Really, it is not. I was heartened to see that it doesn’t even make the oxymoron list, which does however include “government worker,” “congressional ethics,” and the rather hackneyed “military intelligence.” In fact, governments are innovating all over the place, particularly with the help of new technologies and a growing constituency of civic-minded developers.

One of my colleagues here at Forrester asked me today if I was planning to write a Playbook on smart cities. While we don’t have a government playbook currently in the works, we have a number of reports that share market trends and industry best practices. So I thought I’d pull together a list. 

Here are a few examples of Forrester reports that illustrate government innovation. My series on smart cities includes:

• Getting Clever About Smart Cities: New Opportunities Require New Business Models
• Smart City Leaders Need Better Governance Tools
• Not Business As Usual: ICT Opportunities In The Government Sector

At the Cisco Live EMEAR 2013 event in London, Cisco brought a new down-to-earth dynamism to the table. The vision for how Cisco is intending to empower its clients in an evermore connected world is becoming clearer. In this blog, Forrester analysts Dan Bieler and Peter O’Neill discuss their take-home messages from the event:

Hosted Collaboration Solution is empowering its high-end channel partners.

Dan. HCS, Cisco’s hosted collaboration suite, allows carriers to offer cloud-based as-a-service solutions, comprising unified communications, telepresence, contact centre, as well as a range of communication features under the Jabber brand. In EMEAR, BT, Telefonica, and Vodafone are already selling HCS, primarily aiming it at MNC customers. It remains to be seen whether the HCS pitch is the right one for smaller carriers and SMBs, especially as Cisco remains committed to catering to SMBs.

Peter. They also need to think about being more attractive to the needs of midmarket system integrators and MSPs. That means they must provide different price configurations that are attractive to SMBs. Positioning themselves only to the national telcos is quite restrictive and doesn’t match the increasing demand we are seeing for these solutions across the market. But, of course, if they want to compete in the SMB segment, they’ll compete with Google and Microsoft and their pricing strategies. The best way to run two pricing strategies is to use two brands.

On Tuesday of this week, Microsoft launched Office 2013, the latest version of its flagship productivity suite. Forrester has released a report entitled Office 2013: A Breakthrough in Productivity; I had the opportunity to work with some great Forrester minds on writing it. Each analyst brought a unique perspective to the analysis:

• My work, in addition to corralling all the talent mentioned below, focuses on document collaboration and social. 
• John Rymer’s work is in the analysis of the new development environment with specific focus on SharePoint.
• Ted Schadler focuses on the current and emerging mobile experience.
• Art Scholler provides excellent perspective on the role of Office 2013 in unified communications with a focus on Lync.
• Phillip Karcher takes a close look at the next version of the productivity suite. 
• Frank Gillett looks at the implications of cloud deployment.
• Chris Voce looks specifically at Exchange and provides perspective on the operational environment in general.
• Leslie Owens provides perspective on search, taxonomy, and information architecture in the new release.
• TJ Keitt weighs in on broad collaboration capabilities.
• James Staten looks how Office fits into Microsoft’s broader cloud strategy. 

The long, much-delayed wait is over. Today RIM took the formal wraps off its new BB10 platform and the first two smartphones running the OS: the all-touch Z10 and the Q10 that will carry the much-loved RIM physical keyboard. RIM has learned at least one lesson from Apple: their launch event included details on launch dates, carrier availability, and pricing. My colleague Thomas Husson has offered a viewpoint on BB10 for product and marketing specialists here.