Hi…

So after a number of years I thought if you cannot beat them, join them – blogging here we come. 

My name is James Brown (yes, thanks for that Mum and Dad) and I am an Industry Technology Strategist (ITS) at Microsoft for the World Wide Public Sector Team (WWPS)focusing on Local and Regional Governments.  This role involves me working with Microsoft teams and customers around the world on how to deliver better quality and value to citizens on the Microsoft platform.  One of the core pieces around this is the Citizen Service Platform (CSP) which I am the Technical Architect for.

Before becoming an ITS earlier this year I was with Microsoft Consulting where I was the architect of the UK Government Gateway for about three years, which is the central Authentication and Message Routing system for the UK.  During my time leading the project we spent a huge amount of time and effort looking at authentication and authorization at a national scale and how to make it as open and inclusive as possible – even leading to the Liberty Alliance folk giving us an award, which was a great moment for the team.

So what do I want from this blog or conversely what will you get from this blog? I want to be able to blog about the topics of central and local governments and the issues they face.  I want to explore the ever complex area of Identity in the Government space.  I want to be able to tell you about some of the new technologies that Governments and people can use to make things better.  Hopefully you can find something useful here.

Thanks, James

PS.  My other goal in life is to able to search for ‘James Brown’ and return something related to me rather than the other James Brown.  I have that sinking feeling that it is going to be loosing battle…