Use the tools you know and the software you trust

What is the idea?

Although there have been many posts with great ideas trying to define transparency and ideas on how to display and present data on recovery.gov, there needs to be more discussion on the significant problem in addressing the quality, source, and cost of the data that will be collected and accessible.

ARRA is pushing an unprecedented amount of funding, in an exceptionally accelerated pace into our government bureaucracies – federal, state, local, and educational institutions are facing an enormous challenge in:

1.       Identifying the funding source (and requirements)

2.       Processing funds (either as a grantee, grantor, or both)

3.       Managing funded and proposed projects from start to finish

4.       Creating all mandatory program and funding reports         

5.       Defining ‘transparency’ and what data to collect

This isn’t really anything new. Governments at all levels have been processing different funding streams for a long time, and will be after ARRA dollars are spent.  What is unique at this moment in time is the scale of and requirement for creating a single view into all related ‘stimulus’ monies.  These challenges are magnified by the lack of definition of ‘transparency’ combined with growing citizen’s expectations.

For example, a report from the State of Minnesota is the best summary of the ‘find the money’ challenge I have seen to date - http://www.mmb.state.mn.us/doc/citizen/summary.pdf - hundreds of funding sources to find and track – interesting to note the summary of the Federal legislation is coming from a State, and unfortunately every State is spending energy doing the same analysis.

The dialog within these pages itself clearly exemplifies the diversity of perception in what defines ‘transparency’.

Why is it important?

So why is the quality and sourcing of data so important?

Although ARRA provides much needed funding for Federal, State and Education related programs it does not specifically provide assistance to help the government agencies in charge of managing and reporting on the use of those funds with the tools to help them with this process and to put those dollars to work quickly.

While the need to report on how federal and state funds are being applied is not new, the challenge to manage the multiple reporting and transparency requirements, where the entities need to report back, in what format, and how do they ultimately make this information open to the public, is affecting all levels of government today.

If recovery.gov is going to be successful in the promise of delivering unprecedented access to information – the promise that data will be gathered and organized in ways never seen before - the participants of ARRA funding need help in collecting quality data.  They need tools to help them so that ‘finding the money source’ and ‘collecting the data’ are not the primary job.  Tools that help them effectively move funds through the system and get resources where they are needed.

The answer lies in taking advantage of platform solutions that are based on easy to use tools and technologies that these organizations use (and likely own already) today, so government agencies can quickly mobilize and put stimulus dollars to work, with confidence they will be able to comply with evolving reporting requirements and ultimately exceed citizen’s expectations for transparency.

We have spent a lot of time talking to our customers and they have asked us for “easy to use” tools that can help them capture data at all points in a process, track funded programs with different objectives, monitor progress with varying timelines, and provide intuitive views of the data for different audiences.  We have been asked for a answer that can support known key performance indicators and government-backed performance metrics, automated workflow, and comprehensive analysis across consolidated data sources – but flexible enough to quickly accommodate future requirements.

To that end, Microsoft made a commitment to help customers by creating a solution that can meet these objectives.  We worked closely with numerous partners and customers across the country and in the spirit of economic recovery created a set of solution accelerators that, with limited resource and effort, are available for customers and partners to implement. 

The Microsoft Stimulus360 solution is now available as templates to download directly, for partners to implement, or hosting providers to deliver.  It will help government organizations and educational institutions to quickly mobilize and track federal funding sources, requirements, and grant submission processes. It manages incoming resources, facilitates downstream funding requests, tracks funded projects, and tracks allocated resources. The solution provides an effective means of compiling results, satisfying reporting requirements, and publishing content to citizens.

Governments can use the Microsoft Stimulus360 solution immediately to:

·         Manage and track all ARRA fund sources

·         Manage and track all ARRA funded projects within your jurisdiction

·         Integrate with your existing financial, grant, and project systems to provide a central ARRA repository

·         Produce all mandatory ARRA reports and progress

·         Provide business intelligence to visual data, processes, and goals with scorecards and geospatial analysis

·         Provide a central source for data, documents, and reports

·         Search documents and data internally and ARRA sites externally

·         Provide full auditing of all data out of the box to track any changes to the data

Federal, State and local governments that deploy the Microsoft Stimulus360 solution benefit from:

·         Automatic capture of actions and events to facilitate quick, informed decisions and to improve transparency.

·         Integration with familiar applications including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Office Outlook and Microsoft Office Excel, to reduce the learning curve.

·         Geospatial features that link data and mapping capabilities, providing the visual component that allows our elected officials, and the public to see the impact that Recovery efforts are having at the national, state, and smallest of local level.

Many agencies that currently use Microsoft applications will find that most of the pieces needed may already be in use, which could lead to lower training cost and quicker adoption rates.  Microsoft Stimulus360 can be deployed on-premise, or government customers can choose to take advantage of hosted options to meet fluctuating demand and to help minimize deployment costs. The Stimulus360 solution does not require extensive consultant engagement or services contracts to deploy. Federal, State and local governments and their tax-paying citizens are counting on a rapid and positive impact of the federal stimulus program. The right technology can help ARRA participants manage the funds appropriately to create needed jobs and to contribute to the national economic recovery – and the effort will provide useful solutions beyond the current ARRA cycle.  This will drive results, and in turn will dramatically improve the quality of information available on recovery.gov.  This is not a magic bullet, not the right answer for everyone, and still requires hard work.

Technology does not solve problems, people do.

Use the tools you know and the software you trust.

For more information see:  http://www.microsoft.com/government/stimulus360/