As global defense and intelligence organizations embark on their digital transformation journeys, they are increasingly looking to technology to assist in the design, development, deployment, and sustainment of military assets, as well as increased agility and speed. This requires a shift for both defense forces and their industry partners from legacy methodologies to a digital engineering approach, with forces and industry collaborating across the entire mission capability lifecycle. At the heart of this transformation is moving from the unwieldy and resource-intensive legacy procurement and development methodologies to agile, adaptive approaches that deliver high-value, innovative capabilities directly to the individual in the military at the speed of relevance.

Increasing the velocity of the capability lifecycle through an integrated digital approach to system development will be a theme that is front of mind at the forthcoming Atlantic Future Forum. The Atlantic Future Forum exists to help strengthen the defense, security, technology, and trading relationships between democratic nations. The forum brings together senior politicians, policymakers, military leaders, and academia, together with business leaders and entrepreneurs from the United Kingdom, the United States, and other allied countries.

Microsoft at Atlantic Future Forum

The Microsoft Global Defense and Intelligence team will be at the Atlantic Future Forum 2022 to discuss how the allied defense community can leverage commercial technology and modern development paradigms to support militaries and defense industrial base partners alike, in their capability lifecycle transformation goals. Our commitment is based on seamless delivery of three tenets¹ that underpin digital engineering strategies:

• Model Based Engineering. Employing models and authoritative sources of data across the entire capability, system, or product lifecycle. These models may be digitized and supported through contemporary modeling, simulation, and virtualization that, amongst other things, support the generation of digital twins to digitally mirror and represent the capability through design into production and across the entire lifecycle.
• Agile and DevSecOps development methodologies. Agile and DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) approaches introduce regular customer and user feedback and allow for rapid and iterative deployments of highest-value capabilities, thereby enabling the fielding of these capabilities in far more rapid timescales than seen in traditional methods (such as a waterfall).
• Modular, Open Architectures. Incorporating open architectures and modular components expands the opportunities for technology insertion and enables sharing across coalition allies, while also creating opportunities for non-traditional industry partners to contribute to the defense tech stack—thereby increasing the opportunity for disruption and innovation. Furthermore, the provision of these capabilities in a secure cloud environment provides the resilience, flexibility, and portability desired by defense and intelligence organizations, allowing resources to be safely shared with trusted partners.

Embracing the adoption of a digital engineering approach is a key enabler for coalition partners to maintain their technological advantage over adversaries, building systems smarter, and faster, with more user feedback, and improved efficiency. This, in turn, is a foundational step in delivering mission superiority to the allied defense ecosystem. We are seeing a tremendous appetite across Five Eyes, NATO, NORAD, and other alliances to leverage commercial development paradigms, commoditized technologies, and collaborate more effectively on mission capability development in a common and secure environment.

Learn more at the event

We are keen to continue the discussion on both securing the cyber domain and this topic at the Atlantic Future Forum 2022 in New York City from September 28 to 29. In addition, our Defense and Intelligence team will be participating in three sessions: Conflict in the information age, AI and the Future of Human Decision Making, and Accelerated digital adoption – a critical defense enabler?

We look forward to connecting with existing partners—and making new ones—at this important event.

¹There is No Spoon: The New Digital Acquisition Reality. October 2020.

The post Modern development methods for mission success appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Does your organization face the intense pressure to both modernize existing processes to better meet citizen needs while also preparing technology and infrastructure for the future?

If so, you’re not alone. The Gartner Group analyzed current trends and estimates 85 percent of organizations will find themselves using advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) by 2020, while as of 2018, only 25 percent have prepared technology planning initiatives that incorporate future technologies. The remaining 75 percent of all organizations—businesses, nonprofits, and government organizations alike—are struggling to make plans for the future and making do with outdated systems and processes.

To help create plans and technology initiatives for the future, government enterprises require vision into the future in order to align their digital strategy. To that end, Gartner industry analysts looked at current trends and formed a hypothesis on how a future government might work. In the resulting report, “Digital Government 2030: Predictive Government Anticipates Citizen Needs With Autonomous Services,” Gartner predicts a future where technologies that today we consider “emerging” are refined and heavily leveraged to government infrastructure, operations, and services.

[msce_cta layout=”image_center” align=”center” linktype=”blue” imageurl=”http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/industry/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Industry-Blog-AB-Test-Images_Govt_R3-B.png” linkurl=”https://discover.microsoft.com/digital-government-2030/?wt.mc_id=AID723399_QSG_SCL_327859 ” linktext=”Read more about the digital government of 2030″ imageid=”30856″ ][/msce_cta]

A vision for the future: better services for citizens, powered by data

Key to Gartner’s vision is a present and a future where governments deliver services that build trust with their citizens, and in turn, citizens become willing to share data that enables governments to provide more personalized services. Further, Gartner hypothesizes that governments will be able to monitor and facilitate data exchanges and predictive analytics. The Gartner report dives deep into the potential power and uses for AI, IoT and machine learning and how data can move a government organization from reactive to proactive to power proactive government services that impact lives in a variety of ways. Gartner’s report makes it clear that technology of today also prepares organizations for a better tomorrow.

