Microsoft Digital City

Development in all quarter seems to be the mantra of the day. Citizens are more and more
demanding with each passing day for civic amenities or government services in developed and
third world countries. They need best class physical infrastructure for better quality of life as
complete beautification of city, building bridges and over bridges, improving transport through
metro and new roads, better social and health services; same time there is an urgent demand of
best class ICT infrastructure with e-gov initiative, administrative reforms and government process
reengineering to facilitate citizen services to be more transparent, simplified, efficient and
accountable.

Microsoft Digital City Initiative is one of the Core Focus Area (CFA) under Microsoft Global e-
governance Strategy for emerging and mega cities; here Microsoft is working with respective
local governments worldwide of developed and developing countries to develop best class ICT
infrastructure and e-gov solutions with Microsoft successfully leverage technology landscape and
software solutions stack, our key initiative and steps to make a digital city are –

• Streamline common functions and integrate backend processes as HR, Finance,

Procurement, Tax management, Project management to improve business operations
and internal efficiencies.
• With Citizen Service Portal and Walk in Citizen Facilitation Center (CFC) city’s local
governments listen citizen demands and needs 24/7, ready to cater them online at the
click of finger, enabling single window services across multiple departments, deliver
benefits for better G2C and G2B interactions.
• Comprehensive initiative in the area of government process reengineering, process
reforms, employee development, health and social care services and budgetary details.
• Better city infrastructure along with efforts to harness technology for citywide computer
network, municipal Wi-Fi, GIS & GPS and implementing multiple software solutions and
technology programs with our partner network.
• Form Project Management Task Force (PMTF) for steering Digital City initiative to
leverage technology to give better quality of life.

Microsoft Digital City initiative being implemented on service clustered approach with Public
Private Partnership basis with Microsoft Citizen Service Platform integrated with People ready
technology solutions for local governments. Microsoft strategy with Digital City initiative to ensure
that our customers can take the approach and procedure that best suit the needs of
stakeholders , citizens , executives and elected members in the new world of local government.

Local governments in a Global World

In an information led technology driven world, citizen’s expectations are also changing driving
new behaviors and new ways of interacting with government organizations. National and local
governments are under great pressure to use emerging technologies and tools to interact with
citizens and constituents. Wealthier sections of the society can exercise choice and means to
interact with government and to avail government services; but it is the statuary duty of the
government not to ignore people lower on the economic scale and to give them the experience
and benefits of citizen centric economy.

Global demographics are also driving change worldwide. The issues and challenges of developed
and developing nations local governments are different and also the expectations of the citizens.
In developed countries aging populations with longer life expectancy are placing huge and
increasing demands on health and social care systems. There is need to deliver improved care
and to an increasing percentage of the populations funded by reducing workforce. For local
governments in developed world the only affordable answer is to improve efficiency and increase
public sector productivity.
In many developing nations, even basic services that support population life cycle and economic
processes are cumbersome and poorly implemented or altogether absent in most of the cities.

At the same time globalization and population growth are creating mega cities even in developing
countries where the strains of large, diverse populations create increasingly complex demands
that may include having to deal with over 100 ethnic groups and languages. The right technology
implemented in a model tailored approach to local conditions can help and bring these cities and
regions more fully into global economy.

There are wide variations in the extent to which governments both national and local level have
adopted technology to support their responses to these pressures. While many local
governments are able to deliver end-to end connected experiences for citizens and government
workers nowadays; but still there are many urban bodies without basic services as organization
e-mail. The most successful local governments are able to recognize the power of technology
and to focus on implementing business solutions that solve real world problems. More and more
people, business and governments connect via internet; security and privacy is also key concern.

Local governments and Use of Technology

Local governments and urban bodies & councils are regarded as the closest point for services
delivery to the citizens with the government. The majority of citizen interaction with the
government happens with the local authorities at the municipal and local level. In most countries
approximately 80% of transactions between governments and citizens or businesses take place
at local and regional level. In some countries even local governments are responsible for
delivering services on behalf of national or provincial authorities in addition to the services within
their geographic or organizational domain. Designing business applications and IT infrastructure
for local governments that are intended to serve thousands or millions of people are significantly
challenge.

