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Today at the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC) meeting Sean Ferrel presented the latest business insights by Microsoft that are transforming the modern workplace
Managed Solution is the premier provider of IT support services and technology recommendations for the government sector. Founded in 2002, we enjoy a proud tradition of partnering with the IT staff of the many organizations we work with. We can even act as your IT team. For more information on government specific solutions contact Managed Solution at 800-220-4432 or fill out the contact form.
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Managing courtroom video
In many places around the world, legal systems are turning to video footage to record trials and other court proceedings for record-keeping purposes. Moreover, many judges are allowing witnesses to testify via teleconference to create a more inclusive justice system.
Take Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois, for example. The court recently allowed a man bedridden from a stroke to testify via Skype. The man was seeking the extension of a protection order against his estranged wife, but felt too weak to get out of bed.
Likewise, the Ontario Superior Court recently allowed a witness from Denmark to testify via Skype in a child custody case. “Skype is now in HD and has an internal automatic checking system,” explains Family Lawyer Phil, who persuaded the judge to allow the testimony. “You can see people in the courtroom and they can see you. This is clearly the way of the future.”
As video conferencing in the courtroom becomes mainstream, it is improving courtroom efficiency in a variety of ways. It’s expediting the issuance of search warrants. It’s speeding up arraignments, pre-trial conferences, and other court hearings. It’s allowing foreign and out-of-state witnesses to testify while avoiding the cost of travel. And it’s reducing the cost of transporting prisoners to the courtroom.
Yet as courtrooms increasingly turn to video technology to improve their proceedings, managing this new way of doing things can quickly turn into an administrative burden. Video-conferencing technology can be unreliable. Video storage can be expensive. And accessing the exact content needed can involve hundreds of hours sifting through vast amounts of video footage.
The good news is that Microsoft provides the advanced technology needed to help judicial systems overcome all these hurdles. Consider the following:
•Capturing video: Increasingly, legal systems are turning to Skype for Business for reliable, high-quality video conferencing. Skype for Business protects conversations through strong authentication and encryption features. It offers built-in compliance for strict security requirements such as the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) standard in some U.S. versions. And it can be used even in situations in which the person appearing remotely is not on Skype for Business. All that person needs is a phone or Internet connection.
•Storing video: Microsoft Azure Storage offers the durability and scalability to store large amounts of video footage at low cost. Data stored within Azure Storage is automatically replicated to guard against hardware failure. And in situations where justice systems prefer to keep their video files on-premises, Azure Storage can be used as a backup to ensure a judicial system’s video footage is always available.
•Managing video: Microsoft Azure Media Services enables legal professionals to access the exact video content they need through Azure Media Indexer, a feature that uses state-of-the-art machine learning to convert spoken language in video files into a searchable text format. Thanks to this feature, legal professionals can conduct keyword searches for specific comments that were made during the conversation and obtain the exact time those words were spoken, making it easy to find those moments in the video.
As judicial systems incorporate video technology into their courtrooms, Microsoft is leading the way, helping them to reliably capture, store, and manage all this data. To learn more about our state-of-the-art solutions for the public safety arena, please see our State & Local Government webpage.
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EXCLUSIVE: Fujitsu delivers Microsoft’s Skype for Business to NZ Govt
“Citizens and businesses will now be able to use Skype to message, talk to, and video call Government agencies."
As written by James Henderson (New Zealand Reseller News) on computerworld.co.nz
Fujitsu has served up Microsoft’s Skype for Business unified communications platform to the New Zealand Government, utilizing its place on the Government Telecommunications-as-a-Service panel.
As reported by Computerworld New Zealand, Fujitsu was appointed as one of 12 Government telecommunications providers in November, tasked with provide leading unified communications solutions and services.
As such, the tech company partnered with Microsoft in New Zealand to create a GoCommunicate, a Government unified communications service based on Microsoft’s Skype for Business solution.
Designed to remove costly traditional telephone systems, Fujitsu’s GoCommunicate provides agencies with an integrated service that brings together IT and communications for a monthly fee per user.
