This special advertising feature presents white papers and other resources provided by companies and other organizations active in state and local government. In some cases, visitors seeking to read or download the documents may be asked to provide contact and other information. New documents are posted periodically, so check back frequently.

New in 2008:

Market-based government through innovation: How public sector leaders are improving collaboration and focusing on citizens
Like the private sector, governments want to solicit input from citizens to improve services and become more responsive and innovative. This paper explores how enhancing collaboration among government groups, citizens and others can enable a more “market-based” approach to processes and can help improve service delivery.

To view the document, click here.

The Case for Portals: When Citizens Demand Online Access to Their Government, States Turn to the Experts
When the state of Kansas began to develop its portal, Kansas.gov, nothing like it existed. But once the state realized that it didn't have to act alone to get eGovernment up and running, the process became much simpler. The public sector had and continues to have limited resources to build the technological infrastructure of a portal.

What the state lacked in expertise and resources, portal developers in the private sector made up for with a demonstrable track record of building online destinations for large, complex organizations.

To view the document, click here.

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Spatial RDBMS: A Key to Increased ROI
It is a commonly known fact that data (any data) needs to be managed. The proliferation of database management systems (RDBMS) is a testament to that theory and recognizes the value of managing organizational data. Spatial data is no exception and deserves the necessary attention.

Myths About Mainframe Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) has come a long way from the early days of simple reports or isolated groups of statisticians locked in back offices, pouring over considerable amounts of numbers and data points. Today, the entire enterprise requires real intelligence in making its decisions. BI has moved from the back office to the entire organization; every part of today's corporation needs some form of decision support.

After reviewing the requirements of BI today, we were struck by the synergy that SAS and the IBM mainframe offer to address the requirements of these new business intelligence workloads. This white paper describes 10 misconceptions about the IBM mainframe platform (now called System Z) and explains why that platform is a competitive option for business intelligence.

Reducing TCO: Keys to Selecting Government ERP Solutions
Driven by increasing costs, declining IT resources, aging infrastructures and workforces, state and local government organizations are shifting their traditional approaches to IT and embracing ERP.

Research shows a significant increase in government organization interest regarding enterprise resource planning – ERP – applications software. For most government agencies, ERP can deliver standardization of technology, data, skills, operations, and management. It can also create a unified layer of infrastructure upon which to cost-effectively build or adapt future technologies, systems, and operations – while enabling improved (and less expensive) management of both IT and business operations.

This paper presents research on the movement toward ERP in government organizations, with a focus on the IT and operational trends, needs and drivers as reported by U.S. state and municipal government agencies. The research examines what state IT directors and other executives see as the most important aspects of ERP in state and local government, and what value they would most like to receive from ERP applications and vendors.

Finally, guidelines are presented for choosing ERP applications and providers, focusing on what state officials indicate are the most important and valuable factors.

See How Lean Works in Government
Improving the State of Idaho Air Quality Permitting.

City of Mesa, Arizona- Building Safety
Permitting reduced from 3 months to days.

Delivering Operational Excellence with Innovation
Today, islands of automation, growing IT complexities, governance pressures and budget reductions are IT realities that hamper the ability of small and large organizations to embrace new business practices and technological innovation. As organizations look for better ways to achieve competitive differentiation, market responsiveness and operational excellence, they often find their existing IT landscapes too complex, inflexible and costly to adapt to evolving business conditions. Even if organizations can afford the resources, time and effort it takes to change and enable new practices, all those might prove too extensive to justify the value of the investment. IT must be aligned with business needs and evolve with changing market demands to enable future innovation, agility and excellence.

Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector
Governmental agencies charged with administering and collecting taxes and revenues must capture all appropriate revenues while easing the compliance process for the public. The SAP Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector package provides a single view of the taxpayer and supports multiple revenues types, helping you increase collections and maximize compliance. It is configurable, upgradeable, standardized off-the-shelf software that supports the tax and revenue management life cycle at lower risk and cost than custom-developed solutions.

Shared Services
The Benefits of Shared Service Centers: As organization grow, bureaucracy and administrative burdens increase. But administrative and support functions too often do not feel directly responsible for the company's results and tend to drift into a "comfortable mode", since they are not exposed to pressing customer needs and market forces everyday. SSC's are often a means to transform such back-office functions into flexible, responsive, effective, customer-oriented teams.

A Blueprint for the Revenue Agency of the Future
Revenue agencies can no longer be satisfied with the status quo. To overcome organizational pressures related to cost, efficiency and service—and to take advantage of enhanced technologies and business processes—CGI has developed a blueprint for the future revenue agency. The blueprint provides insight into the innovative concepts that provide the greatest opportunities for success, and recommends an approach for selecting future initiatives based upon an agency’s particular needs.

State and Local Technology Investment Curve
The CDW-G State & Local Government Technology Investment Curve is an assessment of public-sector purchasing behavior across all 50 states in the United States. The Curve is based upon research from the Center for Digital Government and CDW-G sales data from 2003 to 2006. This is the third of several Technology Investment Curves, and focuses on storage IT products.

Women and Retirement: Facing Unique Challenges
Retirement saving in the U.S. is a national issue that cuts across race, gender and income lines. But the reality is women workers face unique challenges that often make it difficult for them to achieve retirement security. In fact, nearly one in three women over age 65 in the U.S. is living at or below the poverty level.

SAP Customer Success Story: HOUSTON INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the largest public school system in Texas and the seventh largest in the United States. Operating with a $1.65 billion budget, the District's 30,000 full- and part-time employees provide pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade education to 207,000 ethnically diverse students.

With the strategic context for technology defined and the need for a new financial system clearly identified, HISD began evaluating potential vendors using a detailed evaluation and scoring process to help ensure the selected vendor best met the District's requirements. In the end the nod was given to SAP R/3.

The total investment made by HISD to implement the SAP R/3 systems was $10.1 million. HISD is projected to realize savings and benefits from reduced transaction costs, the more productive use of invested capital in inventory, a one-time reimbursement for warranty claims, and a reduction in purchased materials costs. This stream of investments followed by savings yields an attractive ROI of 42%.

SAP Customer Success Story: ERIE COUNTY
Erie County lies in the western part of New York State, bordering on Canada. Encompassing the city of Buffalo and surrounding territory, it is home to approximately 960,000 people, distributes a budget of about $900 million to some 44 agencies, and employs 8,400, of whom nearly 1,000 are now SAP solution users.

"SAP was very quick to pick up on our strategic requirements for this region, thinking out of the box and using ERP as a backbone for common processes not only in Erie County but throughout the region." - Art Telaak, CIO, Erie County, New York.

SAP Customer Success Story: PORT OF SAN DIEGO
The Port of San Diego, California is using the mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) solution to strengthen customer relationships and foster a world-class port through excellence in public service.

Technology Investment Curve
CDW Government, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of CDW Corporation and leading source of Information Technology solutions to governments and educators, launched the second in a series of the State & Local Government Technology Investment Curve (TIC), an assessment of State & Local government purchasing behavior since 2000. The TIC maps all potential state, county and city government customers against five years of CDW-G customer data. Encompassing all 50 states, more than 100,000 products and 1,000 manufacturers, the Technology Investment Curve provides the most accurate, unbiased assessment of State & Local government technology investment currently available.

Securing Water Distribution Systems
Various terrorist activities over the past five years have led government officials to recognize the urgent need to secure the nation's infrastructure. Fears of bioterrorism against the nation's drinking water facilites in particular, led to the passage of the Bioterrorism Act in 2002. To this end, American Water has been developing a comprehensive approach to improve protection of distribution system water quality by employing a combination of technologies that facilitate real time feedback of water quality information.