Canadians have come to expect ‘familiar’ online services from government agencies, providing the same user-experience they get from commercial service offerings. This fundamental shift in the delivery of IT services has forced many government agencies to revisit their approach.

Successfully executing your cloud strategy requires a systematic approach as well as a defined program of change. This systematic approach and program of change is structured around three workstreams: workloads, foundation and operations. 

Consider which workloads to move and why

Addressing the foundational and operational components without having a workload or set of workloads that will exist on the platform is of little value. Identification, prioritization and migration of a workload is essential to the business case for change and ensures the department prioritizes the foundations and operations workstreams.

Address the right foundational components

The greatest degree of commonality across customers is in the foundational components that provide the core services for cloud consumption. The following components are included in this effort and others may be identified: identity, authentication, network, subscriptions and security.

Operational management and support

This workstream often proves to be the most challenging as each customer’s culture and work environment is unique. While Microsoft has numerous proven practices around operations and governance how it is incorporated into the existing customer environment is challenging. This workstream focuses on change management, release management, service management and governance.

Your starting point: Create a Cloud Center of Expertise (CoE)

You may not be intimately knowledgeable in cloud but you possess the desire, drive and entrepreneurial spirit to learn and grow. This multi-disciplinary team will work with cloud project teams and provide:

• Cloud analysis
• Cloud guidance and architecture
• Cloud engagement and reporting

This team will collect winning design patterns and practices to leverage in other cloud projects. Start small and expand into more complex workloads as the organizations maturity in designing and operating cloud solutions (including hybrid) increases. The Cloud CoE will work across all three workstreams (Workload, Foundational, and Operational) to drive consistent & continual delivery, share knowledge with service consumers, enable prioritized cloud deployments, and advance consumption of cloud services.

The Cloud CoE is key to successfully executing your cloud strategy and delivering a systematic approach across all cloud projects that will evolve as your organization matures. Our next blogs will delve deeper into the framework components for this approach which consists of three workstreams: workloads, foundation and operations. 

Find out how Microsoft Digital Advisory Services can get you started on your digital journey by helping you engage your customers, empower your employees, optimize your operations and transform your products.

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However, specific implementations still require a healthy degree of research and experimentation to drive-out the full value of blockchain. In this respect, Microsoft is in a unique position to help customers move past conceptual understanding and learn through ideation and experimentation.

With this in mind, the following post will begin by exploring the degree of fit between the key characteristics of a blockchain, and aspects of the Public Sector mission. The post will then explore candidate Public Sector scenarios with a more detailed foray into the use of blockchain for real property management.

Blockchain and Public Service.

Let’s start with why before moving to the how. Blockchain is a building block, or tool, that tackles a specific design challenge: how can a common set of information be shared across many organizations, without any single party being the central authority, while ensuring the changing data set remains trusted? The blockchain proposed to solve this challenged using a distributed ledger:  a distributed database with a trust harness.

In this light, the blockchain can be described as a tool to enable distributed digital trust. It is therefore not surprising that the blockchain has shown the most potential in circumstances where there is an opportunity to share data across multiple parties without having established trust between each party a priori. This is how trust in payments using the bitcoin digital currency based on a blockchain is established.

Another differentiating feature of a blockchain is that it does not rely on any single intermediary. In fact, no single party is trusted absolutely; their actions are scrutinized equally through cryptography.  As a result, the blockchain is also tool that enables disintermediation, or circumventing middlemen, to lower the cost of operations or transactions.

A final aspect of the blockchain to consider: it is important that we are exploring a blockchain and not the blockchain, a mythical solution to transformation everything. Several blockchains will be established for specific purposes or industries, and to address both public and private scenarios.

Using our definition of blockchain as a backdrop we can now explore the data stewardship role played by Public Service.

Public Service: A Trusted Steward

At the heart of the Public Sector’s purpose is maintain the trust of its citizens and constituents. From this imperative of public trust stems the need to demonstrate accountability through transparency.  Furthermore, the Public Sector operates at the interaction of many stakeholders: constituents, citizens, NGOs, private enterprise, and other jurisdictions. We can see here the applicability of the blockchain distributed trust model discussed earlier.