Until recently, interest in government ICT has been focused at national level. Today the
importance of using ICT to support and drive change in local and regional governments
particularly in cities is becoming well recognized. By adopting Information and Communication
technologies and e-gov initiative, public service delivery by the local governments and urban local
bodies could be restructured to meet the needs of their citizens effectively and efficiently. Some
of the services include payment of utility bills – water, electricity, property; issuance of birth, death
and marriage certificates; facilitation of lodging complaints and their hassle free redressal and so
forth. Nowadays local governments are adopted the use technology and e-gov initiative
worldwide and citizens are being provided the above mentioned services online so that they can
access the services without travailing long distances and without waiting in queue.

The key challenge of many local governments of mega cities are their closed technology legacy
applications that often cause many duplication of the same processes to be created, incurring
inefficiencies errors in operations. Most of the local governments in developing nations can’t
provide reliable and efficient services to their citizens due to the non-integrated nature of manual
procedures of information management followed by them. Many cities and their local
governments started to follow the process of automating individual functions and operations but
they create silos of information and obstacles for a single window access to services.

In Digital City initiative, Microsoft’s vision and roadmap is sustained improvement in efficiency and
productivity of cities and at the same time effective, transparent and quick delivery of municipal
and local government level services to citizens. The Key Objectives of this Core Focus Area are :-
 • Provide Single Window services to citizens on any time, any where basis
• Increase the efficiency and productivity of local governments and municipal local bodies
of cities.
• Develop a single and integrated view of local body information system across all local
level governments and urban bodies of the state.
• Provide timely & reliable management information relating to local and municipal
administration for effective decision making.
• Adopt a standards-based approach to enable integration with other related applications
and e-gov solutions of the state.

Objectives of Digital City

While the local governments around the world operate in a different cultural context and scale;
but the challenges are same consistently in spite of those differences. Every local government
citizen wants better quality lower cost service. Every politician’s wants to see regulatory
compliance and obligations met properly. All civil servants want work to with the best tools,
having one accurate picture of up to date informations and to make decisions without taking risks.
Digital City initiative envisages and provides the following benefits to local governments
worldwide:-

Improving Customer (Citizen and Business) Service Delivery :- Digital City gives citizens
and businesses better access to government informations and services with simpler processes,
less paperwork and more efficient interactions. Citizens now get 24/7 access, sophisticated online
services and prompts response to their request ,rapid resolution of their inquires. We provide
multichannel access ( Web, telephone, SMS and face to face) to allow customers to access
services in ways that suit their needs.

Increasing Operational Efficiency :- Public Services are coming under increasing pressure to
work more efficiently and to deliver more services at lower cost. There is also pressure on
national government budgets usually means less funding to local governments in recession led
econonmy. Microsoft proven technologies and best practices in Digital City offer ways to reconcile
these pressures by improving efficiencies, transforming working practices and delivering more for
less.

Improving Compliance and Accountability :- Digital City improves regulatory compliance and
accountability for good governance showing what money has been received and how it is has
been used to deliver agreed upon services and who is accountable for the delivery and
performance of services in functioning of cities and local governments.

Leverage the Power of Technology :- Local Governments can achieve dramatic improvements
in efficiencies by developing new business models that are supported by technologies such as
CRM and ERP. These technologies offer significant opportunity to public sector bodies to
transform their ways of working; to move resources from back office administrative functions and
reinvest them in delivering front line services. Digital City gives local governments planned and
integrated ICT platform include economies of scale in terms of reduced administration,
maintenance and training integrated with business applications. It also provide improved integrity
of data, better business intelligence, increased internal controls and significantly reduced
potential for fraud.

