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The City of London is an ancient organisation using modern technology to deliver services to a large and complex range of constituents that includes local residents, visitors, small businesses, international corporations, embassies, and over 300,000 daily commuters. Previously, the city had no unified...

The Metropolitan Police Service in London required easily accessible email for extra police officers during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. To avoid costly capital expenditure on its existing infrastructure, the Met wanted to quickly provision these users and then remove the service when no longer...

The organisation has reduced IT budgets by more than 25 per cent with new deployments. London, UK. — Mar. 20, 2013 — Wiltshire Council has cemented its transformation from 5 local authorities in Wiltshire to a single Unitary Authority by moving a significant IT service to the Cloud with...

Visiting the Houses of Parliament is always a pleasure… actually, now I think of it, I’ve never been before… so my first ever visit was very exciting! The reason for attending? A parliamentary reception for the Anywhere Working Campaign. And, if you want to get symbolic about it,...

Off the back of the Parliamentary reception for the Anywhere Working campaign and as Office 365 for business is launching today, we thought we'd share this lovely video with you... Do you have a flexible working policy in your organisation? If not, check out this fab video out: Posted by Howard...

Here is a great case study for anyone thinking of improving data accuracy, cutting admin and improving customer relations... The Electoral Commission is a body set up by the United Kingdom (U.K.) parliament to regulate party finance and set election standards. To improve decision making through more...

Chris Anderson, CTO at the City of London, talks to our journalist Helen Olsen about the benefits the City has gained from joining the Shared Learning Group (SLG). Prior to joining the group, the council had evaluated the CRM market, opting for a Microsoft solution - at the same time committing to a...

Plymouth City Council is facing a big social challenge - a 16-year life expectancy gap between the east and west of the city. Addressing this issue requires all services - including social and health care, policing, and housing - to work closely together. To achieve this, the council needs to update...

Through the use of Unified Communications and Microsoft Lync, North Wales Police has been able to dramatically improve their ability to respond to critical incidents and support their local communities. It's also led to a minor revolution in their ways of communicating with other the emergency services...

If you work in one of the many marvellous charities spread throughout the UK, you might be looking into ways of communicating effectively. Great communication to the public is something so essential for charities but how is your communication within your organisation? Is there room for improvement...

Day two of the Worldwide Government Solutions Forum got off to a fantastic start, despite attendees battling the horrific weather to arrive at the venue. The morning consensus was very excitable with a full day ahead of us and a fabulous gala dinner to look forward to in the evening. Opening the talks...

The sixth year of the Worldwide Government Solutions Forum saw the turn of London, featuring speakers from 26 different countries. After sampling a few international cuisines we sat down to gain a range of views from around the world on how the Government and Public Sector can incorporate cloud computing...

This weekend in Manchester, the Blue Light Camp unconference took place and was reported to have been very a unique and refreshing day. The emergency services event was the brain child of Sasha Taylor , Paul Coxon and David White and provided a fantastic networking opportunity for those interested in...

It's less than a month to go now until the huge Worldwide Government Solutions Forum in London (24th-25th April). We thought we'd share the latest agenda with you - it's packed full fantastic speakers and chances to do some great networking. Just see for yourself below... More soon - don't forget, you...

The demands that governments are facing from their citizens and workers are changing and it has become crucial for governments to look for new technologies as a catalyst to help them overcome these hurdles with fewer resources. Turning to Cloud computing services can make it dramatically easier and...

We’ve recently blogged on two topics currently close to UK Government’s heart: firstly, Annemarie Duffy wrote about how internal IT within Microsoft is embracing opportunities presented by cloud, and by the Consumerisation of IT (CoIT). Then Nick Umney posted the first in his “ Why...

The role of any IT department in an organisation is to deliver business value through information technology. This distils down to delivering a set of applications to the business users to enable them to do their roles more efficiently. Anything outside of the application is inherently overhead, whether...

Worldwide Government Solutions Forum, 24 th -25 th April 2012, Cardinal Place (Microsoft), London. It’s just under two months until the Worldwide Government Solutions Forum (GSF) rolls in to London. It’s theme this year is ‘efficiency and opportunity: how cloud and technology innovations...

Microsoft is perhaps unique, in that it is both consumer and enterprise technology provider, as well as being a major enterprise technology consumer. This unique perspective brings great value to the organisation - not least in its ability to comprehensively test out and use new product developments...

We’ve been attending UK GovCamp , an ‘unconference’ that aims to bring together public sector professionals to discuss best practice use of technology. The event lasts 2 days, read our day one wrap-up post to see what happened yesterday. As with yesterday and in the true ‘unconferencing’...

Whilst the concept of online transactions is now a mainstream activity for most consumer organisations, designing and building this type of online service in government presents unique challenges. Unlike online banks, or eBay or Amazon, an online government transaction platform has to be designed with...

When it comes to interacting with government agencies, I am sure many of us think of stacks of complex, multi-page forms asking for information on all sorts of aspects of our lives. IEG 4 , an innovative company based in the UK, is making this a thing of the past for local authorities. Through the use...

Recently, at the ITU Telecom World 2011 in Geneva, Microsoft, along with several partners including Neul , the University of Strathclyde , Steepest Ascent , and Inveneo , demonstrated innovative new wireless technology. Described as “Super Wi-Fi” by some, it shows how unused TV and other...

Gartner has just published an interesting report on ICT in the current economic crisis. The Gartner perspective is that organisations need to focus on cost optimisation not cost cutting in their ICT. What’s the difference? Cost cutting focuses on spending less on ICT procurement and in reducing baseline...

Auld Reekie is neither an insult nor a profanity. It is a traditional epithet for Edinburgh and refers to what you used to see of the city from the surrounding hills during the era of wood and coa l fires, with the plumes of smoke over the city seen as a sign of prosperity for the citizens of Edinburgh...