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.

The common functionality of the request involves the registration of the property by the bank with the city, with re-registration occurring every six months or a year.  During the period, the bank managed property must keep the building or home up to code.  If there are violations against the property the bank must bring the property into compliance or face additional fees, and or/higher re-registration fees.

The common challenge for these cities is the need for a higher-level view of all the properties to determine which banks are good and/or bad at keeping abandoned buildings in compliance upon registration so the city can be proactive in dealing with them at registration.

The additional challenge is doing is quickly, and at a low-cost.

The solution is straight forward, even if we are expected to import your parcel data.  Setup can be as quick as three weeks if this is all that is needed to start with, and the ongoing cost is a low monthly fee per user.

The end solution can be called any number of things:

• Foreclosure Management Software
• Abandoned Buildings Tracking Software
• Foreclosure Compliance and Registration Tracking

Whatever it is, we can get you up and running quickly so you can start managing the banks and keeping citizens happy that their neighborhood property values don’t go down.

Kundra was the first United States chief information officer where led the  adoption of  cloud computing technologies and open government.  As US government CIO, Kundra authored the groundbreaking Cloud-First policy, which is a model for government IT organizations for increasing efficiencies with less resources.

Kundra will be the keynote speaker at the Data Center World conference scheduled for March 18-22 at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. In his keynote he’ll “share his experience leading change across the world’s largest consumer of information technology—the U.S. government—and the lessons every organization can use when leading a transformation in a change-averse environment.”