Caring for Environment: - All local governments are concerned with protecting the environment
with limited human resources and budgets, looking for technology to assistance for environmental
problems. They need to create a safe, attractive, healthy, sustainable, environment for the benefit
of local people. As population increases so do pressure on the local environment and
infrastructure. Digital City of Microsoft with its Green It initiative working with urban authorities to
make policies to reducing carbon footprint , noise nuisance , improving street scene , protecting
parks and trees and solid waste management program.

Sustaining the Local Economy and Infrastructure :- Most local governments have similar
vision to sustain their local communities and culture. Most cities compete on a global level to
attract investments based upon relative measure of quality of life, economic benchmarks and
transport, physical and IT infrastructure like broadband and telecommuting to attract industry and
commerce. Microsoft has engaged in Public Private Partnership basis to assist cities and regions
to help and promote the local ICT economies.

Delivering Social Care :- In developed world aging populations is placing increasing demands
on public services. In other parts of the world, expanding populations are expecting better public
services and putting local governments under pressure to deliver better quality services with
static or diminishing budgets. Microsoft Digital City transform the ways local governments deliver
social care to handle these pressures and dramatically improve the efficiency of services
responsive to people’s needs.

Raising Standards in Education :- Most of the educational infrastructure is under the

management and control of the local authorities in cities. Traditionally the support of ICT has
been confined to a dedicated facility, be it a school or further education institution, and entirely
separated from the wider community. Much of a region’s economic prosperity is tied to the
employability of its workforce and education is a major tool to achieve such an aim. Digital City
we raise standards in education; provide online learning to citizens as well as in schools and
colleges; support standard ICT literacy education in the community.

Improving Staff Productivity :- Local governments have historically labored with poor ICT tools
and facilities for productivity and collaboration. The use of emerging technologies and modern
ICT tools like availabity of e-forms, broadband, mobile devices and instant messaging
communication provides significant opportunities for staff productivity.Intelligent applications that
capture data once only can further improve processing by avoiding a second back-office pass in
many processes.

Microsoft Solutions and Technologies for Digital City

Microsoft offer high value solutions at low cost to solve the challenges and issues of local
government organizations face everyday. . Our People Ready Technology solutions are designed
to provide organizations with long tem stability and maximum agility in responding to the evolving
needs of the local governments and cities.

Technology Architecture :- We provide local government greatest range of choices in the

use and deployment of software from on premise to online basis. Our software–plus-services
vision means local government organizations can deploy software and solutions from the cloud or
the enterprise data center and deliver rich applications to PCs, the Web and mobile devices. Our
solutions integrate with heterogeneous computing environment and set new standards in
interoperability between new and existing applications; supporting fully open standards and on
demand operating environment with Windows Principle.

Microsoft gives local governments and urban bodes the more secure, reliable, flexible and well-
mannered IT infrastructure with its software solution stack and products in every area of
computing, provide the most fascinated IT environment from Business Solutions of Dynamics to
Windows on a solid foundation of integrated technologies from Office, Share Point, SQL Server to
.Net architecture. We provide all the key software components from Operating Systems and
Servers, Desktop Applications and Unified Communication tools, Database, Middleware and
Applications all based on open industry standards.
Application Architecture: - Microsoft has investigated the needs of governments in multiple
dimensions to understand how to best compose products, applications, solutions and templates
and address the business needs of local governments. The applications architecture and
solutions designed to accommodate the varying levels of size and maturity of local governments
in Microsoft Digital City initiative.

• Very small local government agencies with limited technology resources.

• Small local government agencies with focus on internal optimization of processes and
limited citizen interaction.
• Larger local government agencies with needs spanning complex challenges, technology
capabilities and rich business processes.

For all those scenarios, levels and size of local governments, Microsoft offer common set of
presentation components, technology capabilities and business templates in people ready
technology solutions offered in Digital City initiative which has business productivity and
application platform infrastructure. Microsoft provides best class technology solutions to improve
operational efficiency and service delivery mechanism of local governments those are fully
integrated with Microsoft Citizen Service Platform. Citizen Service Platform is one of the key
products and solutions offered under Public Sector Group which ensure that effective,
transparent, efficient citizen centric services reach the entire constituency and enable growth and
social development at government level.

