Crossing the Citizen Chasm: Fast Track Citizen Engagement at the Speed of Now

I recently wrote an article for SharePoint Pro Magazine discussing citizen engagement and the influence technology has on the relationship between government agencies and their constituents. The barriers between governments and citizens are eroding thanks to a combination of technology and a thirst for information. At least, they should be – but that’s unfortunately not always the case. Citizens expect more from government – more information, access, and input. They’re used to interacting with businesses in the private sector – where interaction is the rule, not the exception – and are translating this to government. They want to interact with government, but traditional forms of communication – which many governments still depend on as part of legacy IT systems – make this difficult. In the article, I discuss the different ways governments can start to include technology into their community outreach and relationship management. These examples include:

• Provide mobile-enabled citizen and government engagement to report, address, and track citizens’ needs. Organizations can leverage Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for citizen case management, such as e311 Citizen Services solutions.
• Empower governments to provide real-time visibility and accountability for public project initiatives that have a high impact on citizens. Technologies like SharePoint, Project Server, and Yammer can provide effective and relevant Project Transparency solutions.
• Provide a response to social media sentiment analysis and allow for engagement in virtual town hall meetings through mobile, real-time, and on-demand capabilities by taking advantage of Microsoft Social Listening, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, and Microsoft Azure media streaming to provide a Town Hall solution.
• Enable field inspections with real-time assignments, status, history, checklist, and knowledge base all delivered on mobile devices. Leverage Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Biztalk, and Azure to deploy a mobile workforce.

To read more about how governments can take full advantage of what technology has to offer the public sector, please visit SharePoint Pro Magazine. To learn how AvePoint can help deliver powerful collaboration and information management platforms through intuitive and mobile-friendly interfaces, delivering the satisfaction citizens deserve, please visit our website.