PTI presents this executive summary that outlines the results of the State of City and County IT 2015: The IT Organization and Operations national survey.
In August, 2015 local government technology executives representing cities and counties of all sizes were asked to respond to the survey.
Highlights from the 2015 survey:
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47% of the IT executives who responded to the survey stated that their local government IT department budgets will remain the same over the next year.
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How much value does "Big Data" have for local government operations? 31% of survey participants responded that Big Data would become increasingly important (up from 27% in 2014 and 18% in 2013).
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New to the survey in 2015 - Cloud Adoption - where 69% of all respondents stated that the cloud is important to their disaster recovery and COOP operations.
Tech trends that will enable “what’s next” for cities
Microsoft CityNext puts a city’s people first, harnessing their ideas, energy, and expertise to create more sustainable and safer place to live, with access to citizen-centric services and quality healthcare and education. Microsoft CityNext solutions, alliances and programs can help governments, businesses, and citizens shape the future of their regions, cities and municipalities. Microsoft is uniquely equipped to enable this approach. No other company offers as broad a portfolio of secure, consumer-to-business software, devices, and services; as diverse a network of global partners to implement it all; and as extensive a history of successful education and social programs. In combination, all of this helps cities imagine and realize what’s next for their people.
While many cities are already well on their way toward modernizing their technology infrastructures, they will continue to face growing challenges as migration trends rise and citizen demands for public safety and other services increase. Microsoft CityNext is the bridge to help them meet these challenges in a phased approach, now and into the future.
Working together, Microsoft and our partners can provide cities with highly integrated solutions that will focus the most important technology trends — cloud, Big Data, mobile, and social — on their most pressing issues.
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Microsoft Azure Government Becomes First Major Gov Cloud to Achieve FedRAMP JAB P-ATO
By Susie Adams as written on Microsoft.com
This week, Microsoft announced new compliance milestones for Azure Government which included a number of key security safeguards, from FedRAMP JAB P-ATO to Microsoft contractually committing to meeting HIPAA requirements in Azure Government (by offering a Business Associates Agreement (BAA) to supporting compliance with IRS 1075 safeguards for processing accessing federal tax information in the cloud.
All of these are important – for governments of all sizes. And each of these on their own are significant milestones in the lifetime of Azure Government, which has only been generally available to customer since last December. It shows Microsoft’s commitment to recognizing the security and compliance standards that are important to our customers and to driving towards alignment with each of them.
I’d like to focus on one that is particularly notable in the Federal space, namely the FedRAMP JAB P-ATO, confirmed by FedRAMP this month as approved for use by all U.S. government agencies. This achievement is particularly significant as Azure Government is the first major government cloud platform to receive a FedRAMP JAB P-ATO for its Iaas and PaaS solutions. This is essentially the “gold seal” of approval on security controls for our Azure Government platform. JAB approval means that our solution had to pass muster with the JAB board consisting of approvals from GSA, DHS, and DoD technical reviewers.
This announcement comes on the heels of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) granting a FedRAMP ATO for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Government cloud. Together, these important milestones build on Microsoft’s commitment to providing the most complete and trusted cloud environment to its customers.
It also rounds out our Gov cloud with Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online Government. The JAB and Agency approved cloud workloads and partner solutions ready to go NOW is unmatched in the Federal industry. In fact, Microsoft is the only major cloud vendor that offers a hybrid cloud solution that is designed to support the rigorous compliance and security demands of government, healthcare, public safety and defense agencies.
Microsoft Azure Government is a government-community cloud that offers hyper-scale compute, storage, networking, and identity management services, with world-class security. A physical and network-isolated instance of Microsoft Azure, operated by screened U.S. persons, Azure Government enables new forms of cross-agency collaboration and rich cloud service integration. Learn more.
The Azure Government 90 day trial includes $500 per month to spend on all Azure Government services. This is a non-renewable, fixed term free trial agreement. Customers and partners who wish to continue to use Azure Government after 90 days must have a Volume Licensing agreement in place.
