Patrick Marshall, writing for Government Computer News,wrote an in-depth article examining how the local government of Washington, DC has decided to implement Google Apps and open source software alternatives under the direction of their CTO, Vivek Kundra.  The article makes heavy use of direct quotes from Kundra, offering advice about why and how Google Apps have been a great choice for them, but there is one claim made that should attract the interest of all local government employees:

"The move to Google Apps has so far been a success, Kundra said. 'We did our budget planning with a group of 60 people using Google Docs,' he said. 'Could we have done that with Microsoft Word? Absolutely, though we would've ended up with about 60 documents, and we would've had to compile them together.'"

Given the often-lengthy process of working through budget proposals, this anecdote alone signals the huge potential offered to local governments by cloud computing!

Read the full article here.