From the 21st to the 23rd of April, Microsoft presented in Porto its global strategy for electronic solutions and services for local and regional government environments, also known as CSP (Citizen Services Platform). This program is laden with components allowing local and regional government to quickly and efficiently develop and implement solutions that provide electronic services.
Within the timeframe of Regulation 11/2007, which fixed a horizon of 2010 as a date when every citizen in Spain would be able to carry out any type of electronically available administrative task, the pressure is coming from a more and more digitally-literate public, ever improving telecommunications infrastructure, the desire to comply electoral platforms (most which have made expressed reference to this question), the application of the Law of Dependency and the eEurope2010 objectives set in the Lisbon Agenda. These have become the most important factors pushing forward the investment in new technology that can provide these electronic services.
With this in mind, Microsoft Corporation commissioned Spenta Public Sector with the core development of the CSP platform (which consisted in integrating MOSS 2007, Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Virtual Earth, as well as other Microsoft products) and the generation of a series of templates or preconfigured generic applications to help clients and partners all over the world attain an accelerated, low-cost implementation of these services.
These templates and pre-programmed services were presented in Porto and stirred a great deal of excitement from the nearly 300 attendees from local and regional governments around the world.
According to José Antonio Ondiviela, Local & Regional Government Lead Western Europe Public Sector at Microsoft, "Spenta Public Sector was selected for their experience in Microsoft SharePoint and Dynamics CRM environments and their ability to develop and adapt these tools to the public administration environment".
The Local and Regional Government Solutions Forum also served Spenta Public Sector to strengthen alliances with other European business partners, such as the Portuguese company Cave Digital, for whom Spenta Public Sector distributes their CSP-based solutions in Spain so local governments of any size can hold their city council meetings without paperwork. Another partner is the French-Belgian company Wygwam, who brought Spenta Public Sector a CSP-based solution to what is known as City TV, allowing city governments to have environments featuring streaming video and online television channels. Spenta Public Sector has overseen the integration of these products to ensure their consistency with the terms of the CSP platform.