Understanding that the easiest way to reach the public these days is through their mobile devices, police departments have begun publishing mobile apps for citizens to report petty crimes and thefts. According to a multitude of departments, the old system of calling in each crime would lead to a backlog of paperwork and nearly a month turnaround to obtain a police report. Additionally, a lot much crime data was lost as it would be difficult for the department to follow up. Appalling numbers such as for every 2000 phone calls for reported crimes, only 500 police reports would result, showed the need for a change. Now with the mobile app, citizens fill out the crime information through the app and upon approval, a PDF copy is sent directly to them. This new system leads to not only less time spent and paperwork, but greater record keeping accuracy and creating more crime data for certain areas.

CGI has gained approval from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP) Joint Authorization Board to become a secure cloud service provider (CSP). CGI joinsAutonomic Resources as one of only two firms approved by FedRAMP.

Recent investments in cloud technologies are showing marked improvement in sales and revenue. This points to an overarching demand for cloud-based services and technologies and increased interest in the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

Hurricane Sandy will be remembered not only as one of the worst hurricanes to hit the eastern seaboard, but also as the first natural disaster where social media platforms played a significant role. Twitter and Facebook dominated the social media world and were fully utilized by citizens on the ground and in other locations. Local officials were the most active on these platforms providing citizens with real-time updates on closures, emergency response, and weather updates. Virginia’s Fairfax county published a metrics report tracking their social media outreach and discovered over nearly 400,000 views, 10,175 likes, comments, and shares on Facebook, and about 1,500 retweets on Twitter. In addition, New York City’s Bloomberg Office reached over one million individuals using social media over the course of the storm, and even used the photo sharing application, Instagram, to share evacuation route maps. Going forward, this will be the new standard for crisis situations. It is crucial Federal, state, and local offices are prepared with citizen engagement software and platforms to track, respond, and provide information for citizens- before the next Sandy.

The Digital Dilemma Report of 2013 has found that out of 300 government employees surveyed, 95% believe that their work has improved through access to mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Although many government agencies currently lack a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, a majority of these federal employees are bringing their personal mobile devices into the workplace due to the benefits reaped from their use.

As social media has grown in popularity and continued to encompass more citizens, the government has made effective use of its outbound reach by using the medium to get information to the citizens. Whether it is used for warnings and instructions during an emergency, or to gauge support for a particular pending protocol or bill, the social media communication channel is one that the government has taken full advantage of to push information out. However as it is with so many other innovations, the governments use of social media is slowly beginning to evolve to a more passive connection.