“Outside of a beneficial commercial model, GoCommunicate helps connect Government, citizens, and business using a common and familiar tool,” says Stuart Stitt, Managing Director, Fujitsu New Zealand.
“Citizens and businesses will now be able to use Skype to message, talk to, and video call Government agencies.”
Stitt believes the convergence of IT and telecommunications hasn’t always been reflected in the industry commercial models, with traditional telecommunications companies dominating voice calling services, despite the rise of new-world services such as Skype at home.
“GoCommunicate brings the familiarity of Skype into the business world, and enables seamless communications between citizens and agencies using Skype for Business,” he adds.
Under the IT Managed Services (ITMS) panel, many government agencies already use Fujitsu’s Service Aggregation capability for managing ICT vendor environments.
With the launch of TaaS, Mike Bullock - General Manager of Sales, Fujitsu New Zealand, says agencies are now able to use Fujitsu’s mature Service Aggregation capability to manage and coordinate telecommunication providers, enabling agencies to select the best providers in each area.
“This helps to break the stronghold of the major telecommunications providers and promotes greater competition and innovation for the New Zealand market,” Bullock explains.
For Bullock, the recently updated ITMS service, DaaS, and now TaaS enables agencies to receive a full end-to-end ICT service from Fujitsu without the overheads of a lengthy and expensive procurement process.
“This reduces the cost for both the industry and agencies, enabling agencies to focus their efforts on using technology to engage with citizens and businesses, making the public sector more efficient and faster moving,” he adds.
Locally, Fujitsu is a major provider of outsourced ICT services to the New Zealand Government, and globally, a key alliance partner of Microsoft.
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Police department uses Office 365 to make faster decisions and better serve the community
The Richland Police Department wanted to streamline its flow of information so that officers could spend less time filing reports and more time serving the community. It also sought to encourage collaboration among department staff for faster decision making. The department adopted Microsoft Office 365, which officers use to connect with colleagues and file reports from the field, gain access to real-time information to help protect the public, and work as a team to develop strategies and keep the community safe.
Protect and serve
Resolving disputes, responding to burglary reports, helping community groups—it’s all in a day’s work for members of the Richland Police Department (Richland PD). The department’s officers and staff must work together to safeguard citizens and visitors, handing off cases from shift to shift and alerting each other to trends that threaten public safety. “Communities have high expectations of their police officers,” says Sergeant Darryl Judge, Field Operations/Bomb Squad at the Richland Police Department. “In our line of work, we need to be as well informed as possible to do our jobs best.”
While Richland PD has always promoted teamwork, certain conditions made it challenging. Officers handwrote notes on the scene, then had to return to the station to transfer them into memos, emails, and other electronic formats. “It was a redundant business practice that took up valuable time,” says Judge. “We shared the obvious high-stakes information, but the details necessary to connect the dots in a case could still be in an officer’s notebook.” Even after the notes were converted, the department still couldn’t fully share valuable information across its employee base, which often slowed the decision-making process.
Traveling back to the station to file reports and access data also meant that officers were increasingly at their desks, not out in the community. “We looked for a better way to share information so that officers could spend more time in the field and be more effective,” says Tony Striefel, Lieutenant CCIP, Professional Standards and Technology Division at the Richland Police Department.
Knowledge sharing with compliance
In 2012, the department adopted SmartForce law enforcement software, a solution developed by Adventos Consulting and built on Microsoft SharePoint technology. “SmartForce provided the form tracking and controls we wanted, but we wanted to do more,” says Striefel. “For example, if we were working on a series of auto thefts, our analyst team would need access to officers’ reports, and the delays involved meant we could wait weeks instead of just a day or two for the team’s final analyses.”
Richland PD decided to augment its environment with a technology solution that would support department-wide collaboration and mobility. Finding the right solution involved more than just identifying the best functionality to suit users’ preferences; the department also needed its solution to meet stringent government requirements about data protection. Richland PD considered several conferencing products and analytics tools, but of those, Microsoft Office 365 was the only solution that complied with Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) requirements. “We’re taking our security and compliance to a whole new level with Office 365—one we certainly couldn’t have reached on our own,” says Striefel.
