The modern workplace is not only limited to private organizations these days, but government agencies are also opting out for smart and effective solutions to increase their productivity and decrease errors. Recently, The General Services Administration and the Defense Department awarded a $7.6 billion DEOS contract to General Dynamics IT. Under the contract, the Pentagon will implement a full suite of Office 365 to streamline and increase the efficiency of their business processes.

SharePoint and Office 365 is an optimum solution for government agencies, they can use it for building applications, as a document, project, and content management solution. Its capabilities are limitless, and if you feel that it lacks in certain areas, then you can easily integrate dedicated business solutions to your out of the box SharePoint. In this article, we'll review why SharePoint and Office 365 are a powerful development platform for the federal government. 

Attractive and easy-to-use portals

Generally, government portals are not known for their user-friendliness and visual appeal, but government agencies can remedy that by creating SharePoint based portals. SharePoint portal building capabilities enable local, state, and federal government agencies to create easy-to-use and attractive portals. US Department of Treasury, Washington State, Bellingham, WA are a few examples of SharePoint based portals; there are several others. These portals offer a full suite of features along with appealing graphics, so people can enjoy these portals and get the information they need.

Automation

City, state, and federal government agencies have to process a substantial amount of data daily. From demographic data to traffic data, government agencies have to process it all, and even after taking up a substantial amount of time and resources, manual processing is still very inefficient.

Government agencies can leverage SharePoint to create automated processes and reduce their chances of error, save time, reduce costs, and increase productivity. SharePoint and Office 365 can automatically capture data for your teams, which they can easily analyze and process according to the requirement of the workflows. Team members can also create dashboards in real-time with the captured data; this process is really helpful for creating reports. When you add an image into the document library, SharePoint automatically scans it and adds meta-tags and geo-location to support the search feature.

Cost-Effectiveness

Government agencies have to work within an allocated budget; that's why they require solutions that are efficient and cost-effective at the same. SharePoint and Office 365 are the most cost-effective solution available in the market in terms of functionality when compared with other solutions. Regardless of the size of the government agency, they can make their business processes more efficient at a cost-effective rate. Santa Clara County is a great example of government agencies implementing SharePoint and Office 365; with 15,000 employees, they gradually implemented the solution starting with email and then added other Office applications such as Word and Excel.

Office 365 offers an extensive set of services, but if officials think that they don't require a complete business solution, then they can choose SharePoint. It is flexible and offers a vast set of features that are more than capable of meeting the needs of an organization.

Security

Government agencies often work with sensitive information that's why security is a paramount concern for them. And due to previous security breaches and malware attacks, they may be reluctant to implement a digital solution. But by implementing SharePoint, they can easily tackle the security issue; when you upload a file in the document library, SharePoint automatically scans it to make sure that it does not contain any malware. You can also assign sharing, reading, editing privileges according to your need and can even limit access to specific IP addresses. SharePoint also features Virtual Identity Server, which simplifies identity management. It allows you to set up one-time permissions and security settings that automatically update when data is changed.

Third-Party Integration

If a government agency considers that they need a more specialized solution for their business processes, they can easily integrate 3^rd party solutions to their SharePoint and increase its capabilities. 3^rd party GSA and Microsoft approved solutions such as Infowise's ULTIMATEforms can be a great addition to your out-of-the-box SharePoint environment. Here are a few ways the federal government can use their SharePoint after integrating a 3^rd party solution.

• Customer Relationship Management
• Enterprise Resource Planning
• Enterprise Contact Management
• Document Management System
• Project Management System
• Business Intelligence
• Information Technology Service Management

Infowise for Federal Government

"We have been servicing various public sectors for several years, being listed as a vetted and approved GSA (General Services Administration) vendor only helps us to further focus our products for US government clients. We offer advanced and efficient collaboration solutions in an era where the digital workplace is becoming more and more necessary."

—Avi Pagi, Infowise Business Development and Partnership

Infowise Solutions was recently awarded an IT schedule 70 contract and is now listed as an approved vendor by the GSA. By using our flagship solution, ULTIMATEforms, government agencies can increase the capabilities of their SharePoint. ULTIMATE forms provide several features including;

• Advanced Forms
• Reports and KPIs
• Integration
• Business Process Automation
• Approval Workflows

Federal government agencies can leverage their SharePoint to bring efficiency to the following areas. 

• Recruitment, Employee management system
• Expense reimbursement
• Compliance
• Reservation
• Quote Generator
• Project Management Solution
• Help Desk Solution, and much more

For more information about ULTIMATEforms and our GSA partnership, then feel free Avi Pagi, Infowise Business Development and Partnership at apagi@infowisesolutions.com