There’s no question that the public sector frequently trails the private sector when it comes to innovation and the utilization of technology. The sheer size and complexity of most government agencies makes it incredibly difficult to keep up with the latest advancements. That said, the importance of improving services is an ever present driver pushing public sector organizations around the world to adopt digital transformation (DX) initiatives that offer the promise of vastly enhanced and upgraded capabilities.
Amongst the many services provided by government, perhaps the most important are emergency services. While achieving cost-efficiencies in these services is vital, providing the highest level of reliability is the greatest priority. Certainly every second counts when it comes to an emergency, which places tremendous pressure on contact and communications centers that are the central touchpoint for reporting incidents and coordinating responses. When an emergency occurs, first responders and public safety officials must be rapidly dispatched and fully supported in the field with the necessary level of situational awareness.
The public has a high expectation that when called upon, government emergency services departments will be there and ready to help. This means network and communications availability must be assured. Voice and data systems simply can’t be allowed to fail or degrade, ensuring call center staff is able to provide time-sensitive information to first responders. Of course, the larger the emergency situation, the more taxing network traffic can become, putting a greater burden on IT to maintain always-on capacities of vital infrastructure.
As DX initiatives transform operations centers with increasingly sophisticated UC tools, IT faces the added challenge of managing the quality and performance of converged, multi-channel IT infrastructures that integrate voice over IP (VoIP), chat, data video, and web capabilities. When it comes to life-saving services, IT must maintain a near-perfect level of service delivery for agency staff.
And, of course, government reliance on network performance goes well beyond emergency services. Transformation initiatives are impacting agencies involved with criminal justice, social services, treasury departments and registry of motor vehicles – just to name a few.
All of these government services, whether at the local, regional/state or national level, rely on online systems and processes where reliability is an absolute must. To ensure that reliability, IT has to have an accurate view of the user experience and a system-wide view of all dependencies that could affect any of the unified technologies and capabilities. This means having end-to-end service assurance across all platforms and environments, removing service performance blind spots and allowing IT to quickly triage and resolve a range of issues and ensure every engagement has a positive outcome.
NETSCOUT solutions enable IT to proactively monitor and analyze these inherently complex services in a cost-effective way. As a result, IT is able to optimize infrastructure assets, dramatically reducing CapEx and OpEx spending without compromising the end-user experience of citizens, employees and contractors of government agencies.
In particular, NETSCOUT solutions support the management of UC services for public sector communication and call center environments. NETSCOUT’s vendor independent solutions help government IT organizations to consolidate UC service management for highly complex, multi-location, multi-vendor environments.
For a more in-depth look at how DX is impacting the retail industry, download the NETSCOUT white paper, Assuring the Enterprise in the Digital Era – Public Sector, by clicking here.
~Written by David Pitlik, Content Creator, Speechwriter, Technology Consultant