The department worked with Microsoft FastTrack for strategic planning and implementation assistance. “We received phenomenal service from members of the FastTrack team,” says Striefel. “We expected to deploy Office 365 over several months, but they helped us finish in just a few weeks.”
In addition to Windows Phones, lieutenants and command staff use Microsoft Surface devices, and field officers use rugged laptops that run Office 365 and the Windows 8 operating system. Employees also rely on Office 365 ProPlus and Click-to-Run to keep Office software current. “We allow employees to install Office 365 ProPlus on their home devices, too,” says Striefel. “It’s extremely helpful to have access to documentation from everywhere, because crime doesn’t stop when your shift does, and decisions can be made more quickly when everyone stays up-to-speed.”
Increased teamwork and responsiveness
The department’s biggest improvement since the adoption of Office 365 is its success in breaking down the silos typically found in police organizations. “It’s so much easier now to find the people in our organization who have deep knowledge, such as traffic cops who have years of experience with a particular location,” says Striefel. “We can use Skype for Business Online to see who’s available and get valuable opinions and consensus. We also use SharePoint Online to access officer reports, crime bulletins, and other documents without waiting. We’re taking advantage of avenues that we just didn’t have before to streamline our activities.”
“In fact, our culture is shifting,” continues Striefel. “We’re all communicating more—officers and others are sharing documents and getting more creative and frequent with their teamwork. Instead of one problem getting tackled by just one person, multiple people can now help evaluate and resolve issues because it’s easier to collaborate. As a result, we’re improving both the speed and quality of our responses to incidents.”
Today, every team in the department, from traffic safety to detectives, has its own SharePoint Online site to collaborate and store the most current information. Team members store finalized documents such as training plans and crime bulletins in Microsoft OneDrive for Business for anywhere access. And officers use this information to be more effective in their police work. For example, they may pull up photos of a suspect taken from surveillance video to instantly compare the visual depiction on their phone or laptop with the person in view to see if it’s a match.
The level of detail within team documents has also increased now that officers and others use SharePoint Online to share and review files across the department. Plus, having an accessible place for information has been helpful in connecting officers who rarely see each other. “Now that we can contribute to sites from wherever we are, whether we’re on shift or not, we can take advantage of the collective knowledge of the group to solve cases together as quickly as possible,” says Judge.
Real-time collaboration for better situational awareness
In law enforcement, gaining a complete understanding of a situation is critical to safety, and Richland PD now uses Skype for Business Online to help keep everyone abreast of current conditions. Field officers use video calls to present the scene to those in command at the station so that they can determine the appropriate level of support based on the seriousness of the situation. For example, Sergeant Judge went to help a neighboring district during a protest demonstration and used Skype Meetings to screen share so that his commander and certain specialists could see the demonstration. “I’ve also shared images of bombs I’m dealing with straight from the field,” says Judge. “With capabilities like these, we get better collective decision making, and we better prepare officers headed to a scene by giving them complete information and the right resources.”
Faster decision making
Speed to decision is critical in law enforcement. “With Office 365, we have a number of ways to get synthesized information out to officers in the field,” says Striefel. “Wading through forms took a lot of time, but our analysts now transfer data into data sets in Microsoft Power BI. We analyze data and share results more rapidly, which ultimately means smarter, faster decision making and the ability to put crime-solving strategies into place more quickly.”
Once Richland PD identifies a pattern, the department forms a project group and assigns tasks to help address it. Previously, those groups met physically three to four times a week. Now, they establish a SharePoint Online site to share all project-related information and use the built-in dashboard for real-time data tracking. They also establish a Yammer enterprise social network group for the informal collaboration that used to take place in person. “As a result of using the integrated Office 365 services, we’ve adapted our crime-solving processes and can respond faster to serve our citizens,” says Striefel.
