FutureFed

Overcome the digital divide, and unleash the future

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2012-02-21T07:00:00Z

Curt Kolcun - V.P., Microsoft U.S. Public Sector

In the past three posts in this series, we have explored redefining our nation’s access to education and training in the 21st century. We’ve delved into why the digital divide matters, why it’s such a difficult problem to solve, and encouraging progress. Today, we wrap things up by peering into our crystal ball and taking a stab at how today’s technologies and trends might evolve in the near future.
We think barriers to digital access will continue to drop during the coming years as people adopt new technologies and find innovative uses for existing ones. Three of the biggest technologies to watch are:

• Super Wi-Fi: The move from analog to digital television since 2006 has freed up the low-frequency wireless spectrum that can travel farther and penetrate buildings better than the higher frequency spectrum that current wireless technologies use. Once dismissed as “white space,” this spectrum is now market gold to cable, satellite, and Internet providers. The Cambridge TV White Spaces Consortium, in which Microsoft is a partner, last year announced white space trials in Cambridge, England.

As Super Wi-Fi, the spectrum offers a more reliable and accessible connection to the Internet, without the difficulty and expense of installing fiber optic lines or other new infrastructure. The technology is just starting to take off: Wilmington, N.C., launched the country’s first Super Wi-Fi network last month, and the FCC approved the first Super Wi-Fi broadcast device last December. We expect the first Super Wi-Fi–enabled consumer devices to start arriving in 2013 or 2014. At that time, high demand across the board?from currently unconnected rural communities, urbanites in concrete buildings with poor reception, and more?will likely cause supply to quickly rise, lowering Internet costs for everyone.

• Always-on mobile devices: Even as Super Wi-Fi starts making the Internet accessible to all Americans, we’re going to see always-on Internet-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, continue to proliferate. By all accounts, smartphone use is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 35 percent of American adults own a smartphone and that the young, African-American and/or Hispanic demographic groups—all groups that the digital divide has hit hard—show a higher than average use of smartphones.

Many people around the world already access the Internet through their phones, and smartphones, tablets, and e-readers are becoming more popular. Rising popularity and rapid technological advancement are making these devices increasingly affordable. But bandwidth is becoming an issue—data throttling is a recurring theme in technology news. Together, Super Wi-Fi and always-on mobility could pave the way for a whole new era of digital inclusion.

• Accessibility: Technologies continue to enable more people to communicate, share, and learn?despite distance and other barriers. Device trends we see now, including providing all-in-one capabilities and taking advantage of the cloud?offer huge opportunities for mobile learning. Technologies like Windows Phone, Windows Live, and Microsoft Office Web Apps offer students and teachers unprecedented freedom to communicate and collaborate anytime across multiple devices, from anywhere in the world. Skype real-time video communication opens the door to long-distance interactive learning. We expect to see a growing number of free or low-cost services that rely on this technological foundation to connect learners to teachers anywhere in the world.
Natural user interface (NUI) technologies can open even more doors. Speech and gesture recognition can improve online interaction for people unable to use keyboards, mice, and other traditional input devices. These capabilities also free users to explore creative solutions to education and training that incorporate NUI technologies, telepresence, and more. Now that Microsoft Kinect is available on PC, the opportunities are even greater with Kinect in the classroom and beyond.

The discussions we’ve had over the last few weeks have illustrated how mitigating the digital divide can inspire and empower tomorrow’s learners, workers, and innovators far beyond their geographic, economic, or cultural boundaries. These developments and others are exciting, but what’s really cool is that the storm of creativity we’re seeing now around learning and training is only a drizzle compared to what’s coming.
Jaron Lanier, of Microsoft Research, a contributor to Microsoft Kinect and one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2010,” sees unique potential in the use of avatars, according to a Microsoft story. From an education perspective, “Students could transform themselves into a molecule during a chemistry lesson, for example, or become a triangle to study geometry.” Overcoming the digital divide can tap the genius latent in a globally connected community and can open up possibilities that we can’t even imagine today.

Advances in technology will undoubtedly continue to evolve over time, and we think those changes will continue to serve as a catalyst for readying the U.S. workforce, enhancing economic opportunity, and driving innovation leadership. But as is always the case, technology is just a tool. We will need to continue to innovate to ensure that we apply it to solve U.S. problems. We’ll continue to watch, to comment, and to innovate as technology delivers new opportunities to advance U.S. goals. We’d like to hear about the possibilities that excite you. Tell us on http://twitter.com/Microsoft_Gov with the hashtag #DigitalDivide, and check back with us on our web site as the digital access story continues to evolve.
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Smith, Aaron. ”Smartphone Adoption and Usage.” Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 11, 2011.