Public sector also must uphold its responsibilities in terms of the efficient management of public funds by minimizing intermediaries. This is of particular interest given its role as the steward of the public wallet. Again, he finds here an alignment with the transactional efficiency of a blockchain.

This high-level overview of how the design characteristics of blockchain presents the to some information stewardship challenges faced by Public Services.

Public Sector Blockchain Scenarios

The Public Service federal, provincial, and municipal level acts as a trusted intermediary and steward of public record in a wide range of areas including registries, permits, claims adjudication, voting, copyright, and trade.

Public service is also a trusted steward of confidential records in the areas of identity management, health, education, and electoral processes. These scenarios share certain aspects their public record relatives which also shape the service to citizen. However, these scenarios also consider confidentiality to be of paramount importance.

Another area that warrants exploration is the question of Public Sector procurement, and supply chain management. Much like its private sector counterparts the public sector much also manage the complexities of increasing elaborate supply chains.

In each of these scenarios a blockchain embeds core capabilities in the area of audit. Indeed, digital records increase the ability to detect fraudulent operations early, preventing unwanted consequences, and reducing the effort or implementing corrective measures downstream.

Detailed Scenario: Real Property Management 

Governments manage among the most diverse real estate portfolios. A blockchain scenario of real property management would include the following elements:

• Devices can track the state of safety of buildings and their maintenance in your organization.
• From bridges to elevators blockchain can provide for a tamper-free ledger of operational data and the resulting maintenance.
• Third-party repair partners can monitor the blockchain for preventive maintenance and record their work back on the blockchain.
• Operational records can also be shared with government entities to verify compliance.

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Imagine if you could provide responsive and personalized information and services to victims, witnesses, neighborhood communities, and businesses.

Imagine if information flowed securely, within and across the public safety and justice ecosystem, enabling you to adapt to the needs of individuals and communities.

Imagine if you knew how your services were used so citizens and law enforcement could collaborate to improve existing services and develop new ones.

Digital transformation has unlocked extensive new capabilities for citizen engagement, incident response & management, investigation, and operational support.  These new capabilities enable both elected officials and law enforcement organizations to reduce operational costs, manage demand, build effective collaborations with partners, address priority crime types, and improve the overall efficiency, accessibility, and effectiveness of the criminal justice system.

The significant benefits of this transformation in law enforcement include:

• Faster and more effective incident response
• Empowered data that may reduce threat, risk, or harm
• Increased percentage of resources allocated to frontline duties
• Improved collaboration across the public safety and policing authorities ecosystem
• Increased community engagement and satisfaction

Digital transformation in law enforcement, presented by Microsoft Services, provides inspiration and insight to develop a digital strategy that will transform the officer and citizen experience and deliver significantly improved outcomes.

Read the full article, “Digital Transformation in Law Enforcement” here.

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You also want to be sure the valuable data that you entrust to Microsoft in the cloud will remain safe and under your control. City of Brampton is a great example of a Canadian organization who is a municipal innovation leader with strong commitments to protecting their constituents data. We also see Dynamics 365 increasingly being used by customers to optimize their field service organizations who are often highly mobile workers. In a mobile first, cloud first world, trust in technology is more important than ever. Dynamics 365 is built and operated using the same trust principles you have come to expect from Microsoft – Security, Privacy, Compliance and Transparency. Whether you are a risk and compliance assessor, security officer, governance or privacy officer – the Dynamics 365 Trust Center provides the relevant information resources tailored to your role.

Dynamics 365 is comprised of a suite of services and it can sometimes be tricky to understand which compliance certifications apply. In the past year we have also expanded the coverage of compliance certifications across Dynamics 365 so I encourage you to refer to the Cloud Services Compliance page for a summary view. Access to the corresponding third party audit and GRC assessment reports is available from our Service Trust portal. We go even further by publishing independent penetration testing results for Dynamics 365 providing additional transparency.

