UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS IN GOVERNMENT

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Percival Robertson
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1 UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS IN GOVERNMENT March 2011

2 COLLABORATING FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD For government agencies, budgets may rise and fall with economic cycles, but financial circumstances do not change citizen expectations. People count on government to maintain excellent service delivery, from processing permits to maintaining public safety. Microsoft unified communications solutions play a huge role, enabling new, more efficient ways of working that can drive down the costs of providing government services. Microsoft unified communications: A new world of work for governments. Microsoft unified communications solutions give government workers the flexibility to reach their colleagues and access the information they need anywhere, anytime. They can work collaboratively and do their jobs whether they are working from headquarters, at home, in the field, from a temporary office space, or in any other location with an Internet connection. Unified communications integrate enterprise telephony with , conferencing, and instant messaging. Through presence awareness, workers can quickly and easily find the right person and click to communicate from within everyday software applications and business processes. Microsoft unified communications solutions enable faster, more informed, collaborative decision-making. This allows governments to improve the way they serve and protect their citizens. Unified communications technologies integrate: Secure, mobile . Voice mail. Calendaring. Instant messaging (IM). Voice communications (Voice over IP [VoIP], which can be integrated with the agency s private branch exchange [PBX]). Web conferencing. Video conferencing. Audio conferencing. Presence awareness. 1

3 PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION By working with existing investments in office productivity software and telephony, Microsoft unified communications solutions can bring extremely cost-effective new efficiencies to government services. Service delivery. Microsoft unified communications can improve collaboration across agencies and between organizations. It gives civil servants a single inbox for voice mails, s, and instant messages and alerts users to the availability and status of coworkers through presence awareness. This can speed up the cooperative effort of civil servants to gather information, resolve issues, and inform the public in all kinds of scenarios from weather and road-condition alerts to service disruptions. When other agencies or private-sector contractors are involved, federation capability links directories so all participants can quickly communicate to exchange information and help speed resolution. Citizen requests (permits and licenses, for example) may be submitted through any convenient channel, including web forms, messages, or phone calls. The worker handles all requests via the same inbox and can then use unified communications technologies to quickly find coworkers, exchange information, and process the request expeditiously. This speedy resolution replaces cumbersome trails and backand-forth phone messages among government workers. Citizens may receive regular updates through whatever communications method they choose. Combining unified communications with Web 2.0 technologies, such as mashups and blogs, can truly enhance service delivery to citizens. Microsoft solutions also integrate with line-of-business applications to further improve civil-servant workflows. 2

4 TELEWORK Telework initiatives typically give workers the option to spend all or part of the workweek away from the office at home or in another location. Microsoft enables telework through a common collaboration platform that encompasses information-sharing, presence capability, and a full array of easy-to-use communications capabilities, including voice, web, and video conferencing. Government telework initiatives, enabled through Microsoft unified communications solutions, deliver multiple benefits, including: Increased productivity from field workers, who no longer have to routinely travel to the office. Improved continuity-of-operations planning. Greater ability to retain employees, by offering a better work/life balance through flexible working schedules. Reduced commuting, which can lower the agency s carbon footprint and worker stress. Possible lower costs for transportation, real estate, and facilities. Potentially reduced real estate costs. The trend to telework is growing. In the United States, federal agencies face the mandate of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 to establish telework policies and to make telework available to all eligible employees. Telework is also a powerful recruitment strategy for attracting talented younger workers who are comfortable with technology and expect flexible working arrangements from employers. An option to telework can make employment in the public sector a competitive and attractive option to many workers. For example, a 2010 FedScoop study 1 found that more than 90 percent of federal sector employees surveyed reported that the ability to telework would make working for an organization more desirable. Putting robust Microsoft unified communications solutions in place lays the foundation for expanding telework to take advantage of these opportunities. 1 Telework 2010: Telework in the Federal Government. 3

5 PUBLIC SAFETY AND NATIONAL SECURITY Events over the past decade have shown that, whether dealing with a crisis or preparing for one, government agencies need to interoperate and collaborate to help ensure better outcomes. Information must be shared in a more secure environment with role-based permissions to meet security and privacy policies. And under the extreme conditions of an emergency, workers need to reach out easily, using any communications channel. Situational awareness. In any crisis, it is critical that the person in charge has real-time information to help make the best possible decisions, while participating agencies share a common view. Microsoft unified communications solutions allow multiple agencies to share information gathered through multiple modes of communication, including instant feedback from responders on the scene. The ability to federate directories across agencies makes it possible to identify personnel in other jurisdictions, agencies, or locations who might be available to supply information or to participate in the response effort. Presence information makes it possible to immediately determine availability and to escalate an IM session or voice conversation to a video conference, if necessary. Screen-sharing disseminates images, such as radar, maps, or photos, from an incident scene quickly. Individual users in the field may communicate using laptops and can join video conferences using an inexpensive webcam. Emergency response. Effective real-time emergency response demands that responding agencies be able to communicate via the most appropriate method. Microsoft unified communications technologies integrate disparate communications methods, including radio, telephony, and messaging systems, over a common platform. Location and presence information allows dispatchers to send the most available and appropriate resource. Continuity of operations (COOP). During extreme weather events, widespread illness (such as a flu pandemic), a technological attack, or other disruptions that impair normal operations, workers and decision-makers need to collaborate and communicate more securely, via PC or web-enabled phone, from remote locations. Microsoft unified communications solutions can give organizations the flexibility they need to maintain their mission-essential functions through a crisis. Operational readiness. Training and planning are essential for coordinating response prior to a disaster but aren t always practical on restricted budgets. Travel is expensive, teams may be in remote locations, and personnel need to be available locally should a situation arise. Microsoft unified communications technologies allow instructors to extend training, planning sessions, simulations, and post-incident debriefings to mobile personnel through audio, video, and web conferencing. Organizations increase personnel preparedness, while helping to save time, money, and materials. 4

6 Learn more Learn more about how Microsoft unified communications solutions enable government agencies to achieve higher levels of efficiency while helping to lower the costs of serving and protecting citizens. Visit the Microsoft unified communications for government webpage Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This document is provided "as-is." Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet website references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes. 5

CompleteCare+ Enterprise Voice

CompleteCare+ Enterprise Voice There s more to communications than email: Unified communication and collaboration, information sharing and team productivity services Contents 1. Executive Summary 2. Introduction Enterprise-level communications