The world has experienced a lot of firsts with the Obama administration, most notably the election of the first African American President. But there are numerous other firsts, particularly when it comes to technology.
Obama is the first sitting president to use a smartphone and rely on email to get things done. He’s also the first to explore cloud computing as a means of increasing efficiency and cost savings across government agencies. This is particularly clear when you look at the profile of his Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra.
Prior to his nomination to the post of CIO, Kundra was most well-known for introducing Google Apps to Washington, D.C.as the city’s CTO. In an interview with InformationWeek on June 17, 2009, Kundra talked about introducing cloud-based tools such “blogs, video and lightweight workflow programs or public participation programs” across government agencies, stressing his support for “open architecture.”
$33 million was set aside for cloud computing projects in the President’s 2010 budget request. Kundra indicated that “as we get closer to October, projects plans and specific funding … will be determined.”
Interest in cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) is skyrocketing in government because of its potential to help solve some of the challenges faced by the current administration. If implemented correctly, cloud computing pilot projects can create jobs and reduce energy consumption, not to mention increasing efficiency and promote cost savings.
An example of a cloud computing application that can be leveraged by government agencies to achieve these goals is hosted contact center technology. The SaaS model, by reducing cost and complexity deployments, enables existing deployments to save money and increase flexibility. More useful still is the fact that this technology can now be deployed in non-traditional call center spaces.
When we refer to “non-traditional” call center spaces, we’re talking about informal or hidden work groups that do not recognize themselves as “call centers,” but can benefit from the same technology. For example constituency services, helpdesks, mobile, remote and work-at-home teams to name a few.
A huge component of government resources are dedicated to delivering services to people. The private sector, driven by an extremely competitive market, has been able to achieve impressive efficiency in traditional and non-traditional call center spaces. And although the public sector faces some different challenges, working with Industry Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. GSA among others has allowed us to witness a trend towards innovation and cloud technologies in public sector service delivery.
If Kundra and the Obama administration more broadly are going to be successful in leveraging cloud computing to achieve efficiencies and cost savings across government agencies, adoption of new technologies like hosted contact center technology in both traditional and non-traditional call center spaces is going to be key.