Have more questions about Dynamics 365? Reach out to your Microsoft Account Manager for a discussion.

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While the private sector has been making great strides towards utilizing cloud presence to digitally transform their organizations, many government Departments (federal, provincial and municipal) have been moving more slowly.  Although the drivers to move to the cloud and digitally transform are different in the public sector, they are still very real.

Realize the benefits

While reduced infrastructure costs are what attracted early adopters of cloud, surveys now show that factors such as greater scalability, higher availability and shorter time-to-solution are just as significant if not more. A Cloud strategy will allow your department to determine which benefits of the Cloud are most important in transforming the delivery of your programs.

The traditional approach to automating and transforming program delivery has been to undertake large, monolithic, multi-year programs requiring expensive, dedicated infrastructure that takes months to deploy.  This approach has an unacceptably high failure rate. The Cloud allows you, in some cases in partnership with your shared IT services provider, to provision infrastructure in minutes, not weeks, and pay only for the capacity you actually use. This enables you to work with the business on innovative changes to program delivery in an agile, iterative manner.  Experiment with new ways of doing things with small, integrated business and IT teams, and progressively learn and evolve solutions.

Harness the Data Explosion

Significant improvements to digital program delivery require a Cloud strategy.  Your objectives likely include one or more of the following:

• Assessing public sentiment from social media
• Drawing intelligence from “open source” data published by numerous providers on the Internet, from paid subscription sources, or from your own internal systems
• Managing critical program data such as health care information collaboratively with citizens and with key stakeholders (in the case of health care these would include doctors, hospitals/clinics, pharmacies, patients, etc.)
• Combining insights from data stored in multiple formats, including structured data stored in relational or non-relational databases, documents/text, flat files, flat files, XML, tec.

The Cloud facilitates all of the above.  It provides virtually limitless low-cost storage, predictive analytics and machine learning (available on a scale not possible on premises) and secure storage of even the most sensitive data. Microsoft’s cloud carries numerous industry and government certifications which attest to its ability to ensure data integrity and availability. These capabilities allow you to collect, store, analyze and share large volumes of data from multiple sources to produce actionable insights, deep analysis, and better decision-making, thereby improving your program delivery.

Develop your Cloud Strategy with Microsoft Services

Achieving the above requires a disciplined approach. The first step is developing a Cloud Strategy that will address the following:

• Your department’s business objectives
• The workloads/applications you will deploy, including prioritization of IaaS, PaaS or SaaS
• Changes needed to your core IT processes to accommodate workloads in the Cloud
• The role of your shared IT services provider as a broker of cloud services(in some cases)

Microsoft Services can help you formulate your Cloud strategy as a firm foundation on which to build as you move to the Cloud.  This strategy will be agnostic with respect to who you eventually chose to be the provider of your Cloud services.

Proven Government Digital Transformation Success

Learn more about government digital transformation success in these eBook articles featuring actual experiences of government agencies working through their digital transformation with the help of the Microsoft Cloud.

• Optimize the cost and operating efficiency of government with flexible solutions to harness the transformational power of the cloud –  link
• Transform and harness the data explosion to digitize government processes and services for increased efficiency – link

Contact us to get started

If you are a Provincial or Municipal Department CIO and would like to develop a Cloud Strategy, reach out to us on social media: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

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Few industries in the world face more complex problems than healthcare. Uncertainties in the regulatory environment, disconnected information systems and disruptions in core business models are among the challenges that have been noted by health care organizations around the world.

As we look at some of these challenges our healthcare customers face, we ask ourselves how can technology solve some of these problems?

We believe technology – specifically the cloud, collaboration tools, artificial intelligence and mixed reality are central to healthcare transformation – a transformation that is already happening in Canada.