Topics : Digital Divide

New Programs, Data Show Progress in Bridging the Digital Divide

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2012-02-13T07:00:00Z

Curt Kolcun - V.P., Microsoft U.S. Public Sector

In the past two posts in this series, we’ve touched on the challenges our nation faces in bridging the “Digital Gap” and why those problems are difficult to solve. Today, we’d like to talk about where we are seeing progress. Fortunately, we have a lot to report. The 2009 economic stimulus package made digital empowerment a national priority by allotting $7.2 billion for national broadband expansion. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently found that 68 percent of U.S. households in October 2010 used broadband Internet, an all-time high.

The centerpiece of federal broadband expansion efforts, NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), had spectacular success in 2011. BTOP’s December 2011 quarterly report and year-end review shows that from the first quarter of 2011 to the fourth, the program increased:

• New household and business broadband subscribers from 10,952 to 230,755 (up 219,803 or 2,007 percent)
• New and upgraded network miles from 4,824 to 29,191 (up 24,367 or 505 percent)
• Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) from 11 to 4,163 (up 4,152 or 37,745 percent)

New workstations in Public Computing Centers from 4,268 to 24,512 (up 20,244 or 474 percent). Not only that, the program nearly tripled its projected 2011 goals for new infrastructure and more than doubled its goals for new workstations and broadband subscribers. The number of CAIs exceeded its 2011 goal by a healthy 39 percent.
Despite these successes, cost of both computers and broadband remains a hurdle, especially for low-income rural, African-American, and Hispanic households. Government programs and public-private partnerships are emerging to address this issue. The State Broadband Initiative, another NTIA program, gave $293 million to 56 state programs, including California Connects and the Mississippi Broadband Connect Coalition.

Just last week, Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said the agency plans to expand its Lifeline program, which enables low-income Americans to buy discounted phone service. The expansion will include shifting Lifeline’s focus from making basic phone access more affordable to helping ensure more Americans can afford the broadband Internet service that is becoming essential to participating in the 21st-Century economy. According to reports, the program currently serves roughly 10 million people.

On the higher education front, last December the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) debuted MITx, a free interactive online portal to MIT’s OpenCourseWare, which itself offers free access to nearly all MIT undergraduate and graduate course materials. Another prominent program underway to help the country reap the benefits of digital inclusion is Connect to Compete, a public-private initiative launched by the FCC last November that aims to boost digital participation and literacy. The pilot program is launching this spring, with nationwide deployment scheduled for September 2012. More than a dozen cable companies will offer broadband service for $9.95 a month – roughly a quarter the regular price – for two years to eligible low-income families participating in school-lunch programs.

Microsoft is proud to contribute to Connect to Compete on multiple fronts, including:

• New $250 laptops and desktops pre-loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium and Microsoft Office
• Supplying the same software to $150 refurbished computers from Redemtech, another Connect to Compete partner
• A free online portal that offers online job skills training and assessments, as well as basic digital literacy in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel

We’re coordinating our work with Connect to Compete with our Microsoft IT Academy Program. The Microsoft IT Academy currently offers Microsoft Office training through retail stores and local K-12 schools, libraries and community colleges in 15 states and will expand nationwide over the next three years. These efforts complement our Elevate America program, as well as our Shape the Future Program’s partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative to provide one million low-income U.S. students access to job skills training and discounted software, hardware and broadband Internet access.
It’s exciting to see innovative, promising projects already underway to overcome the Digital Divide, and we know we’ve just touched the surface. Do you know of other projects that are showing promise in breaking through the Digital Divide? Chat with us on http://twitter.com/Microsoft_Gov with the hashtag #DigitalDivide.

Be sure to join us next week, when we wrap up our series. We’re going to explore some ideas for the future of digital inclusion and promising technologies that could help our nation to grow the economy and lead in innovation.

Topics :

Building the Case: Providing Access for Economic Growth

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2012-02-02T07:00:00Z

Curt Kolcun - V.P., Microsoft U.S. Public Sector

Last week we discussed the role of technology access and education in economic development and the future of U.S. innovation. This week we’d like to dive deeper into what is holding us back.

The digital divide – the huge disparity in economic and social opportunity between digital haves and have-nots – remains the largest obstacle to universal technology access and education. A November 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) found that in October 2010, 32 percent of Americans – 100 million people – didn’t have broadband Internet access at home. The consequences are staggering: Microsoft’s own research has calculated that the digital divide costs our country $32 billion a year.

