The State of Minnesota has been named a recipient of National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) 2012 Recognition Award for Enterprise IT Management Initiatives.

The honor, awarded yesterday at the NASCIO 2012 Conference in San Diego, recognized Minnesota for the executive branch's seamless migration to a single Enterprise Unified Communication and Collaboration (EUCC) cloud-based platform. The project unified all communication technology across state government to increase productivity, providing state workers new communications tools and the ability to collaborate easily and effectively across agency lines. The move to the cloud delivered enhanced constituent services without adding infrastructure or capital investments.

This was a significant project that eliminated redundant systems, improved security and, in the simplest of business terms, made it possible for the Governor to finally send one email to all State of Minnesota employees, said Carolyn Parnell, Minnesota's State CIO and Commissioner of MNIT, the state agency that delivers information technology to state government.

The consolidated cloud-based system has the capacity to serve Minnesota government beyond the executive branch. We knew we were a success when St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman made joining the states email system a key goal in his 2012 state of the city address, Commissioner Parnell explained.

Today, Minnesota has what is largely considered the most advanced communication and collaboration ecosystem in the public sector. The project brought all 70 state agencies into a single communications platform, including email, voice, video conferencing, instant messaging, desktop sharing, web collaboration, storage, and mobile phone options, in addition to other services. All this was accomplished while also keeping the system flexible enough to meet ongoing business needs, yet ensuring security levels befitting the work of law enforcement.

Moving in a new direction takes courage, commitment and a willingness to challenge assumptions, said Parnell. Winning this award tells our Minnesota IT team that we are going in the right direction. It validates our path toward additional innovative projects as we optimize our recent statewide consolidation and lead Minnesota government toward solutions that benefit Minnesota citizens. We appreciate being recognized by our peers in other states, and we look forward to sharing our experiences on the road to new IT challenges.

Work on the custom-designed project was done in partnership with Microsoft. The EUCC system is cloud-based and modeled on tools from Office 365.