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In Burlington, Ontario, life has gotten just a little easier for building contractors—and measurably more efficient for the city government.
With a growing demand for housing in this municipality of 200,000 people, the City wanted to ease the burden of obtaining a building permit. As with many government agencies, applications and inquiries used to be handled primarily in person. In 2024, however, the City decided to improve the cumbersome process with technology.
Using Microsoft Copilot Studio and related cloud technologies, the City created a custom Copilot that reduced the permit approval process from 15 weeks to 5 to 7 weeks—“A giant leap forward,” according to Community Planning Director Jamie Tellier. Critically, with the help of low-code development, the copilot was conceptualized and deployed in only eight weeks.
It’s just one improvement in a single government agency, but the City of Burlington story reflects a significant global trend. In the year or so since Microsoft’s core generative AI and Copilot offerings arrived broadly in the marketplace, first with Microsoft 365 Copilot and subsequently with developer tools, industry-specific solutions, and autonomous AI agents, the broad impact on governments is becoming clearer.
At Microsoft for Government, making the most of cloud and AI is central to our focus on helping government agencies and organizations to solve some of society’s biggest challenges. As we work with government customers on a broad array of challenges and solutions, we continue to be amazed at the expanding impact of AI and modern cloud technologies, which are delivering far more than just efficiency gains.
How cloud and AI are broadly transforming governments
When it comes to operations and IT, governments worldwide face a set of uniquely difficult challenges. The community expects them to deliver a quality of service and user experience that matches what they get from the private sector. At the same time, governments face specific demands around compliance and security that most other sectors do not. Factor in shrinking budgets, aging workforces, and legacy on-premises systems that add cost and risk, and governments struggle to hold the line, much less to innovate.
However, the advent of AI and complementary cloud solutions can offer help and advance both cost savings and innovation. For example, Microsoft 365 Copilot played a key role in the successful modernization of communications systems in the UK Home Office.
A critical government department responsible for national security and public safety, UK Home Office urgently needed to modernize outdated systems to continue meeting national security and public safety demands. Working with Microsoft and technology partners Colt and Netcompany, they were able to drive a smooth migration of 63,000 users in just eight working days and minimized disruption to essential services.
AI-powered support from Copilot played a crucial role in optimizing workflows, summarizing meetings, generating follow-up tasks, and offering real-time insights. The cost-savings it delivered also allowed the department to allocate resources to more strategic areas, reinforcing its commitment to delivering exceptional value for the public.
As we look across government customers worldwide, we see three key areas in which cloud and AI are delivering new benefits:
- Increase productivity and save time with personal assistants
Productivity benefits are central to the value delivered by agents and AI. The core capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot are uniquely attuned to help address the frustrations surrounding repetitive tasks, serving effectively as tireless personal assistants.Interestingly, while 49% of professionals surveyed by Microsoft said they worry about AI replacing their jobs, 70% said they’d like to lessen their workloads by delegating as much of their work as possible to AI.1
A good case in point is the Torfaen County Borough Council in Wales, which is using Copilot to help respond to growing service demands even as budgets were reduced. Copilot’s seamless integration with everyday applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Teams meant that workflows were not interrupted. Employees then saw significant time savings in things like minute-taking tasks and summary reports. As Chief Executive Stephen Vickers put it, “It’s saving time and it’s delivering a better end product.”
Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the Buckinghamshire Council in England implemented Copilot to improve productivity and staff wellbeing across selected operations. Employees reported 10 to 20% time savings on tasks such as transcribing meetings, creating reports, drafting emails, and handling customer inquiries. Project managers were able to take on more projects due to an average time savings of 30 hours per month. And customer service workers focused more on providing better assistance. As one put it, “With Copilot transcribing, I can focus completely on what the customer is saying, rather than worrying ‘Did I take that down right?’”