Transparency and increased community engagement
Richland PD can better communicate with the greater community, reaching out quickly and engaging those outside the department with transparency, especially when responding to complaints. For example, a field officer can use her mobile device to instantly pull up a dashboard about ticket-related complaints or community accolades while in conversation with a community member. She also can see who’s on duty in a specific area and instantly connect that officer with a neighborhood resident who approached her with a question or issue.
“The more the department embraces Office 365, the more information officers have available to us from wherever we happen to be,” says Judge. “Staying visible and available out in the field has a positive impact on community members and supports our mission far better than working in the station.”
Smarter resource allocation and cost savings
Since adopting Office 365, Richland PD is making better use of taxpayer dollars because it has greater insight into its costs. “We can understand more clearly how crimes affect the community and our budget and take appropriate steps,” says Striefel. “For instance, if we see burglaries increase, we can anticipate the amount of overtime salaries and detective time we’ll need right then. And we also can reallocate resources in the coming months’ budgets to avoid running into problems while still maintaining top priorities.”
Striefels continues, “Plus, we’ll save resources in the form of officer time, because we’re able to be so much more efficient. We’re allocating six officers’ time better—over several years, that equates to better use of about [US]$500,000. That’s a huge benefit for public safety in our region.”
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
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Cloud adoption soars in regulated industries
By Kenneth Corbin as written on cio.com
New study from cloud security firm finds that government agencies and businesses are rapidly warming to Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365.
The past year-and-a-half has seen a steep increase in the rate of adoption of cloud computing applications, with some of the biggest movers found in the government and regulated industries.
That's according to a new study by the cloud security firm Bitglass, which analyzed traffic from some 130,000 organizations in North America and reported a 71 percent surge in cloud usage across the board in the verticals it evaluated.
Within the government sector, Bitglass reported a spike of more than 300 percent in the proportion of agencies that have moved to the cloud.
Quantifying the cloud
Rich Campagna, vice president of products at Bitglass, says the study seems to confirm what industry observers have seen anecdotally, quantifying "the sheer rate at which cloud adoption has taken off in the last year-and-a-half."
Importantly, Bitglass' analysis was not looking at all facets of the cloud. The firm evaluated only the use of public cloud applications, and, of that large subset, confined its analysis to the popular productivity suites Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. Those applications, Campagna explained, are generally deployed on an enterprise-wide scale and are "key indicators" that an organization has committed to a "cloud-first strategy."
"The decision is made at the CIO level to move to Office 365 or to Google," he says. "What we wanted to find is what is the best indicator of an organization-wide adoption of cloud-based applications."
So that approach weeds out firms where a small pocket of employees might have incorporated some niche application into their workflow, but where the enterprise writ large continues to run processes like email and collaboration applications through a traditional, locally housed data center.
Among U.S. government agencies, 47 percent have adopted either Google Apps or Office 365, according to Bitglass' findings. A slightly larger proportion of agencies with more than 1,000 employees have made the move, but Bitglass is still seeing much of the cloud activity happening at the state and local level.
"They have a thin IT shop and this allows them to focus on value-added parts of their business, rather than on having to spend on a headcount on managing and maintaining applications that are not part of their core [mission]," Campagna says.
The most dramatic increase has come in the education sector, where, by Bitglass' estimate, 83 percent of organizations have adopted one of the cloud apps that it evaluated, up from 23 percent a year-and-a-half ago.
"That's easily explained by the incredibly compelling licensing that Microsoft and Google offer," Campagna says, referring to the free distribution those companies have been offering to education customers.
But less dramatic gains can still be observed in other regulated industries, such as healthcare, where 36 percent of the organizations Bitglass reviewed have moved toward an enterprise deployment of a cloud app, up from 8 percent last year.
In the financial sector, adoption increased to 37.5 percent from 9.5 last year, and would likely be higher still with more permissive industry regulations governing the use of IT.