The digital divide also spells big trouble for anyone trying to live in today’s digital economy. According to a 2010 IDC study, 50 percent of today’s jobs require technology skills, with that number growing to more than 77 percent in next 10 years. Yet more than 9.5 million students don’t have digital access, be it a PC or broadband access, at home.

Expanding digital access
As technology increasingly becomes a core skill, like reading and math, is it time for us to consider Internet access a basic necessity? Let’s take a look back in time. In the early 20th century, Americans gained access to a plethora of knowledge and ideas through the development of local public libraries. Looking forward, information grows by the hour and access to that information is primarily digital. Although the information itself is often free, retrieving it requires equipment and infrastructure that is beyond the means of many. It begs the question, should access to the Internet be as available as access to a public library?

Assuming we decide that digital access should be available to every citizen, whose responsibility is it to provide this access? In our historical example, government and philanthropists joined forces to invest in significant infrastructure—books and buildings—to get information to the people. How do we translate that success to the 21st century?

Paving the information highway
On the bright side, we have started the process of building our nation’s information superhighway. In 1991, Congress signed the High Performance Computing and Communication Act (HPCA) into legislation. Since then, projects like the Federal Communication Commission’s 2010 National Broadband Plan have been working towards providing broadband to the approximately 100 million people without broadband at home.

The plan, now entering its second year, was designed with policies that will ensure robust competition and maximize consumer welfare, innovation, and investment in broadband. Unfortunately, we are still well short of making affordable broadband and the computers to support it available everywhere.

It may actually make sense for government to participate in providing access. For government agencies already working with decreased budgets and increased costs, the long-term costs associated with the digital divide among low-income students and families are unavoidable. In fact, the business case for the adoption of digital inclusion is simple. By providing access to modern communication, local governments are likely to decrease costs related to social program inefficiencies, , and lost e-government benefits, while also delivering better access to services. The need for a digitally literate workforce has never been greater, as technology skills play a critical role in delivering citizen services, keeping the economy globally competitive and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure. The greater the digital divide, the harder it is for the government and industry to find qualified employees.

The impact could be staggering across areas like healthcare and education. We could potentially reduce long term healthcare costs with easier access to information, as digitally literate people are generally healthier and less likely to have preventable chronic conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. And we know that improved technology access increases the likelihood of high-school graduation, which in turn increases the chances of higher education, increased earnings and lower unemployment, all of which lead to greater tax revenue and a more productive society.

Recognizing roadblocks
Although the outcomes we want seem crystal clear, social factors are preventing us from jumping this digital divide. Among the most worrisome: According to 2011 U.S. Census data, one in five children is living in poverty. When basic survival is a priority, technology in the home is an unaffordable luxury.

Many communities have introduced technology in the classroom—even providing laptops for students. But not every community has the start-up funds to implement a technology program, laptops are of limited use in the home without digital access, and technology in schools will not reach homes without school-age children. As digital literacy becomes a prerequisite for more and more careers, are we prepared to address the need for ongoing job training and retraining? How could widespread digital access help Americans become much more prepared for the jobs of the future?

Whatever the answers are, we need to think bigger. With equal access to education and tools, all Americans can have a tremendous opportunity to adapt to the changing global economy and contribute to U.S. innovation. What more can we do as a nation to engage citizens fully in digital access and education, and what role should government play?

Next week, we’ll highlight some exciting initiatives we know of that are gaining momentum to help bridge the digital divide. In the meantime, we’d love to hear about promising solutions in your community—chat with us on http://twitter.com/Microsoft_Gov with the hashtag #DigitalDivide.

Topics :

Redefining Access to Education and Training is Crucial to Economic Recovery

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2012-01-26T07:00:00Z

Curt Kolcun - V.P., Microsoft U.S. Public Sector

The rough economic seas we’re sailing these days can make anyone queasy about our nation’s future. Longstanding concerns about U.S. competitiveness in the global economy are accelerating these concerns. For years, many international and domestic studies have found that the United States continues to lag behind other developed countries in access...

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Ballots in the Cloud: Improving Absentee Voting for Our Military Personnel

govweb@microsoft.com — 2012-01-23T07:00:00Z

Tim Solms - General Manager, Defense, at Microsoft

It’s an unfortunate irony that many U.S. military personnel stationed overseas – nearly 300,000 in 2010 – have difficulty voting in elections back home. Fortunately, a new cloud computing service is helping overcome the tyranny of distance and help them exercise the right they defend for us all.