Likewise, in early 2024, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) introduced Copilot as part of a modernization effort to revolutionize utility services. Internal operations were streamlined dramatically, as processes that had previously taken days, such as research and document drafting, were completed in mere hours. Critically, customer happiness remained consistent at a 98% rating, as internal efficiency soared.
- Automate government operations and reduce costs
An additional category of Copilot benefits is the ability to reduce costs by automating operations and delivering insights and data visualizations that help people make informed decisions quickly.Copilot can be integrated into many business systems, including customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center solutions, to provide contextual, AI-powered responses. This means that whether an agency is using Dynamics 365 or another CRM solution, Copilot can seamlessly connect to those systems and enhance existing workflows.
In the United Kingdom, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is evaluating Copilot as an expansion of a highly successful effort to bring its nationwide driving test system in house after decades of outsourcing it. The new solution, integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365, has improved customer satisfaction rates from 80% to 96%, while saving a projected £15 million within five years.
The agency’s deep investment in the Microsoft platform positions them to readily innovate with generative AI in ways that promise to, for example, power a data-driven approach to understanding drivers and the use of roads. “It’s still early days,” said Digital Operations head Alex Fiddes, “But I think this will help the DVSA respond at a far more rapid pace than it’s done in the previous three decades.”
Copilots can also orchestrate complex, long-running processes with more autonomy and less human intervention. Microsoft Copilot Studio offers a subset of capabilities that allow for deep customization, which lets organizations tailor Copilot to their specific business needs without the need for costly development time or extensive modifications.
- Protect your data with secure and compliant enterprise-ready AI
Security is obviously paramount for government organizations, which are not only among the most attacked sectors in the world but are often the most stressed due to staffing shortages and budget constraints. The good news is that Microsoft Security Copilot offers a powerful way for governments to make dramatic improvements in cybersecurity.Security Copilot is the first generative AI security product to combine the most advanced AI models with a Microsoft-developed security model. It is powered by Microsoft Security’s unique expertise, global threat intelligence, and comprehensive security products. This helps governments maintain a secure and compliant approach to security and privacy, it applies data classification labels to make sure the right people have access to the right data, and it helps protect unauthorized access with data loss prevention (DLP) strategies.
At Oregon State University, Security Copilot is playing a central role in protecting vital research and sensitive data, including the personal information of students and faculty. After experiencing a major cybersecurity incident in 2021, the university created a new Security Operations Center (SOC) that integrates Microsoft Security solutions, including Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender. Security Copilot is used for essential tasks to help the security team assess and respond quickly to cyberthreats.
In particular, Security Copilot holds promise in automating processes and addressing vulnerabilities, according to SOC Manager Emily Longman.
“Copilot for Security will boost our automation capabilities and help our analysts—who are college students—learn how to quickly write more Kusto Query Language (KQL), such as threat hunting with more advanced hunting queries, and more workbooks.”
Emily Longman, Security Operations Center Manager, Oregon State University
Our commitment to security above all
As promising as AI innovation is, we recognize that progress will always depend on world-class security to help ensure safety, privacy, and regulatory compliance. Since Satya Nadella made security Microsoft’s top priority in May 2024, Microsoft has dedicated the equivalent of 34,000 engineers to advance the objectives laid out in the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), a framework that provides a structured, comprehensive approach for enhanced cybersecurity across all Microsoft products and services.
For governments, this commitment means that agencies and organizations can innovate with confidence in Microsoft advanced cybersecurity measures, compliance support, and risk management tools.
Learn more
To help your government organization take the next step in your cloud and AI journey, contact your local Microsoft representative or certified technology partner. They can help explore options, identify use cases, and transform your ideas into meaningful solutions.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
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1 Work Trend Index Annual Report, Microsoft.
Kirk Arthur
Worldwide Government Solutions Lead, Microsoft
Kirk Arthur has responsibility over experts who serve our global civilian government markets. Kirk joined Microsoft after spending 19 years working in government and is passionate about technology and how it can help governments deliver the right level of service and care to the people and communities they serve.
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