Microsoft and Google cloud offerings promote adoption
Campagna sees a variety of factors at work in the rise in cloud adoption, and credits Microsoft with a successful sales strategy that has aggressively promoted Office 365 while also offering more flexibility in the licensing and renewal terms of its contracts. Google, too, has recently been stepping up its efforts to push its Apps suite in the enterprise, Campagna says.
But there is also a larger shift underway that has seen the security concerns about the cloud at least partially abate. Young companies like Bitglass, which describes itself as a "cloud access security broker," have been popping up with the express purpose of helping enterprises lock down their data in a public-cloud environment. And within IT circles, where CISOs might not have even considered going to a public cloud a few years ago, many have lately been softening their stance on the issue as they aim to reposition security as a driver of the organization's mission.
"Within that risk-averse subset of the IT department, I've seen the attitudes just shift quite a bit over the last couple years," Campagna says. "The mindset of security practitioners in general -- and there are still some holdouts -- has shifted from one of control to one of enablement over the last couple of years."
The future of mobile data management
By Will Kelly as written on gcn.com
Many government agencies have mastered the basics of mobile device management (MDM), but the growing number increasingly powerful devices is changing the mobile threat landscape, and bringing a whole new level of complexity as security concerns shift from apps to data.
GCN spoke with a range of experts about the evolving challenges. The following tools and tactics are worth watching as agencies seek better ways to secure their data:
Data loss prevention
Look for DLP solutions to become location- and destination-aware, said Brian Kenyon, chief strategy officer for cybersecurity firm Blue Coat Systems. “We're starting to realize that data is going to [mobile] devices, so rather than saying we need to prevent it, we need to move to a model [where] is this okay… so we know what data is going, what devices it's going to and if we're comfortable with that or not.”
The federal sector is increasingly interested in extending data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities -- beyond data center and PC controls -- to the mobile world, added Rob Potter, vice president, public sector, Symantec.
Because most agencies need some kind of hybrid cloud environment, he said, they must expect data to become portable from the cloud to an on-premise environment and then to a mobile device. Expecting to secure data through virtualization or having it never leave the data center is a false hope, considering the amount of information sharing that takes place in government and the intra-agency dependencies that go along with that sharing, he said.
Therefore, Potter recommended that government agencies move toward a comprehensive method of DLP, including:
•Know that agency data is going to move
•Put controls around agency data that identify who is try to access it
•Place protections around the data
Derived credentials: CAC and PIV for a mobile workforce
“The part I think that is starting to become more of a challenge these days is around the access control piece,” said Dan Quintas, solutions engineer, AirWatch. “We know that as of a few months ago, the concept of using a username and password to access resources is essentially off the table for any federal agency. What that means is we're looking at alternative forms of authentication.”
It can be expensive to deploy CAC and PIV readers to a mobile workforce, according to Quintas. Nor are they necessarily the right answer for mobile authentication.
“Where people are starting to look now is around the concept of derived credentials,” in which a soft certificate – derived from the user’s CAC or PIV certificate -- is installed on a mobile device, Quintas explained.
However, derived credentials and single sign on are independent of one another, Symantec’s Potter stressed. Having a derived credential infrastructure will simplify the sign-on process, but agencies must drive SSO across applications, multiple devices, and inside their infrastructure.
He acknowledged the hesitation among agency IT managers who say, "I'm never getting derived credentials so I have single sign on,” but pointed out that derived credentials are about trusting multiple components in an enterprise environment. Once you achieve that trust, Potter said, SSO becomes much easier for a federal agency.
Common criteria
Citrix's Rajiv Taori, who vice president for product management in that firm's mobile platforms group, echoed Quintas’s observations about derived credentials and sees Common Criteria security standards as another option for agencies to protect their data on mobile devices. With every agency doing something different for security, he said, standardization is an important next step for improving data security.
Windows 10
Sean Ginevan, MobileIron's senior director for strategy, predicted Windows 10 will change how federal agencies manage their mobile devices. He sees federal customers asking whether to treat Windows 10 devices like desktops, “where the security model is, I'm inside the network, and I join the Windows domain, and I get my security policies and update that way,’ or do I treat them more like mobile devices?"