Operational Efficiency and Productivity Solutions :- Microsoft offer Dynamics

business solutions in Digital City initiative for improving internal efficiencies and to better access
to information, revenue collection, enhanced transparency and accountability and reduced
operational overheads that lead to more efficient utilization of taxpayers money. Microsoft
Dynamics delivers a suite of integrated tools for managing finances, human resources, citizen
relationship, supply chain, funds & grants , compliance obligations all with lower TCO. These tools
are used by government organizations to improve operational efficiency with effective services
and greater accountability.

• Dynamics Financial Solutions --- enable and automate end-to-end financial operations
of local government and urban body by providing integrated systems that manage
budgeting, asset management in addition to accounting and reporting.
• Dynamics Supply Chain Management Solutions --- applications that assist in all
aspect of supply chain from effective purchasing and procurement function to inventory
tracking.Provide control over entire purchase and supply chain process.
• Dynamics Tax Management Solutions --- enable more transparent revenue and tax
collection ward and council wise throughout urban body.
• Dynamics Human Resource Management Solution --- enable all aspect of employee
relation from application, hiring to compensation and benefits, certification and education
tracking to much more ; increase level of satisfaction in career management.
• Dynamics Asset Management Solution --- enable more efficient usage of internal
assets and inventory of municipal authorities.
• Dynamics Project Management Solution --- monitor municipal and council’s projects
and ward works from budget to execution.

Service Delivery Solutions :- Microsoft offer Dynamics CRM and partner solutions to
deliver high quality transparent services to citizens and businesses to conceptualize Digital
City initiative. Dynamics CRM for local governments offer citizen centric approach for service
delivery, inquiry management and other business practices. These citizen centric approaches
deliver centralized access to detailed informations about citizens and services to many
government organizations. Dynamics CRM offer citizen interaction management, case
management, community communication management, grant management, field inspection to
 business intelligence tools to the modernization and integration of public services for local
government of all sizes.

• Dynamics CRM Citizen Interaction Management Solutions --- offer information call
center or contact center enable real time multi channel (walk in, telephone call, web etc)
access of services to constituents and citizens.
• Dynamics CRM Case Management Solutions --- enable public grievances and their
redressal and increase effective governance by city officials, through feedback on various
problems and issues in the city, helps citizens to lodge complaints at single counter and
their efficient resolution.
• Social Services Solutions --- enable improved transactional services with citizens and
businesses (service for birth, death, marriage certificates and issuance of trade licenses)
with citizen service centers.
• Environment / Social Care / Infrastructure and Education Solutions --- Microsoft
with its partner ecosystem and technology landscape provide solutions to better manage
environmental, social care, education standard, physical and ICT infrastructure
development process.
• Microsoft Virtual Earth --- enable capturing, storing and analyzing geographical data to
efficiently governing city as GIS. This next generation solutions from Microsoft helps in
emergency response system in traffic management, crisis management and many other
processes.

Microsoft Citizen Services Platform :- . Citizen Service Platform is one of the key
products and solutions offered by Microsoft which ensure effective, transparent, efficient citizen
centric services reach the entire constituency and enable growth and social development. It is an
end to end IT infrastructure that provides a highly secure, scalable, easy to mange foundation on
which local government of any size can create applications and solutions. For local governments,
Microsoft Citizen Platform is a key tool to communicate policies, plans and future actions from
council members, local government management to employees to constituents to better know
how the urban and municipal council activities are impacting on the citizens.