Managed Solution partners with IT staff to offer consulting and government solutions to improve IT infrastructure to reflect the latest technology.
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City on a Cloud
AWS simplifies IT workloads that governments struggle with every day, making it easier to deploy and manage the technology our customers depend on, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Content Management Systems (CMS), Open Data portals, and more. All of these applications run on AWS and make it easier for governments to deliver their services.
Through their City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, we recognize local and regional governments are hubs of innovation, driving technology solutions to help improve citizens' lives. Visit our map of the "City on a Cloud" to learn what cities can do with cloud computing or see the solutions deployed by last year's winners here.
City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge 2015
Local and regional governments are innovating quickly to respond to the needs of their citizens. From transportation to planning to utilities, governments are using cloud computing to transform the way they interact with citizens and think about their future.
If you are a local or regional government leader or a technology partner who has deployed an innovative solution to solve a government challenge, we want to hear about it in the Best Practices or Partners in Innovation Award Categories. Or, if you have a great idea that you'd like to implement in your city, we encourage you to submit it in the Dream Big Award Category.
Learn more and submit your entry here.
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HUD Confirms Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Government is FedRAMP-Compliant
As written by Amir Capriles on Microsoft.com.
For the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), creating strong, sustainable, and inclusive communities that strengthen the nation’s housing market is mission-critical. A key piece to meeting this mission in a mobile-first world is having access to secured, cloud-based technology business solutions that can enable an on-the-go, geographically dispersed, and productive workforce.
Today, we announced an important milestone in helping HUD fulfill its mission as the agency granted an Authority to Operate (ATO) for our Dynamics CRM Online Government cloud.
In addition to giving our government customers the assurance they need to transition their business solution workloads to Dynamics CRM Online Government, the HUD ATO confirms Microsoft’s solution complies with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) regulations and legislative demands.
To learn more about the news and how HUD will benefit by using the solution, check out the Dynamics team blog.
Managed Solution partners with IT staff to offer consulting and government solutions to improve IT infrastructure to reflect the latest technology.
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City IT Department Upgrades Infrastructure and Builds Successful Technology Roadmap
Industry: City/Municipality/Government
Business Needs:
A city in San Diego County with more than 1200 employees finally received the budget to improve their IT infrastructure. The city needed to upgrade over 600 Windows XP desktops that were no longer supported because they presented a security risk. They wanted to migrate to a cloud-based solution for email and were evaluating Microsoft Office 365 to improve employees productivity and increase collaboration. The organization also needed to migrate over 60 servers that were running on Windows server 2003 which Microsoft ended support in July, 2015. The city needed to focus on implementing new and innovative ideas to move the business forward, not worry about if their infrastructure was running properly or presented a security risk.
Solution:
Managed Solution partnered with the city's IT department to assess their overall network and provide a detailed IT roadmap. Managed Solution provided a GAP analysis for the IT department with the results showing how the city stacks up against contemporary IT services given their size and complexity of operations. Managed Solution addressed security concerns by making sure the environment was up to date, effective and not obtrusive into productivity. We also analyzed the city's network infrastructure ensuring they had the appropriate bandwidth to run cloud-based applications. Managed Solution recommended to virtualize more of their servers and move beyond virtualization to a private and public cloud environment. The hybrid cloud environment provided a solution for some applications to run on-premises in a Microsoft-based private cloud environment and others to run in Windows Azure. Delivering IT as a Service provided the city with a solution that was able to upgrade their IT infrastructure with reliable services. Managed Solution implemented this strategy by performing a thorough network assessment of their existing infrastructure and understanding the city’s business objectives.
Success:
Assessing the city’s network allowed Managed Solution to provide a detailed and comprehensive IT roadmap. The city was able to identify a migration strategy to reduce security risks, retire old infrastructure, and improve employees productivity and end-user experience. The roadmap better supports business growth and provides strategies to standardize, virtualize, and cloud-enabled its IT assets. The technology roadmap is allowing the city to focus on using technology for better operational inefficiencies while improving productivity and reducing IT troubleshooting.