A great example of this is Montreal-based CAE. The company is a global leader that is revolutionizing the healthcare industry with HoloLens. They recently launched VimedixAR, an ultrasound simulator that uses HoloLens to transform the way doctors, ultrasound technicians and students visualize complex organs, like the heart and lungs. The goal with this technology is to improve patient safety and outcomes

Imagine a medical student being able to elevate a hologram of a beating heart and turn it, enlarge it, and examine it to fully grasp its anatomy.  Or that a surgeon could practice inserting a smaller, more efficient pacemaker into a holographic patient while the patient breathes and displays vital signs. Mixed reality can accelerate learning and provide shared training experiences in a more immersive and engaging clinical learning environment.  With this type of technology, CAE believes a new generation of medical professionals will be better prepared and more advanced from the start.

We are so impressed with CAE’s dedication to improving patient safety and they are just one of many innovators in the healthcare field that are using Microsoft technology to transform the healthcare industry. You can learn more about their story here.

Many hospitals, clinics and healthcare offices around the world still use fax machines as their primary source of sending referrals, booking procedures and sharing medical information between facilities. Based in Kingston Ontario, Novari Health is helping health care providers modernize that process. Built in the Microsoft Cloud and Canadian datacentres, Novari Access to Care® and Novari e-Request® is access to care technology that helps patients move more efficiently through publicly funded healthcare systems.

Once a patient reached the referral stage, Novari e-Request® helps medical professionals sort, rout and manage referrals efficiently and securely based on criteria such as specialty, location and wait times. And once a decision has been taken to proceed to surgery, Novari Access to Care® system helps determine what tests and other steps the patient will need to have done before surgery, such as blood work, x-rays, MRIs and more. Hospitals and regional departments of health can now track the surgical journey so no patient has to fall through the cracks due to a misplaced fax, all while maintaining the strictest data security with the help of Azure’s Canadian datacentres.

Novai works with roughly 35 hospitals and healthcare clients in three Canadian provinces and are currently expanding into Australia.

Other Canadian companies that are using Microsoft technology to deliver improved care to patients include Kinetisense, based in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Hôpital Montfort based in Ottawa, Ontario. Kinetisense is helping to open lines of communication between multiple health-related disciplines across the globe by leveraging Azure and the Microsoft Cloud to provide tools for clinicians to be able to access data from clinics around the world. They can build on each other’s treatments, and ultimately help the patient. Montfort Hospital is using Power BI to help provide its physicians with the evidence to eliminate unnecessary lab tests, which can reduce the value of care by potentially exposing patients to harm.

In many ways, the healthcare industry is firmly rooted in the past. Healthcare providers are understandably risk averse and have been slow to adopt new processes, BUT we are starting to see a very exciting shift. We are even more excited to be the trusted partner to help Canadian healthcare organizations through their transformation. It is a market that is ripe for innovation and companies that can take advantage of this opportunity have the potential not only to impact the industry, but also generate tangible results for the Canadian economy as a whole. To see how other customers are doing amazing things with the Microsoft cloud check out our Customer Story website.

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Microsoft was founded on the principle that people can do remarkable things when technology is within reach. Accessible technologies don’t just benefit people with disabilities. Whether it’s the hands-free voice commands you use for your phone every day or zoom features, it’s clear that we can help drive a more equitable education experience by creating and building technologies that work well for all students regardless of their abilities.

Educators today are faced with the challenge of integrating technology into the classroom and teaching students of all learning styles and abilities, including students with accessibility needs. As overall student usage of computers continues to rise, there is greater demand to provide assistive technology solutions to ensure all students have equal access to educational opportunities.

As Dr. Gordon Porter, the Director of Inclusive Education Canada stated in the recent release, “by giving teachers, administrators, parents, and students the knowledge and skills they need to make education equitable, we are creating stronger, more inclusive classrooms for everyone”

National Inclusive Education Month takes place across Canada starting now through to April. Microsoft has partnered with Inclusive Education Canada to provide free professional development workshops and resources for educators to ensure they have the right tools to help provide the most effective learning experience for students. They will learn how built-in accessibility features in Windows 10 and One Note learning tools in Office 365 on Surface Pro 4 devices can give teachers the opportunity to personalize student learning.