LiveBallot - a cloud-based service that enables absentee voters to securely access their ballots from anywhere in the world – is helping military personnel, as well as citizens living overseas, efficiently access their Presidential ballots online for the first time in history. Over 1,200 Florida residents from 40 counties have already used LiveBallot to access ballots to vote in the State’s Republican Presidential Primary, which takes place January 31st. And starting last Friday, all Virginia residents living overseas gained access to their ballots online as well.

Created by Democracy Live, LiveBallot is hosted and delivered via Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud platform. Users can fill out ballots online and return them by email, snail mail or fax. LiveBallot aims to remove a longstanding hurdle for all Americans living overseas: ensuring their votes get counted with everyone else’s. No one is precisely sure how many Americans live in other countries. The 2010 U.S. Census estimated more than 1 million, while the U.S. State Department estimated more than 5.2 million in 2009. Whatever the total number is, apparently hardly any of them vote: The nonprofit Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) found that barely 262,000 people (6.8 percent) of an estimated 4 million overseas civilians participated in the 2008 election. Even that small turnout, however, could easily swing an election, especially this year. The 2012 Republican presidential primaries have already shown that every vote will matter in this election, with a relatively small number of votes – sometimes dozens or fewer – deciding major outcomes.

While Americans overseas have many reasons for not voting, OVF’s research found that the inability to return ballots in time was the most common obstacle would-be voters encounter. Many expats that request ballots either don’t receive them or receive them too late to make filing deadlines, OVF said. By eliminating time spent waiting for a ballot to arrive, LiveBallot helps voters respond quickly enough to meet submission deadlines.

LiveBallot has the distinction of enabling the first vote cast in the 2012 Republican primaries, from a Florida resident living in Thailand. Votes have already come in from six continents. In addition to Virginia and Florida, California is launching LiveBallot in April before its statewide primary in June. What’s more, the technology doesn’t just help overseas, it helps overcome accessibility hurdles stateside, too. Washington State is using it to provide absentee ballots to voters with disabilities this election cycle.

Thanks to LiveBallot, 2012 will be the year that cloud computing increased access and efficiency on behalf of our democracy.

Topics : Cloud Computing

Transform Agency Communications While Saving Money

govweb@microsoft.com — 2012-01-19T07:00:00Z

Dean Iacovelli - Director for Collaboration Solutions, Microsoft State and Local Government

The federal belt-tightening promised for 2012 will start shortly, meaning government agencies are already scrambling to find ways to squeeze the most from existing IT investments while meeting mandates to move to cloud and mobile computing. Decreased funding for federal IT will force federal employees,...

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Meet the Big Data Warehouse

govweb@microsoft.com — 2012-01-17T07:00:00Z

Jack Bradham - Data Warehousing Technologist, Microsoft

Take your pick of memorable movies – action, romance, comedy, whatever – and you’ll often find that an “opposites attract/odd couple” setup drives the story. Different traits clash to provoke interesting situations and insights, and character typically end up cooperating to solve problems neither partner could solve alone. This odd couple dynamic is evolving between big data and the traditional enterprise data warehousing federal agencies use for business intelligence.

Gartner Research’s December 2011 report on synergizing big data with traditional data warehousing introduced a new acronym federal agencies should remember: BDW, or big data warehouse. BDW handles gargantuan amounts of unstructured data in myriad formats, with a focus on agility and experimentation to find hidden insights. It contrasts with the traditional enterprise data warehouse, or EDW, which relies upon structured data and standardized, quantitative metrics to ensure high-quality results.

The Gartner report emphasizes three primary ways organizations can blend BDW and EDW to create superior analytical capabilities:

1. Organizations can store all the data they collect and use BDW to find relevant trends and hidden insights

2. EDW provides the existing identifier data and hierarchies that help make BDW text mining more accurate

3. Users can present BDW-enhanced data through the EDW they already know how to use

Gartner’s suggested description of this union – “Chaos and Diversity (of BDW) meets Control and Consistency (of EDW)” – illustrates the yin and yang at play here. In this odd couple, BDW is the messy person, the loose cannon, the big-picture visionary; EDW is the neatnik, the by-the-book person, the detail lover crossing t’s and dotting i’s.

