Group Publications

Connect, communicate and collaborate

India being a large country, the state as well as central government departments have offices in geographically spread out locations and there is a need for better coordination among departments. The government departments also need to collaborate with multiple agencies.

These factors justify the need for collaborative tools such as unified communication (UC) that help in reducing communication costs, increasing employee productivity in government departments and driving operational efficiencies across departments.

These new communication solutions can also help in meeting service level agreements (SLAs) with citizens, inter and intra department coordination, and inter office coordination.

Benefits of unified communications

With UC, government departments can use one solution instead of multiple devices to cater to their entire communication requirements. UC also offers the choice on how software applications can be deployed—onsite hosted or on-demand.

Application deployment is based on needs at hand, and often results in the adoption of hybrid deployment models that draw on the speed, ubiquity, and flexibility of cloud computing.

Investing in unified communications also helps in consolidating and creating centralised IT infrastructure and resources.

Besides these, the technology also enables the government departments to create environmentally sustainable workspaces by allowing officials to collaborate online, thereby reducing travel expenses and carbon footprint.

Opportunities galore

For streamlining processes, reducing complexity and enabling better collaboration, state governments have opted for IP telephony solutions with state wide area networks (SWAN) wherein one IP phone is installed in each office. However, there is a need for increasing its penetration within offices for better coordination.

Also, all departments in the state government have their own enquiry numbers and call center set ups. With government-to-citizen (G2C) applications being accessed through citizen service centres (CSC), state governments can now look forward to centralise their enquiry toll-free numbers through virtual contact center solutions. This single-window interaction point between the government and citizens will lead to citizens’ delight.
 
During emergencies, departments need to coordinate through multiple channels like voice and video, which causes delays

UC breaks the silo structures and converges all communication on a single device at the touch of a button

 
The route to success

In order to make deployments of unified communications successful, the authorities need to do detailed planning, taking into account all likely scenarios within their departments, laying out the procedures and communicating to all government agencies.

A structured directory listing of all relevant authorities is mandatory and it needs to be updated regularly.

The room of innovation in communications is large, and government departments will benefit the most from innovation. Increase in productivity and response time will be beneficial, both in day-to-day affairs and in emergency responses.\\