business. Centralizing and automating the intake of citizen requests creates an audit trail that enables analysis of service delivery speed and costs. Management can study the number, type, and timing of requests to measure performance and adjust budget priorities. Often, government departments find that adopting a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution can immediately help improve citizen communication and satisfaction with government services—even before efficiencies or process improvements can be implemented. Providing multiple channels to interact with government, automating services, and personalizing information gives individuals and business more choices and greater control.

Microsoft provides Windows Live™ and Microsoft® Office Live to deliver rich and seamless experiences to individuals and small businesses. These offerings combine the power of software plus services and are compelling enhancements to the Microsoft Windows® and Microsoft Office products. In particular, Windows Live helps bring together all the elements of an individual's digital world while Office Live helps small companies do business online. These offerings can be exploited by local government organizations to enable them to more easily reach out to citizens and small businesses within their community.