BasicGov / BLOG

There was a recent article in Government Technology about how the states of Utah and Michigan are building cloud infrastructure with plans to package it for use by cities, towns and schools.  In Utah, the plan is to provide a “hybrid cloud” which will be composed of a mix of hosted state services and commercially provided offerings delivered through a state run service catalog.

The state of Utah is banking on local governments being more comfortable putting their data in a cloud if they know the cloud is owned by an organization with similar privacy concerns.   The state of Michigan wised to go one step further and provide a nation wide public-sector cloud that will hopefully help alleviate the economic pain in that state coming from declines in domestic auto manufacturing and other factors.

This creates some very interesting market dynamics.  Utah may end up competing with Vivek Kundra’s cloud computing initiative and www.apps.gov and Michigan will end up competing with Force.com, Amazon, Google and other major cloud providers.

So what happens if the city of Detroit wants to move over to Gmail like Los Angeles did?

Will state run cloud computing be operated for profit?

It’s going to be an interesting 2010.

You may have heard about the new Citizen Portal, and are wondering what it would take to implement this for your city.  If you are already using BasicGov’s other modules, then this is simply an add-on to your existing system.  Our Implementation Team works with you to determine what kind of requests you would like to receive online: Permits and Inspection Requests, Complaints, Planning Applications, and/or License Applications.  We configure the Portal to show this information, and we configure the Portal with your city logo, header information, and messages.  We then review the configured Portal with you, to make sure it captures the information you want your citizens to see.

This is a fast and easy process, and when it is done, we work with you to develop a rollout plan that works for your city.  You may choose to roll out the Portal to a few developers or citizens, before rolling out the Portal to your full user community. Or you may decide to roll it out immediately to the full user community.  In either case, we work with you to complete the implementation process, train your users on how to review the Portal information in BasicGov, and support you as your citizens begin using the Portal.

We’ll update our community as we roll out Citizen Portals including best practices and tips.  Watch for more information.