Well I'm off on holiday tomorrow and we've decided that this Blog will take a 2 week rest while I'm away. I'm sure a good number of you are away also - I hope you're having a great time with just the right sort of weather for whatever you're doing :-...

I recently read through an interesting post on silicon.com about how Staffordshire County Council were saving up to £40,000 p/a by using software that they've written themselves to automatically switch their computers off at night. I was very interested...

For those of you that have started using Windows Vista you might be interested to download one or both of these new gadgets (see link for more information on gadgets) for your Sidebar on your desktop. The National Rail website is now offering a gadget...

According to Microsoft’s website, Silverlight is; “A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web” Although the definition may sound...

We're running a Live Meeting (click here if you want to know more about Live Meeting) next Thursday 2nd August from 2 - 3 pm where my colleague Bob Walker will be talking about how the various versions of Microsoft Project can be used in government organisations...

I know we have recommended GBTV programmes before but I have no hesitation in recommending that you should take 5 minutes to watch the latest production by the two Johns (Bird and Fortune) on Transformational Government. Much like watching an episode...

Here's another great video from LocalGovTV - this time about the Isle of Man Government and their approach to building an integrated IT infrastructure which enables them to re-use components between their online Tax system and their Bovine tracking system...

I've just come across this interesting free report from Accenture which benchmarks the UK against 21 other countries for customer service. This is the 8th year of this report but this is the first year that they've included a measure reflecting the...

Thanks to William Heath at Ideal Government and Alex Stobart for letting me know that they weren't able to post comments to this blog. My mistake in how I set it up - hopefully fixed now. Posted by Ellen

Yesterday our whole UK Public Sector team (which is now about 140 people) travelled up to Dudley in the Black Country for the kick-off meeting for our new financial year (FY) which started on 1st July. Why Dudley, you may be asking? Well we decided...

This posting is not really Microsoft related but I thought it might be useful to you so I'm posting it anyway :-) Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone keeps referring to some amazing business term and you've sat there wondering exactly what...

We recently held a roundtable event for a group of government executive agencies with our partner Solidsoft . The focus of the event was to make the agencies more aware of Microsoft’s infrastructure optimisation strategy and to offer practical advice...

Joe MacPhee, Development Manager of the Western Isles Council (or in their preferred Gaelic name Comhairle nan Eilean Siar ), was one of the very engaging presenters at Microsoft’s event for local authorities that we held recently at our campus in Reading...

There's a big interest within Government around the potential to have many more of their employees working in a more flexible and mobile way. This can offer a number of benefits including reducing unnecessary trips into the office just to pick up paperwork...

If you or any of your staff - or even friends and family - need help getting started with computers then you might find the Digital Literacy Curriculum will be useful for you. It is free of charge and has 5 modules, when you complete them you can choose...

Get up to speed with Microsoft Word and the Office 2007 System When you first open Word 2007, it looks very different to what you may have become used to, because it has been designed to make your life a whole lot easier. So here's a training course...

I'm a regular watcher of the LocalGovTV web channel and I thought their latest video about Spelthorne's outsourcing partnership with Steria was really interesting. They seem to have a very positive relationship between them and they're introducing some...

My colleague Ray Fleming has posted about the Shift Happens powerpoint presentation which has been creating a lot of interest over the last few months. I think the messages it delivers are also very thought-provoking for anyone with an interest in...

About two years Microsoft helped to set up the Shared Learning Group (SLG) with 10 UK councils who were interested in working with us to identify how they could get the most out of their strategic investment in Microsoft technologies. A key aspect of...

We couldn't have known that June 27th would turn out to be such an amazing day for us to have chosen to host a Parliamentary Reception at the House of Commons and we did wonder what the impact would be on it when Tony Blair announced that was going to...

This blog will try to provide news and commentary on topics that we at Microsoft think might be of interest to people working in UK Government who have some sort of interest in IT and how it can be used to hopefully improve the way that government works...