Microsoft Power Platform: Digitize Your Mission

On February 6, developers and technology professionals will gather at Microsoft Ignite to talk about software development, security and architecture. I’m excited to be representing Accenture in a session that will explore how Microsoft Power Platform can help federal government digitize its mission.

Power Platform enables people who may not consider themselves developers to build applications using drag-and-drop tools. These are authentic, powerful applications that leverage the latest technologies and integrate with both legacy and modernized back-end systems. Small teams can build an application in a matter of hours or days, and the solutions can be readily scaled across the organization.

Putting the power of development into the hands of non-developers can transform federal IT. Front-line workers can create modern, mobile-ready applications, using the camera, GPS, barcode scanner, video and more. And unlike other homegrown solutions – those Excel projects that IT doesn’t know about and can’t track – applications built in Power Platform can be centrally monitored, measured and controlled.

Power Platform has been evolving in the commercial side for about three years. We’re just a year into it on the federal side and I already see numerous advantages for agencies.

Readily available

Because Microsoft Power Platform aligns with Azure and Office 365, it is readily available to federal users who are shifting toward those capabilities. Any organization that has Office 365, has Power Platform too.

Getting started with new technology can be challenging. At Accenture, we use our Accenture Federal Digital Studio to co-create solutions with our federal clients. Here our creative team works side by side with our clients to explore a need using design thinking and then rapidly prototype a solution in Power Platform. Rather than invest the usual time and effort into developing elaborate requirements for a new system, our clients can work collaboratively to define and then build a working application in literally a matter of hours.

We will have one such application at our booth at Microsoft Ignite. It’s an asset management system that uses a mobile app and artificial intelligence to scan a printed manifest and a bar code scanner to log parts for a repair. This application also uses augmented reality so that remote experts can aid in repairs.

It took just two hours to build that app using Power Platform.

The potential on the federal side is enormous. This could support not just inventory process but also case management, constituent inquires, and a host of other common government needs. I hope that this demonstration will show people the breadth of integration, the ability to leverage the data that is already in the organization -- and most of all the ability to empower the mobile workforce.

Having supported federal IT for 10 years, I’m excited about this emerging ability to build enterprise-scale applications -- and I love the idea that small teams can do this. Too often they have been sitting on unfulfilled requirements or getting by with ad hoc solutions in Excel. With integration into Office 365 making Power Platform readily available and easy to use, those teams have a powerful new vehicle at their disposal for addressing a range of previously unmet needs and IT gains a new level of control over the entire organization.