Ginevan wasn’t the only expert to mention Windows 10's place in the agency toolbox. Chuck Brown, a product manager for FiberLink, an IBM company, said his company is also getting inquiries from some federal customers about the new operating system. Windows apps are in place, and users would require little to no retraining.
Windows 10 could enter the “side door” to mobile device management as agencies change out Windows laptops for Windows 10-based tablets like the Microsoft Surface, according to Brown and others.
Mobile app vetting
Mobilegov President Tom Suder said app vetting will become increasingly important. Mobile app developers don’t necessarily think about how an app’s security affects backend systems, he said, which can open data centers to potential attack. Agencies need to secure and authenticate both the app and the mobile device, he said, to ensure that it’s not doing anything you don’t want it to do.
Adam Salerno, Veris Group's manager for federal programs, agreed, and sees agencies adopting app vetting as another layer of security beyond MDM. He explained that the app vetting process runs mobile apps in a sandbox where security specialists look at the mobile app’s code -- and at the static and dynamic natures of the app.
“We can observe the [app] behavior and notice if contacts or data and other things are being exfiltrated in ways that are not obvious to a user,” Salerno said.
Cloud services
Cloud services are part of the evolving tactics that will take agencies beyond traditional MDM. As more cloud vendors achieve certification through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, Salerno sees more questions for agencies to resolve around VPN access, data flow between the cloud and mobile devices, auditing tools on the cloud service side and the potential requirement for a hybrid cloud with data being synced to a virtual appliance residing behind an agency firewall.
Suder mentioned that mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) could help agencies link their mobile users to legacy backend databases and systems. Because MBaaS provides easy-to-use developer tools including user authentication, he said, it could prove to be an economical option for agencies mobilizing their data.
Containerization (or not)
Agencies' use of secure virtual container technologies beyond MDM seems uneven, based on the interviews conducted for this article. FiberLink’s Brown sees containerization alive and well with agencies making secure containers the next step beyond MDM along with implementing DLP. And Salerno added that agencies can use secure containers, because they apply an additional level of encryption security above and beyond what’s on the device. Containers can work on agency-owned and BYOD devices alike.
Quintas from AirWatch, however, sees containers differently. In his company’s conversations with federal agencies in particular, he said, IT managers report that while the concept of using the email container is a very strong security solution, end users are starting to revolt against it.
“Those mobile IT teams in federal are starting to wrap their arms around [the idea that] maybe the email container's not the answer for everything,” Quintas explained. "Maybe you can achieve security using the native protocols that are there today."
Source: Adam Salerno, Veris Group's manager for federal programs, agreed, and sees agencies adopting app vetting as another layer of security beyond MDM. He explained that the app vetting process runs mobile apps in a sandbox where security specialists look at the mobile app’s code -- and at the static and dynamic natures of the app.
Civic Tech Brings Power And Positivity To The People Via
By Stacy Donohue (@StacyDon) as written on Techcrunch.com
People have long had a complicated relationship with their governments — a tension that often is exacerbated by government policies and processes that cannot keep pace with today’s on-demand culture.
It doesn’t have to be like this. The tech community — especially those working in civic tech — know this to be true. From enabling crowdfunding campaigns to revamping entire cities’ tech infrastructure, civic tech empowers people to turn challenges and frustrations with government into opportunities for a new business, a new career or a new voice.
With the growing interest and support from the investment community, there has never been a better time to jump in to the civic tech movement.
The momentum is truly a tribute to those who have championed civic tech for years, including Jake Brewer, the senior policy advisor to U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith who died in a bicycle accident during a cancer charity ride. As President Obama noted, Jake “dedicated his life to empowering people and making government work better for them,” and his legacy will certainly help propel forward the civic tech movement for generations to come.
Here are three ways those in and out of Silicon Valley can help create positive change in the relationship between the governing and the governed.