At Microsoft, we embrace our role in helping ensure students of all abilities have the opportunity to learn. We support the inclusive learning vision by designing technology that is accessible to every student—regardless of learning style.

Visit Microsoft.ca/inclusive to learn about how teachers can leverage technology to individualize student learning and accommodate student needs related to hearing, vision, language, and mobility/dexterity.

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Imagine if there was a service in Canada that was more secure than any individual government’s current computing environment; had enough capacity to accommodate the entire Canadian market’s demand; and could enable global scale scenarios that no single government organization could sustainably fund by themselves … in a matter of minutes?

Imagine no more … that service is called Microsoft Azure and it is enabling global scale, 4^th industrial revolution scenarios across Canada today.

One of the most dramatic world-impacting scenarios today is being led by NAV Canada.  The Aireon system relies on Microsoft Azure as the backbone for an Internet of Things (IoT) project that connects the world’s aircraft to a global satellite network for safer air travel, lower costs and a cleaner environment thanks to optimized flight routes and lower fuel emissions.

The sheer scale of NAV Canada’s vision made Azure an obvious choice. “Microsoft Azure allows Aireon to scale its capacity essentially at the flip of a switch,” says Claudio Silvestri, Vice-President and CIO. “Aireon doesn’t just need hosted services. They need enterprise-class, cloud-based services.” NAV Canada knows that they can move boldly and with confidence because their future compute and storage demands are covered, regardless of scale.

Modern, integrated government services are being delivered today by the City of Brampton, Ontario. Running a municipality involves a lot of moving parts including: a large, distributed workforce; enormous amounts of information; and a day-to-day responsibility to provide a broad range of public services to more than half a million residents.

Peter Simmons, Brampton’s Chief Corporate Services Officer, sums it up: “The city has a highly mobile workforce. In many cases, the individuals that work inside enforcement, parks, road maintenance… they need access to information at a moment’s notice, at their fingertips, where they can assess the situation.”
All those moving parts rely on vast amounts of data.  For most municipalities, budget constraints would make the computing power required to orchestrate these services cost prohibitive.  Azure not only makes this capability affordable, it also provides industry-leading security to protect the city’s key systems and information assets from hostile actors.

These and many other customer stories are what make Azure a transformational capability for Canada’s public sector, and its why more than half of our customers have already started to move to the cloud.

Whether the goal is economic growth, broader social inclusion, sustainability or improved governance, Azure makes it possible for Canada’s public sector to achieve excellence in service delivery and reach its potential on the global stage.

To learn more about how Azure can help to advance Canada’s public sector priorities, please visit our website.

The post How the Public Sector is Embracing the Cloud appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - Canada.

Optimizing Government
Read how agencies are optimizing the cost and operating efficiency of government with cloud computing.

Transforming Government Services
Learn how governments are using data analytics to innovate new government processes and services.

Empowering Employees
Government workers are using the power of mobility to do their best work where they need to do it.

Engaging Citizens
Deliver new and improved citizen services both in person and at scale enabled by the cloud.

Empowering Digital Government
Digital transformation is having a major impact on government, as organizations optimize their operations, transform their services, empower employees and engage citizens.

Learn more about government digital transformation by watching a Microsoft Government Cloud Webcast. Watch Now.

 
Reach out to us on our social channels to continue the conversation: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
 

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In this report, Forbes Insights looks at real success stories at various levels of government in the U.S. Through interviews with over a dozen senior executives from a range of government agencies, consultancies and technology providers, the report examines the efficiencies, advantages and insights these organizations have achieved via cloud deployment.

From the DoD to the City of Miami; from the FBI to the City of Oakland; from the State of Alabama to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. All are success stories, providing examples of how cloud-based services can improve the performance and delivery of government services.

Moreover, in each instance, the agencies in question show in word and deed that they are now convinced of the promise of the cloud and that they are committed to expanding the breadth and depth of their cloud deployments.

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