Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study
Italian Regional Government Maximises Efficiency with New Intranet Portal
“We used to work with sheets of paper or else send endless e-mails to distribute documentation. File sharing is now secure as all data is kept in a single, centralised location. As a result, there is much stronger sense of teamwork throughout the organisation.”
Gianluigi Cogo, IT System Manager, Veneto Region
The Italian region of Veneto has increased local government efficiency by deploying a new information sharing and communication intranet with Microsoft® technology. Staff have an easy-to-use Web portal that includes the latest instant messaging and integrated communication tools. Used by 3,000 employees, the change has resulted in better document sharing and the greater involvement of network users through, for example, wiki software and image posting.
Business Needs
Veneto, in northern Italy, is one of the country’s largest regions. It has a population of more than 4 million and a thriving manufacturing trade—particularly in the chemical industries. Despite its size, Veneto has one of Italy’s lowest public sector employment ratios per head of population. The regional government has 3,500 civil servants—fewer than five for every 1,000 citizens. To help maintain its high standard of public service despite its limited resources, Veneto Region is keen to adopt innovative policies to improve efficiency and officer capacity. One of the most successful projects is the creation of a regional intranet that encourages closer internal collaboration, data sharing, and faster decision making. It also helps the authority’s officers get involved in several different business
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Veneto Region
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www.regione.veneto.it
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100—5,000
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Italy
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Government—Local
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Veneto is one of Italy’s largest regions, with 4.7 million citizens. The regional government, with 70 separate offices, comprises 3,500 employees and 11 secretariats.
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Microsoft Office
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Microsoft Office Communicator 2005
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Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003
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Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003
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Technologies
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Active Directory
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Windows SharePoint Services For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies
processes. “The previous version of the regional intranet basically used Internet technologies within the local network,” says Gianluigi Cogo, IT System Manager, Veneto Region. “There was the bulletin board, based on a Web server, for which content was published manually by using tools from a centralised service. Updating data was slow—content visibility, data classification, and facts that would be useful for each work group were pretty basic.” The authority wanted to replace these with cutting-edge tools that permit anyone submitting contributions and documents to publish them as well. It also needed to implement more advanced archiving and document search systems as well as creating personalised workspaces for all employees. Above all, the new system had to provide easy use and access for the authority’s staff anywhere on the network.
Solution
The Veneto Region installed Microsoft Office SharePoint
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Portal Server 2003 and Windows
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SharePoint Services. IT developers combined these two products with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, which provide staff with integrated communication tools and instant messaging. The new environment serves 3,000 active users across 70 locations from 300 sites and sub-sites. Each area has its own collaboration tools, and the divisions in the intranet have been arranged to correspond to the overall organisational structure and operating units. The portal has been integrated with Active Directory
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service so that officers can access the network by using the same authentication details they use for their own office computer. This makes it easy to define authorisations for the roles of coordinator, author, and reader. Officers can carry out various tasks and procedures such as inserting archive material, defining appointments and deadlines, posting messages to a bulletin board, initiating surveys, and taking part in forums. They can also work with new-generation collaborative tools, for instance with wiki software or image posting. “Microsoft technology makes it possible to expand and personalise the portal with integrated communication tools or develop new-generation applications,” says Cogo. The surveys and forums facilitate, for example, the active participation of wider groups. But videos, images, and other types of files useful for individual work units can also be published. Each department manages its own intranet space, but can consult material that is either common to everyone or posted by other people in the organisation. It’s not just Microsoft applications that are involved. Cogo adds: “We were also able to integrate third-party components easily. The most significant case is the use of Moodle, an e-learning environment through which the authority provides courses on how to make the most effective use of the intranet. It’s been a total success.”
Benefits
Veneto Region officers are now provided with a highly flexible and integrated working environment, with personalised workspaces, shared calendars, tools for instant messaging, application sharing, and features for forwarding post and notices. The new intranet has around 3,000 active users.
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Senior managers can also generate workflows to approve requests, authorisations, and documents. Officers working on the move or away from their own office can enjoy all services through virtual private network (VPN) access, which provides remote connections to the network.
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Civil servants now use fewer paper files and send fewer e-mail messages. Cogo says: “We used to work with sheets of paper or else send endless e-mail messages to distribute documentation. File sharing is now secure as all data resides in a single, centralised location. As a result, there is a much stronger sense of teamwork throughout the organisation.”
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According to Cogo, the biggest single benefit from the change is the “greater involvement of network users and the better sharing of documents.” In addition, data flows and classification of administrative files and procedures have been rationalised.
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Printing and distribution costs have also been significantly reduced. The authority’s regional newsletter is now produced electronically and is provided as a document through the intranet. Another important feature is the high level of integration for information workers with applications in the Microsoft Office suite.
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“Integration is one of the reasons we chose Microsoft technology—users were relaxed when using tools they’d been familiar with for years in their everyday work,” says Cogo.
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