How Microsoft enables Modern Workplace for US Government agencies
At Microsoft, we are constantly striving to understand the priorities and requirements of US Government organizations, so we can develop the technology to support their missions. We consistently hear about a few key goals from government organizations: keep data secure, be cost efficient, improve citizen engagement, and enable modern work styles to help employees do their best work. We are investing in Office 365 to help government agencies and their employees achieve these goals by enabling a truly modern workplace.
With increased demand on government agencies to operate more efficiently, improve citizen services, and reduce costs, agency leaders often ask me how technology can enable their organizations to be more productive. Office 365 helps agencies increase productivity by providing tools that enable workers to access information easily and make document collaboration a natural part of the workday. Civil servants can save documents to OneDrive for Business for secure sharing with colleagues both inside and outside the agency, while maintaining control over document access. Having gone through this transition at Microsoft, I still appreciate having an entire team’s edits made to one document, rather than spending hours combining edits from multiple versions. Another time saver is the personalized search and discovery with Delve powered by the Microsoft Graph and self-service business intelligence and analytics tools. These intelligent cloud-based tools help information workers to discover, analyze, and visualize information they need to generate reports, connect with peers, and make decisions.
The US Government holds and processes massive amounts of sensitive information, and it is crucial to protect this data from an ever-increasing digital threat landscape. Keeping information secure while facilitating seamless sharing of information within and between agencies is a key focus of our engineering efforts. Recently released capabilities like Advanced Data Governance and Advanced eDiscovery help agencies more easily retain and search for important data, significantly reducing the time and effort required for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Built-in classification, rights management, and data loss prevention capabilities help prevent unwanted sharing of information, while Customer Lockbox helps ensure that no one at Microsoft can access government data content without an agency’s explicit approval. And even when approval is granted, all actions are transparently captured in audit logs and Management Activity API data. Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection helps defend against zero-day malware and intelligent phishing attacks delivered in email, and Threat Intelligence leverages the unique insight gained by hyper-scale, global infrastructure to thwart attacks that would not be visible to an individual organization, helping to reduce time and money spent on remediation.
Successful government agencies must digitally transform to provide a modern workplace to attract and retain top talent, and having a modern, flexible, and collaborative work environment makes this possible—especially as more and more Millennials join the workforce. We’re helping government agencies achieve this by enabling simple and efficient information discovery and providing workflow tools that are easy to implement and update, which helps to improve teamwork and response times for citizen services. Skype for Business supports modern work styles by enabling workers to easily find and communicate with colleagues regardless of their location. Office and Office Mobile are the industry standard productivity applications that most employees expect to use in the workplace, and Microsoft designs mobility and accessibility into all our applications so that civil servants can stay productive in any environment.
Microsoft is continuously investing in Office 365, and 2018 will see a broad set of new capabilities released to our US Government customers. At the US Government Cloud Forum event in October 2017, we announced Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and more are coming to our Office 365 US Government cloud environments. I encourage you to you to watch the Government Cloud Forum recap videos to learn how you can take advantage of Microsoft technologies to operate more efficiently, reduce costs, and modernize your workplace in this digital age. In addition, check out our on-demand webcast, “Empower your government agency’s employees,” and whitepaper, “Discover why the time is now with Agency Modernization: Cloud, Cybersecurity, and Cost Optimization.” If you have questions about Office 365 US Government, contact your account representative or request a call and we will be in touch shortly.
