To provide a safer community for its citizens, the Surat City Police Department started the ‘Safe City Project’, an initiative striving to reduce the city’s crime rate using modern technology.

We’re at a transformative moment in time where the proliferation of technology has penetrated into every aspect of our lives and allows us to advance a broad range of sectors. With the number of connected devices set to reach 26 billion by 2020, we’re reaching a tipping point in which we can realize the power of Internet of Things (IoT) across various sectors – from transport to logistic and healthcare. On a recent trip to Singapore, I had the pleasure of meeting with Microsoft partners, and business leaders in both the public and private sectors. I am impressed by the country’s drive towards becoming the world’s first Smart Nation – a bold vision that is being realized by bringing together government, academics, big businesses, and startups, to solve some of the world’s toughest societal challenges through technologies such as the cloud, IoT, and analytics.

The City of Brampton, located in the Ontario province of Canada, has a highly mobile workforce that needs data at a moment’s notice to do their jobs. The city is using Microsoft cloud solutions to deliver highly secure IT services to its workforce when and where they’re needed. The city has created a collaborative culture where employees come together to address citizen needs, work more efficiently, and ultimately save taxpayers money.

Kent County Council (KCC) UK is responsible for providing public services in education, transport, strategic planning, emergency services, social services, public safety and waste disposal to 1.4M residents across 12 district councils and 300 town and parish councils. KCC wanted to rethink Citizen Services for a digital world that would improve health and social care, regenerate towns and cities, and grow its gross domestic product (GDP) by using technology as an enabler to help make people’s lives better.

Auckland, New Zealand, has big plans for our city’s transportation infrastructure. We can’t afford to think in half-measures, because Auckland continues to grow at a dramatic pace. By 2020, our city of 1.4 million is expected to expand to 2.2 million, and a lot of those people are going to need ways to get around. We adopted a custom digital solution called Fulcrum that could manage the 200-plus construction projects on our plate from end-to-end. Developed by LeapThought, the 2015 Microsoft CityNext Partner of the Year, Fulcrum uses the capabilities of SharePoint Server to provide cross-departmental tools that help manage properties impacted by projects such as City Rail Link. Although Fulcrum was implemented initially for City Rail Link, the solution can grow and evolve with our agency’s needs. The cost savings and operational efficiencies gained by using Fulcrum on big projects can also extend to smaller capital projects as well. We estimate a savings of $3 million in the first 10 years alone, and the more projects we put into the system, the more savings we’ll realize.