BDW, EDW and how best to use them are vitally important to federal agencies. The amount of federal data will only continue to grow, meaning EDW will become increasingly ill-equipped to effectively analyze and synthesize it. That’s because EDW requires sampling and normalization of data to fit structured formats, which by definition require ignoring most data and hoping the samples accurately reflect the data as a whole. As data sets grow larger, EDW relies on a smaller percentage of the data to produce results. That fact can lead to many problems, including missing important data, drawing the wrong conclusions and having a lot of data essentially go to waste.

That’s where BDW’s strengths come in. BDW uses big data capabilities to boil the ocean, as it were, and use ALL data collected. Garnering additional insight without laborious data sampling and modeling is crucial to saving time and money. In this era of fiscal austerity, better use of data also is imperative to get the most out of both existing IT assets and to justify new IT investments.

The Gartner report is a fascinating read and raises many more interesting points. You can also learn more about Microsoft’s own Big Data Solution, and integration into PDW which we’ve built around Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and are making available as a cloud-based service for Windows Azure.

Topics : Big Data

Federal Cloud Acquisition: A Square Peg in a Round Hole?

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2011-12-20T07:00:00Z

Susie Adams - Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Federal

Cloud computing is approaching a tipping point in government. A combination of decreasing budgets and government mandates has most agencies focused on data center consolidation, infrastructure cost savings and collaboration on intra and inter agency shared services. Security and privacy are often cited as the biggest barriers to cloud adoption, particularly across government, but if cloud computing is going to officially “tip” in 2012, there’s another major challenge to overcome: procurement.

Most agencies will eventually move their email and collaboration solutions in the community or private cloud and hope to take advantage of the pay for what you use consumption-based pricing models. In the Defense and Intel communities, we’ll see more private clouds, but those organizations will still pay by the drink – that is, monthly. That ability to pay as you go – say serving 1,000 email users one month but only 800 the next - is one of cloud’s key appeals and potentially one of its biggest challenges depending on the workload (IaaS, Paas, Saas) and the ability for the agency to predict its monthly costs.

Acquisition policies and processes don’t quite fit the new cloud paradigm, which Federal Computer Week found in an extremely perceptive article on the current state of cloud procurement. The current budget process and funding models in place today in the Federal government and traditional “everything but the kitchen sink ” 5 year RFPs used to acquire and manage hardware and software need to become innovative contract vehicles not “traditional vehicles – with a sprinkle of cloud” that enable agencies to easily procure services and adjust as the industry evolves. Allowing agencies the flexibility to evaluate new services and not miss out on the innovation that occurs during years 2, 3rd and 4th years of a contact will be critical and in turn offer agencies more choice, which leads to more competition and openness and lower costs – all good things for agencies.

The changes needed to quickly and effectively deploy cloud technology are the biggest disruption to federal acquisition in a generation, for both agencies and vendors alike. It’s so game-changing, it’s ridiculous – which will make overcoming that inertia that much harder. But rapid change is essential because the cost savings and functionality benefits are too important. We’re facing a host of new challenges now and we’re going to have to learn as we go. We’re working on the terms and conditions, and eventually consistent norms, best practices and rules will evolve. Until then, we have to iron out best practices around many key issues, from data portability to data protection to budgeting.

Agencies will have to invest in training that familiarizes acquisition personnel with cloud computing, managed services and the softer business skills those new areas require. Vendors must be flexible, as some agencies are ready to go to a consumption-based model and some aren’t.

Enabling federal acquisition to accommodate the cloud is a challenge but also marks an important milestone: Cloud computing is becoming a dominant enough force to change laws and purchasing patterns. We’re seeing the same phenomenon happen in cloud security with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). By outlining required capabilities for security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and services, FedRAMP is trying to normalize security just like we’re trying to normalize the acquisition process. In a way, the means to acquire and protect cloud investments are coming of age at the same time.

Topics : Cloud Computing

A Cyber Criminal’s Letter to Santa

govweb@microsoft.com — 2011-12-15T07:00:00Z

Pat Arnold - General Manager, Cybersecurity, Microsoft Services

I’ve been in the cybersecurity field long enough to see some pretty disturbing things, but the letter below left me speechless. We knew Cyber criminals would stop at nothing to gain access to sensitive and valuable private information, but asking Santa for help? That’s not right. Luckily Kris Kringle is a tireless IT privacy and...

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USO Brings the Power of Kinect to Soldiers and their Families

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2011-12-12T07:00:00Z

Curt Kolcun - V.P., Microsoft U.S. Public Sector

Those of us in government IT are always thinking about how to make agencies more efficient, more cost-effective, and more responsive - but technology also has the power to bring us together. The holidays are a great time to think about all of the way technology makes our lives more enjoyable. It’s with this in mind that we’re so happy to expand our partnership with the United Services Organization (USO) Worldwide to help lift the spirits of America’s troops and their families at home and abroad.

