Ways to Win

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Ways to Win
The new mobile work force presents opportunities never seen before. Technology now enables workers to be immersed in productive business while not at the office. Employees can take computers, applications and mountains of data with them - and be productive from almost anywhere.

However, expanding the endpoints of an IT network far beyond traditional perimeters brings new risks and issues. How do you provide greater access to data and still keep that data secure? How do you protect against lost or stolen laptops? How do you embrace the Millennialsin your work force - a technology-savvy generation that's grown up with computers, but not with the structured methods leveraged by government?

Governments face numerous other challenges too, including loss of property tax revenue due to the mortgage market, loss of tax revenue thanks to layoffs, and higher fuel costs. Budget constraints make it harder to expand services.

Fortunately IT staffs are coming up with creative solutions. They're leveraging technology in new ways, and extending their network reach further than ever before. Many are looking at new service delivery models to support ever-increasing "always on" communications.

Growing numbers of mobile employees want the same capabilities they have in the office. There are many productivity, cost and environmental benefits to giving them these resources. But shrinking budgets, regulatory requirements, security issues and other challenges must be dealt with.

Government can win. The following case study dives deeper into these issues, and shows how one county is managing the challenges brought about by today's - and tomorrow's - new mobile work force.

Mobility and More
A tech-savvy county sees challenges - and solutions - brought on by an ever-expanding mobile work force.
Harris County, Texas, is one of the most populous counties in the United States. From its seat in Houston, the county government serves nearly 4 million residents. The county's IT staff supports more than 16,000 employees in 278 locations.

That's a big job in itself, and it's growing more challenging every day with the rise in the number of mobile workers. With today's network boundaries often extending well beyond traditional perimeters, IT departments deliver information and applications further out than ever before. They also must protect data and computing assets wherever they are.

So how do you do it? Steve Jennings, CIO of Harris County, said the Harris County Information Technology Center (ITC) focuses on four key points: creating a robust and secure infrastructure to ensure bandwidth availability; modernizing application delivery; thinking harder about the data itself, including where it comes from, where it needs to go, and how to secure it; and re-orienting the organizational culture to adapt to the realities of increased mobility and a new generation of workers joining the public sector.

Flexible Infrastructure
Harris County's network is a Converged Information Utility (CIU) with high-speed switching, large bandwidth and centralized management. Many of its services and applications are enabled or enhanced by Alcatel-Lucent technology. It's a robust network that allows for converging data, video and voice for maximum efficiency.

"We believe we should have a flexible, fluid network to fit the needs of our customers," said Jennings. "And each customer is different."

Bandwidth traditionally has served brick-and-mortar facilities, Jennings noted. Now what's needed is greater flexibility. The CIU delivers those capabilities, enabling communications convergence and providing opportunities for virtualization of computers, servers and databases.

Now it's easier for Jennings to give the county's mobile workers access to the data they need in order to be productive. But access must be balanced with security. And security issues grow more complex as more mobile devices are used and the need for protection expands to potentially thousands of remote endpoints.