This new one stop portal shows Mayor Menino’s commitment to supporting business development in Boston and is a good model for other cities to embrace.

The Boston Business Hub provides tools:

• Connect with the right people in City Hall to answer your questions and:
  • Guarantee a response within two business days;
  • Provide an inquiry number, the name of the person who will respond, and their contact information; and
  • Track the status and history of your inquiry.
• Create a permitting and licensing checklist for your business needs, including:
  • Details and links to the relevant departments; and
  • Downloadable application forms and a personalized checklist that you can save or email.
• Compile resources based on business type and location.

As a Salesforce AppExhange for Government partner, BasicGov’s permitting and licensing modules are easily added to streamline those processes for government staff and businesses.

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced SpringCM’s win as one of 28 CODiE Award winners in business software categories.

• SpringCM recently introduced SpringCM Mobile – the most powerful mobile content app available for iPad, iPhone and Android – allowing business people to securely share content and work together anytime, anywhere, from virtually any mobile device.   Earlier this year, SpringCM introduced Open Cloud Connector, an easy to implement and powerful way to put content to work in virtually any web application or portal a business wants.

• SpringCM colloborates with us / BasicGov to provide a seamless and paperless plan review process for public sector agencies. Both SpringCM and BasicGov provide their solutions via the Force.com platform, by SalesForce.com.

Salesforce announced today a new AppExchange for Government that provides a central cloud app marketplace where government agencies can drive their social transformations and reduce costs by quickly identifying applications to meet their needs.  AppExchange for Government is a one-stop shop for everything from help desks and asset management, to program and project management, to constituent relations and more. Launching with more than 60 apps selected specifically for government and public sector agencies, AppExchange for Government includes apps like:

• BasicGov: BasicGov is a reliable, secure application built on Force.com that allows cities, counties, state governments and government agencies to streamline permitting and inspections, code enforcement, planning, licensing and citizen access.
  [click to BasicGov in AppExchange for Government]
• DocuSign: DocuSign is a leading eSignature application built on Force.com that helps organizations streamline workflows to accelerate transactions, reduce costs, and delight constituents with the fastest way to send, sign, track, and store documents in the cloud.
• SchoolForce: SchoolForce includes essential Student Information System (SIS) modules such as attendance, behavior, homework, student records and grade book, as well as collaboration and document management – all of which can all be shared with parents and students via a Web portal. SchoolForce powers data driven improvements in student outcomes and represents a significant advancement in the measurement of K-12 student, teacher and school performance by tapping the power of cloud technologies and advanced analytics.

As quoted by Dan Burton, the vice president of global public policy at Salesforce –in TechTarget article …

Government Cloud would allow, for instance, the mayor of a city to interact in a social network with citizens, Burton said. Or, for example, a municipal employee could answer tweets asking questions about a construction project, by posting the building permit as a response with an app called BasicGov.

More related articles:

• http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/salesforce-moves-into-the-government-cloud-and-social/
• http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/Salesforcecom-Reaches-for-Bigger-Slice-of-Government-Cloud-Pie-74950.html
• http://gcn.com/articles/2012/04/25/salesforce-government-cloud-app-exchange.aspx

Paul Strobeck, IT Manager for a local government in the San Francisco Bay Area and a contributor writer for TechRepublic, recently wrote an article about tablets in local government and highlighted many interesting and relevant factors in this transition.

• Increased Productivity – local governments that support tablets recognize that it adds to productivity by allowing staff access to access to their work systems in the office or remotely in the  field, at remote sites, or at home.
• Bring Your own Device (BYOD) movement – the iPad has put pressure on organizations, both private and government sector, to allow staff to BYOD for increased work efficiency but this also adds new IT challenges.
• Mobile IT strategy needed – “For tablets to be successful in our enterprise environment, we need to grow our skill sets and discover solutions to new issues” such as policies, security standards, enterprise mobility strategy, and application roadmaps.

Mobile computing is also fueling cloud computing

Mobile apps are also driving demand for cloud services on the back end, such as app stores, databases, and storage (source).

Organizations that have security figured out for cloud computing have the advantage for adding in more mobile computing.

It is encouraging to see local government IT professionals like Paul Strobeck with their embrace change attitude “In the local government, we try to follow what others are doing in the private sector with the mounting issues that tablets have introduced. We do our best to attend conferences and trainings to seek out the evolving policies and advice to support and manage tablets. We’ve discovered that many enterprises are going through the same wave of transition.”

Be on the lookout for news form BasicGov in the coming months for how we are responding to the needs for a mobile workforce in government.

As Jeff James says in his Cloud Computing Blog, “Yet another battle has taken place in the ongoing war between Microsoft and Google over cloud-based office applications, with this latest round going decisively to Google.”

The State of Colorado is moving its 26,000 state employees to Google Apps for Government to consolidate employee email and calendaring into one system from 15 separate mail systems.

Reduced Cost

In the State of Colorado’s announcement they say that the cost will be reduced by half with Google apps …

• The cost to maintain current  on-premise email for state employees is approximately $5.2 million annually. The move to Google Apps for Government will reduce that amount by nearly half. Google’s cloud-based system will allow the state to pay only for what technology is used and reduce maintenance costs. This will allow the state to better plan and budget for email and calendaring services and more quickly adapt to changing demands from individual agencies.

State Governments selecting Google Apps

Many State Governments choosing Cloud-based Google apps

Colorado is not the first state to migrate to Google Apps for Government. Wyoming, Utah and Maryland have already made the transition. In Colorado, Google Apps for Government is being used by Larimer
County, Eagle County, Colorado State University, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Douglas County School District and Jeffco Public Schools.

• Read more about State Government and Google apps case studies here.