Pick-and-choose model 'powerful,' B.C. CIO says

Over 100 public sector organizations, including school districts, health authorities, crown corporations, agencies and municipalities have signed up for the same Microsoft toolset under an umbrella agreement between the Province of British Columbia and Microsoft Corp.

"Well in excess of 100,000 desktops are covered by that," said Dave Nikolejsin, CIO of B.C. Government in a virtual roundtable discussion on how government organizations in Canada are using innovation and technology to cut costs and improve services to citizens.

B.C. entered the broad Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft Corp. for advanced communication and collaboration toolsets in March 2009.

The intention was to make a commitment to a toolset that would be standardized across the broad enterprise of B.C. public service, find a way to do this cost effectively and accomplish all the business outcomes at the same time, explained Nikolejsin.

"The results have been pretty amazing," he said. "We went from a complete ad hoc environment where everyone was doing their own thing to pretty much most of the broader public sector in British Columbia."

The agreement includes full licensed versions of Office 2007, Office Communications Server, Groove and SharePoint (MOSS). MS Exchange was not included in the package. The toolset is coupled with the broad distribution of tablet PCs equipped with Wi-Fi and 3G wireless, noted Nikolejsin.

"The other thing we did which was very transformative and very revolutionary is we don't meter it out ... in the old days, we paid for everything a la carte," he said.

As we refresh, everyone gets the full toolset, whether they use it or not, which allows end users to make the decision over what to use, when to use it and how to use it, he explained. The approach is proving "an incredibly powerful business model," said Nikoljesin.

Allowing employees to pick and choose from a package of tools is opening new avenues for innovation and a lot of workflow redesign, according to Nikolejsin. Employees are finding ways to transform their own work using a rich set of tools, which isn't innovation designed at the Office of the CIO or IT headquarters, but innovation coming from the front line, he pointed out.

Nikolejsin pointed out success with Groove, which allows users to collaborate outside their organizational boundaries and without extensive aid from IT. The online collaboration tool also provides a more secure method of sharing than faxing or e-mailing, which are methods employees will use to get around firewall obstacles, he explained.

"We use a lot SharePoint like other organizations do and have had an extensive SharePoint infrastructure for quite some time, but one of the problems with doing that type of collaboration is the IT group is in the middle. You have to have someone to configure it and set it up ... it takes time," he said.

OneNote is proving valuable for tablet use, he noted, and contributes to paper reduction. "It's also searchable so people can organize themselves much better and because it's well linked to things like Exchange and the mail system, it's a fantastic way to link the notes you want to take at a meeting to the meeting event itself," he said.