Last year, when the Internal Revenue Service began enabling taxpayers to download their tax transcripts, 17 million people took advantage of the service, reducing phone, email, and in-person requests by 40 percent. The new IRS service is a great example of the kinds of government initiatives that can improve citizen services while reducing costs.
The emerging Internet of Things brings the opportunity for local, regional, and national governments to discover relationships in seemingly unrelated data and proactively provide more efficient services to citizens – but the challenge is in managing the data, not the devices and sensors.
As law enforcement officials gear up for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Annual Conference and Exposition this weekend, they are focusing on how they can use technology to make their communities safer. One area in which technology can help is big data analytics.
With the Microsoft Government Cloud Platform, a dedicated, end-to-end cloud platform specifically designed to meet rigorous government demands, governments at all levels can operate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Imagine a world where everything from roads to bridges to airplanes are maintained just in advance of them breaking down. A world in which sensors alert public safety agencies of safety hazards before they erupt into disasters.
Holographic computing, which anchors digital images to physical objects in the real world, is just around the corner. And the implications for public safety and national security are enormous.