Make It Personal
Civic tech entrepreneurs look at pain points as fuel for change. In fact, some of the best civic tech businesses have been born out of the challenges their founders faced.
Take Dan Brillman, an Air Force pilot who grew increasingly concerned as his military friends struggled with the difficult process to search for services and programs available for veterans. Brillman, fellow veteran Taylor Justice and military supporter Andrew Price didn’t wait for the government to come up with a solution. They took matters into their own hands and started Unite US, a free online platform that connects military members, veterans and their families to resources both in their local communities and at the national level.
Similarly, Rose Broome of HandUp created her company after coming across a homeless woman on a cold San Francisco night. Her realization and frustration that there was no sustainable way to help that woman led her to found HandUp. The site and its initiatives such as Homeless Outreach Day enable donors to connect directly with those in need in their communities, helping provide them with everything from funds for basic necessities to medical procedures to college tuition.
These are just two examples of how personal frustrations with government can translate into innovative businesses and offer entrepreneurs the chance to bring communities closer together.
Take A New Career Step
Civic tech is reshaping the resumes of Silicon Valley veterans, new tech talent and those preparing to graduate and enter the workforce. These individuals see the tech deficits in government as career opportunities and the chance to do meaningful work that improves the lives of millions of Americans.
Within the last year, Megan Smith and Alex Macgillivray left tech titans Google and Twitter, respectively, for top positions at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Minerva Tantoco, New York City’s first-ever chief technology officer (CTO), joined Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration after more than 25 years in the private sector. Peter Marx, now Los Angeles’ CTO, was once at Qualcomm Labs and Mattel. Today, he uses his background as an engineer, producer and technical director to drive innovative initiatives such as Los Angeles’ partnership with the popular traffic app Waze.
Civic tech can play an important role in empowering people to take action.
Opportunities to do meaningful work in this intersection are only increasing. President Obama recently announced that the Presidential Innovation Fellowships program — an experimental program to bring tech talent into federal government for “tours of duty” to enable innovation and best technical practices — will now become a permanent part of government.
Rethinking how your tech background could be applied in government could lead to a purpose-driven career trajectory that you never imagined.
Become An Active User — And Citizen
While the civic tech movement is inspiring many people to start businesses or use their skills to serve in government, there are also easy ways for everyone to make a difference in their communities.
You can invest in city infrastructure projects instead of waiting for tax dollars to trickle down through platforms such as Citizinvestor and Neighborly. For example, you can fund a new bike rack downtown or new trash cans for a park, improving your community at an on-demand pace.
Platforms such as SeeClickFix allow individuals to report and track unresolved potholes, graffiti, broken streetlights and vandalized playgrounds, putting a transparent spotlight on government responsiveness. An estimated 25,000 issues were addressed in September alone through this civic tech platform, fostering collaboration with other residents, local government, partner organizations and media.
From long lines at the DMV to ineffective procurement processes, our 21st century challenges with government shape many Americans’ negative perceptions. But for those in the civic tech community, these challenges are an opportunity to give back and make a meaningful difference in our society.
Technology is not the solution to every problem, to be sure. But in an era marked by political pessimism and ever-increasing frustration with government, civic tech can play an important role in empowering people to take action — as entrepreneurs, as public officials and as engaged citizens.
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/14/civic-tech-brings-power-and-positivity-to-the-people/?ncid=tcdaily
On October 14, 2015, Tom Keane Partner Director, Program Management of Microsoft Azure announced further momentum with new capabilities on Microsoft Azure Government that help customers leverage the cloud to deliver hybrid applications and business continuity. They released five new capabilities for Azure Government customers:
•Azure Backup
•Azure ExpressRoute
•Azure Resource Manager
•Azure Redis Cache
•Azure Automation
Since our launch ten months ago, hundreds of government customers in state and local, federal civilian and defense, plus over a hundred solution partners with dedicated government practices, have adopted Azure Government and these five new capabilities to expand on the innovation available to support their cloud requirements. This combination of new services combined with the largest set of compliance certifications in the industry give customers and partners the ability to do amazing things with Azure government. As said by one of our customers:
“The fact that Microsoft contractually committed to CJIS compliance by signing the FBI’s CJIS Security Addendum and having their employees background-checked by California DOJ helped give the LAPD the confidence that we could begin to leverage Azure Government for our most critical, sensitive workloads,” says Sanjoy Datta, information security officer, LAPD. “It is rare that vendors, on their own initiative, take the trouble to comply with the multiple regulatory frameworks that law enforcement, as well as all state and local government agencies, are required to meet. Microsoft has exceeded the LAPD's expectations in this regard by taking on the difficult requirements of the CJIS regulatory regime and meeting them head-on.”