Microsoft Citizen Service Platform (CSP) provides solution sets that helps local governments
solve their unique business challenges. Component-based and rapidly configurable, Microsoft
CSP can support common technology and process foundations across agencies – helping local
governments to deliver high quality, and highly efficient, service to citizens and businesses,
everywhere. Microsoft People ready technology solutions integrated with citizen service platform
build the foundation to conceptualize and implement the Digital City initiative

Digital Cities Accelerator :- Digital Cities is conceived as a platform for housing portals for
city councils. Each portal allows the city councils to interact with citizens, organizations and
companies in the municipalities. Digital Cities Accelerator allows small, mid – size and large city
councils to offer their citizens, companies and civil servants a collection of informational and
transactional services that are normally inaccessible, given the elevated cost of their
implementation and maintenance. Accelerator consists collection of portals (citizen portal, civil
servant portal, local small & medium business portal, tourism portal, communication portal,
mobility portal ) able to offer broad range of services Basic ( included in the accelerator ) and
Advanced ( integrated in the Accelerator and furnished by third parties ) . Accelerator comprised
of Microsoft technologies : Share Point Portal Server , Exchange Server , Live Communications
Server , SQL Server .

Microsoft Products :- Microsoft Digital City is the industry's only comprehensive solution
set for local governments of any size and their agencies to take a holistic, outcome-focused
approach and processes. The Microsoft platform comprises a complete range of products that
integrate seamlessly with one another to enable organizations to build secure, end-to-end local
government solutions.

Microsoft Share Point Portal Server

See how you can use Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server to communicate and collaborate
efficiently across your local government.

Microsoft Windows XP
Windows XP gives you a reliable foundation that helps you better serve your staff and citizens.

Microsoft Office Suite

Using Microsoft Office, solve the challenges of local government administration with products
designed specifically with the needs of local government in mind.

Microsoft Windows CE
With a Microsoft-based PDA, you can provide field officers with access to systems and processes
on the go.

Microsoft Windows Server

Using Microsoft Windows Server, discover how you can extend your connectivity and identity
management without compromising security or ease of administration.

Microsoft Virtual Server

Discover server virtualisation technology engineered for the Microsoft Windows Server System
platform that can significantly help reduce costs significantly.

Microsoft Windows Storage Server

Achieve even greater storage consolidation with Microsoft Windows Storage Server.

Microsoft Identity Integration Server (IIS)

Find out how, by deploying Microsoft IIS, you can reduce the cost, risk and complexity associated
with building, deploying and maintaining an end-to-end identity and access management solution.

Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA)

With Microsoft ISA, Add application-layer inspection firewall and a virtual private network to
improve your network security and performance with Microsoft ISA.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server provides a comprehensive business intelligence platform for data
integration, analysis and reporting.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Visual Studio provides a range of tools to help you take on your software challenges and build
dynamic Windows, Web, mobile and Office application-based solutions.

Microsoft Commerce Server

Profile online users, target content, create and manage catalogues, process orders, analyse
online business metrics and develop custom solutions.

Microsoft Speech Server

Add speech capability to your applications, Web, mobile and Office application-based systems.

Microsoft BizTalk Server

Improve business agility with Microsoft's business process automation solutions.

Microsoft Host Integration Server

Connect and integrate applications, data sources, messaging and security systems on IBM
mainframes with Microsoft Windows environments.
Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager
Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager is a comprehensive scorecard and dashboard application
that gives you deep contextual insight into business drivers.

Microsoft Exchange Server

Enhance your messaging environment with improvements in anti-spam technology, mobile email
and mailbox administration.

Microsoft Live Communications Server

Share ideas and information immediately with business contacts, using this real-time
collaboration solution that integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft Office System.

Microsoft Office Communicator

Connect people inside the enterprise in real time, connect your PC and phone, and increase the
velocity of your supply chain.

Microsoft Systems Management Server

Quickly and cost-effectively provide relevant software and updates to staff with this
comprehensive solution for change and configuration management for the Microsoft platform.

Microsoft Operations Manager

Reduce the complexity associated with managing today's IT infrastructure environment and lower
the cost of your operations.

Microsoft System Centre Reporting Manager

Consolidate your change and configuration information from Microsoft Systems Management
Server 2003 and your event and performance information from Microsoft Operations Manager
2005 to give you easy access to your reports and information.