A pair of recent announcements put Minnesota at the forefront of digital government.
A
survey by the Center for Digital Government gave Minnesota's state government a 'B+' grade and said it was "trending up" when it comes to using digital technology to better serve citizens and streamline operations..
Meanwhile, the state's Office of Enterprise Technology
announced last week that Minnesota is the first state to move its collaboration and communications software into a
cloud computing environment. (That means the applications are stored online rather than in servers owned by the state.)
The Center for Digital Government report highlighted Minnesota's innovation in the areas of finance and administration and energy and transportation. Only four states received a grade higher than Minnesota's.
An example of the state's recent successes, says OEM spokeswoman Cathy de Moll, was consolidating all state agencies into one centralized e-mail system. Innovations like this let the state "put our attention and dollars toward the kinds of applications that are directly related to citizen services," she says.
The announcement came two days after the state announced a first-of-its-kind cloud computing arrangement with Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite.
The move means the state no longer has to maintain its own servers and hardware for e-mail, file-sharing and other collaboration and communications programs. Instead, it leases those resources from Microsoft, which keeps the state's data in a private cloud environment.
Source: Cathy de Moll, State of Minnesota
Writer:
Dan Haugen