Highlighting another customer success story of Azure Government and our compliance investments, Scott Shainman, president of Getac North America, worked with the Memphis Police Department to build a secure, scalable, mission-critical police video solution:
"The partnership of Getac's Veretos in-car video system and the Azure Government Cloud allows our customers to have the best secure data management and mobile video capture. Memphis Police Department is pursuing robust data driven policing and saw that Azure Government provides a contractual commitment to the CJIS Security Policy and easy integration with SQL Server - which the Getac software runs on - it gave them the assurance that this was the best solution for them," said Shainman.
Here are more details on the new capabilities we are announcing today for Azure Government:
Azure Backup
Azure Backup delivers an efficient and secure way for you to protect on-premises and on-cloud assets to Azure, and benefits from Azure Government’s physical isolation and support from cleared U.S. persons. Benefits include:
•Back-up for various workloads like SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, Hyper-V VM, Windows Servers and Windows Clients.
•Data encryption before it leaves your premises. This encrypted backup data is transmitted securely using HTTPS protocol and stored in an encrypted manner in the Azure Government cloud.
•Data is stored in highly resilient storage, up to six copies in two Azure Government cloud datacenters, geographically distributed more than 500 hundred miles apart providing true geographic redundancy and support for the continuity of your business.
Azure ExpressRoute
With Azure ExpressRoute you can create private, high-throughput connections between Azure Government datacenters and your existing infrastructure. Azure Government ExpressRoute connections do not go over the public Internet, and they offer more reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies, and higher security than typical connections over the Internet. What this means to you:
•A physically separate instance of ExpressRoute deployed specifically for Azure Government. This means that we have extended our Government cloud commitments from our datacenter, to neutral edge locations to provide the predictable performance and higher throughput of ExpressRoute, combined with the physical isolation that United States government customers demand.
•Initial Azure Government ExpressRoute Meet-Me sites are in Washington DC and Chicago vicinities. These locations provide dedicated connectivity to both U.S. Gov. Iowa and U.S. Gov. Virginia datacenters.
Azure Resource Manager (preview)
Azure Resource Manager allows you to simplify how you manage your app resources, including being able to:
•Deploy and update a group of resources, repeatedly.
•Manage permissions on a group of resources.
•Visualize a group of resources in a logical view, including monitoring or billing.
•Define the infrastructure and dependencies for your app in a single declarative template.
Azure Redis Cache (preview)
Azure Redis Cache provides access to a secured, dedicated Redis cache, managed by Microsoft. Accessible from any application within Azure Government, Azure Redis Cache helps your application become more responsive even as user load increases by leveraging the low latency, high-throughput capabilities of the Redis engine.
Azure Automation (preview)
With Azure Automation, you can automate frequent, time-consuming, and error-prone cloud management tasks. You can also:
•Create, monitor, manage, and deploy resources in Azure Government using runbooks, based upon Windows PowerShell workflows.
•Use Automation runbooks, which work with the Web Apps feature in Azure App Service, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Storage, Microsoft SQL Server, and other popular Azure services, with any service offering public Internet application programming interfaces (APIs).
•Create checkpoints to resume your workflow after unexpected errors, crashes and network issues.
Looking to the future
We are listening to you and continue to regularly expand the set of capabilities in Azure Government.
--Tom
