152 Many of today’s public sector strategies are focused on driving innovation and helping communities to modernise and flourish. Government leaders are prioritising the use of technology to simplify administrative processes and improve urban life for residents. Healthcare organisations are looking at new ways to use technology to address current challenges, while also seeking innovative solutions that give patients the experiences that they want and need. During the Covid-19 pandemic, governments were challenged to meet increased expectations and demand for public services from residents and businesses. According to a 2021 study titled The transformation imperative: Government by The Economist Intelligence Unit, government bodies have actually found it easier to secure budgets for digital transformation since the start of the pandemic. In fact, improving operational efficiency had driven digital transformation at a higher rate in government than in any other industry in the past 12 months, at the time of the study’s publication. One way that governments are working to optimise the services they deliver is by addressing internal processes first. Take, for example, the City of Everett in Washington, USA. It transformed processes and increased employee productivity by deploying a combination of Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft Azure for storage needs, Microsoft Teams to streamline communication across agencies, and Power BI to support the adoption of analytics for decision-making. According to Steven Hellyer, a former IT director for the city of Everett, the city wasn’t equipped for the modern era. “We weren’t that agile as an organisation because we weren’t taking advantage of laptops and smartphones, e-business services, or cloud computing,” he said. By implementing Microsoft technologies, the city was able to “drive greater agility within departments and place the interests of the city’s residents at the core of the work”, according to Ngozi Nwoko, director of global industry product marketing for government at Microsoft. “[This is] a great example for how state and local governments can utilise digital tools to better serve their communities,” she said. The same strategies are key for healthcare providers, which are increasingly exploring new Cloud technology is outperforming on-premises systems in every way. Despite being traditionally slow-moving, the public sector is now driving its own digital transformation and cloud migration using Microsoft’s tools BY E L LY YAT E S - ROB E R T S F E ATUR E answer is in the cloud “ Cloud helps the public sector meet challenges while enabling governments to create futureready solutions” JEREMY M. GOLDBERG, MICROSOFT The
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=