The USO’s newest facility opened at Fort Campbell, Kentucky last week, and this week we’re happy to announce we’re donating 380 Kinect-equipped Xbox 360 Console Bundles to more than 42 USO facilities worldwide. Those facilities provide essential morale-boosting services that support more than 5 million troops and military families. What’s cool about these donations is that they do more than offer soldiers and their families the chance to unwind with some fun games. We’re offering some brand-new capabilities this year, too. For example, 20 USO facilities in the United States, Europe and Japan will use Kinect Video Chat to enable troops to have live conversations with loved ones anywhere in the world.

What’s more, U.S. soldiers are starting to see the benefits of the explosion of creativity we’ve seen since releasing the Kinect Software Development Kit. Four Wounded Warrior Facilities in Afghanistan will use Kinect in rehabilitative programs in forward bases where medical equipment is scarce. New Kinect applications will help medical staff determine when troops who have suffered from brain injuries, such as concussions, are able to go back into the field. The USO will work with the local groups to develop an analysis of the results from using Kinect as a tool for cognitive and memory reinforcement.

This cool video shows how Kinect is moving from simply a game interface to a means to improve lives through expanded capabilities in medicine and other disciplines. The two most relevant clips are at :33, where a surgeon reviews different x-rays with the wave of a still-gloved (and sterile) hand, without leaving the operating room; and :48, where a kid plays a game as part of physical therapy.

On top of these new offerings, we’re expanding our participation in existing programs. Through our USO partnership, Xbox 360 has now joined Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 3 as a key partner and platform for the Pro vs. GI Joe program, which enables troops to play live against family members, friends, professional athletes and celebrities across the world.

We’re sending games and consoles to cheer up troops stationed in remote parts of Afghanistan as part of annual “Christmas Convoys.” We’re also sending 100 USO2GO kits, which deliver the USO’s most popular services to troops in remote and restricted areas. Beyond gaming equipment, the kits include everything from beanbag chairs, snacks, coffee and toiletries to phone cards, DVDs, laptops, sports and musical equipment and art supplies – little luxuries that are emotional necessities to our troops stationed far from home.

Topics : Veterans, Kinect, USO

Survey Results Show Remote Workers Want the Right Telework Tech

GovWeb@microsoft.com — 2011-12-05T07:00:00Z

Kent Cunningham - Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Federal, Civilian and Healthcare

The winter holidays are here, but so is that winter weather. The Northeast is still reeling from the October storm that closed down some roads, businesses and schools for over a week. Folks in the D.C. area can relate, living through the “snowpocalypse” of 2010. The White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has responded by issuing its new heavy snow policy for federal workers, which includes updated processes on alerting federal workers if government offices are closed, or open with an option for telework.

The fact that OPM included a telework provision reflects an evolution in the way we all think about work. It’s less about where you are, and more about what you’re doing. Agency missions don’t stop just because weather keeps employees from reaching the office, and the ability to maintain essential capabilities is critical. Looming budget cuts means the federal government can’t afford to spend $100 million a pop for snow days, and telework policies help agencies maintain productivity when workers are out of the office because of either personal choice, or business necessity.

To get a better sense of how government workers view telework today, Microsoft conducted a survey of more than 250 folks working in the government sector (agencies, contractors and non-profits), more than half of whom work at the federal level. The Future of Government Work survey results revealed some interesting findings:

•   Over two-thirds work remotely at least some of the time
•   Over 30 percent of teleworkers indicated that their job satisfaction and productivity have increased since telework adoption
•   Of those that don’t telework, nearly half reported they would strongly consider a career move if a comparable opportunity included a telework policy

Despite the strong support for telework, respondents did identify some challenges:

•   Nearly 1 in 3 said telework gets in the way of team collaboration
•   Collaboration concerns included not knowing the best way to reach colleagues, the inability to access key documents, and difficulty scheduling and conducting meetings

In today’s modern workforce, people expect the option to work remotely, but also want the productivity and collaboration tools that make telework efficient; not cumbersome. To help support remote work, Microsoft Office 365 offers enterprise-grade email, shared documents, instant messaging, and video and web conferencing on a scalable, flexible, cloud-based platform. With the right tools, everyone can be productive remotely, even when the weather (or the Beltway) doesn’t cooperate.

Topics : Telework, Federal Government