Bringing the future alive

Gartner’s “Digital Government 2030” predicts and vividly describes scenarios where technology positively improves citizen lives. Gartner’s report, for example, invites readers to imagine a not-too-distant future where first responders are dispatched automatically to a bike collision triggered by reports from bike sensors. Another Gartner prediction is that citizens will be able to consign tax forms to the past and have their taxes automatically filed while a third asks us to imagine the positive impact of an elderly woman’s to live at home being realized with support from technology-based health services. By painting pictures of individuals positive impacted by technology, Gartner’s vision comes alive, moving these ideas for technology and the future from conceptual to inspiring to possible.

How government leaders can get started

Gartner’s vision for the future can help government leaders wrap their heads around what technology can do for their organizations and citizens. To begin creating technologies for today and paving the path for the future, the best place to start is with Microsoft’s infographic “Gartner predicts: The digital government of 2030” which breaks down what government leaders can do as they strive to fix the problems of today while also planning the technology of tomorrow.

Start fixing the problems of today and planning for technology of the future by checking out “Gartner predicts: The digital government of 2030.”

The post Fixing the problems of today and planning for technology of the future appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

If citizens and their government embrace the power of AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning, what could happen? Industry analysts at Gartner recently set out to answer this question. After analyzing current trends, they posited a series of hypotheses on how government might work if it were to leverage AI and data to proactively meet the needs of the people.

What do these predictions mean for decision makers today? Explore the interactive infographic “Gartner predicts: The digital government of 2030” to find out.

In the infographic you’ll learn:

• Key findings from Gartner’s full report
• The impact a digital, predictive government could have on citizens
• How today’s government leaders can anticipate and embrace future innovation

I invite you to explore this infographic to learn about Gartner’s predictions of how governments might work in 2030: Gartner predicts: The digital government of 2030.

Or download the full Gartner report here: Digital Government 2030: Predictive Government Anticipates Citizen Needs With Autonomous Services.

The post What could the future of government look like? appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Carrot or stick? For tax authorities looking to increase revenue collection while minimizing fraud and evasion, it ultimately comes down to one of these two approaches.

The “stick” approach is adversarial: favoring a coercive approach to tax compliance, and threatening punishment for non-payment. The “carrot” approach seeks to create a culture in which taxpayers feel the tax authority is on their side, they clearly see the wider social benefit of paying taxes, and the process of submitting returns and making payments is easy and non-intimidating.

Carrots are better—for everybody

Many modern governments are finding the second approach more fruitful. Encouraging voluntary compliance doesn’t just result in a higher proportion of tax being collected on time. It also reduces the cost to the tax authority of collecting the revenue, since it spends less time and budget on investigations and enforcement.

Making it happen is more difficult. In many countries, there’s a climate of fear among citizens when it comes to paying tax. Turning that perception around takes time and effort, and isn’t helped by events like the recent phone scam here in Canada, where criminals posing as the CRA demanded immediate payment with menaces—netting CAN$10 million to date from terrified citizens.

Four technologies that help promote voluntary compliance

Our work with tax authorities around the world has shown that technology can play a major role in creating a culture of trust and cooperation that leads to voluntary compliance. Here are four technologies that can help taxpayers and tax authorities work more productively together:

Cloud: This is the first step for many authorities looking to move services online and make sure they’re always available. Offering 24/7 service in the cloud means citizens always have somewhere to find advice, submit returns, and make payments. The scalability of the cloud infrastructure means that services never go down—even at times of peak demand like payment deadline days.

Collaboration tools: When tax officials can easily collaborate and find the information they need, taxpayer queries and cases can be resolved faster. Officials can use online productivity tools to work smarter, and be more knowledgeable and productive when meeting with taxpayers. Mobile devices allow them to spend more time in the field, helping taxpayers to calculate tax owed—or refunds due—and submit the right paperwork.

Business process automation: Paper-based forms can be notoriously hard to navigate; even trying to find the right form can be an offputtingly difficult task. Infusing smart online forms with AI can help—by dynamically reconfiguring the form based on the information the taxpayer is entering, or by pre-populating the form with preexisting information to save time.

In Mexico, the Servicio de Administración Tributaria offers an online portal where taxpayers can input their ID and see automatically calculated deductions—helping them file returns faster and more accurately.

Cognitive services: Tax authorities can take a cue from innovative insurers, and use cognitive services like chatbots and voice assistants to make it easier for taxpayers to navigate services and find the information they need. The Australian Taxation Office, for example, has introduced ‘Alex,’ a virtual assistant that can help answer general enquiries from citizens and businesses.

Get the full guide to digital transformation

For tax authorities seeking to increase rates of voluntary compliance, all of these technology initiatives are worth exploring. To see how they can fit within a wider digital transformation strategy, download a comprehensive guide from Microsoft and PwC: Digital Transformation of Tax Administration.

The post Four ways technology can encourage voluntary tax compliance appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.