What’s Next for Government’s Journey with Collaboration Technology?

After a year and a half of rapid digital transformation, many government organizations are asking themselves — what’s next? How do you operationalize new ways of working and use technology to further evolve the way you serve constituents?

Zoomtopia’s government track explored the questions facing today’s agencies, bringing together key thought leaders to provide useful insights, offer best practices, and anticipate what’s ahead for the public sector.

A platform designed for today’s government agencies 

“Many federal, state, and local government customers are culturally evolving with the dynamically changing work environment,” said Matt Mandrgoc, Head of U.S. Public Sector at Zoom, setting the scene for the government keynote at Zoomtopia 2021. His session goal was to leave listeners with three takeaways:

1. Understand the Zoom platform for U.S. governments 
2. Discover how U.S. government customers are benefiting from Zoom
3. Learn why Zoom is the solution for U.S. governments for their communication and collaboration needs

His insightful session walked through five key reasons users choose Zoom — it’s intuitive, scalable, innovative, extendable, and secure. It also serves a variety of unique functions and use cases, a few of which Mandrgoc outlined during the keynote. 

Customer stories: Oceanside Police Department & City of San Jose

Stephen Ellis, Government Solutions Lead, joined the keynote to share an exciting customer use case, showing how the Oceanside Police Department is using remote-controlled drone video, shared via Zoom, to enable command and control visibility for operations conducted by police, first responders, and other emergency personnel. This allows them to save lives, conduct safer operations, and extend capabilities in the areas of search and rescue and public safety.

CIO of the City of San Jose, Rob Lloyd, joined the keynote to speak to how the city strategically leverages the Zoom platform to enable continuity and improve service delivery for the future.

“Zoom has been a critical partner for us in the middle of a disaster. It helped us [provide] over 100 million meals and necessity packages, connect over 200,000 people through digital inclusion networks to education, work, and health, and provide care to children whose parents were essential workers.” 

While Zoom was an essential resource during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lloyd’s department is already looking toward the future, hoping to use the platform to evolve citizen engagement permanently. “We’re hoping to have a more digital public — to use Zoom to resolve language barriers, connect with our differently-abled community. Thousands of people can now participate where we used to get dozens. That digital public can now have a larger and louder voice in our community.”

“At the heart of it, both AWS and Zoom are customer-obsessed. We love to help customers deliver on their missions,” said Brett McMillen, Director U.S. Federal Amazon Web Services (AWS), when describing Zoom and AWS’ tight-knit partnership. By hosting the Zoom for Government platform on the AWS GovCloud, the providers can bring scale, security, and availability to customers.

McMillen was joined by Matt Mandrgoc; Stephen Ellis; Kim Majerus VP, U.S. Public Sector Education, State & Local Government; and Sandy Carter, VP at AWS, to discuss how Zoom and AWS work together to enable seamless and secure communication and collaboration for today’s government agencies. 

“We see a lot of ways that this relationship is going to help customers. Our customers today aren’t looking for piece parts, they really are looking for solutions that solve their problems. So whether that is in federal, state, or local government...this is going to have a tremendous impact,” Carter said. 

And this partnership is going to only evolve, as Zoom and AWS have more news to announce at the upcoming AWS Partner Forum on September 27th. 

What’s possible when you reimagine service delivery using Zoom? That’s the question that Russ Colbert, Customer Success Manager at Zoom; Jolly Holden, Adjunct Faculty at American InterContinental University; Dr. Carla Lane, Professor at Capella University; and Philip Westfall, Director of Air Technology Network at the Department of the Air Force, gathered to discuss.

The group discussed how a video communications platform like Zoom enables government agencies to enhance public services. Here are a few examples that emerged from the panel:

• More robust and comprehensive training
• Command and control emergency response 
• Judicial, corrections, and public safety applications
• Increased access to council meetings
• Drone activity, helping with fire management
• Helps with learning continuity and student engagement in schools

Zoom solutions even help support the environment, as Lane reminded the group, “Video conferencing is green technology — it reduces driving and gas and creates less pollution.” 

Working with Zoom since 2019, Carahsoft has evolved into one of Zoom’s most strategic partnerships, helping us achieve and maintain our FedRAMP Moderate authorization. As such, our own Stephen Ellis; Bud Kinzer, Director, Public Sector Programs and Distribution; and Lou Giglio, Head of Federal Government Sales, sat down with Bethany Blackwell, Sales Director at Carahsoft, to discuss how the partnership has enabled better work for today’s federal agencies, and what’s still ahead.

“Zoom is ubiquitous, it just works. That’s also why we partner with Carahsoft — everything works on their end. There hasn’t been a procurement challenge that Carahsoft hasn’t been able to solve,” Giglio said. 

Karl Hermann, Federal Solution Engineering Manager, and John Keese, Head of Technical Compliance, walked through attestations Zoom for Government has achieved, and how to configure your settings to be compliant with these certifications. From FedRAMP to the recent IL4 ATO-C from the USAF, this session offered tactical tips on configuring your Zoom platform for compliance purposes.

Rob Lloyd, CIO for the City of San Jose, joined us again for a breakout session, this time speaking with a few of his own co-workers to share how they used Zoom to help improve citizen engagement, assist law enforcement, streamline emergency response, and more.

The future is bright for government users — as the growth experienced during the past 18 months is only the beginning to a more efficient and flexible tomorrow. That’s what David Aderonpe, Lead Product Manager, and Karl Hermann conveyed during their Zoomtopia session, examining what’s been done and what’s next for the Zoom for Government platform. 

Features currently available for Zoom for Government:

• New privacy in-product notifications
• Recorded and livestreamed meetings
• Active Apps Notifier
• Immersive View
• Microsoft Teams direct guest join with Zoom Rooms
• Recording Highlights
• Virtual background enforcement
• Zoom Rooms digital signage
• Virtual Receptionist, people count, and environmental data 

Planned features coming to Zoom for Government:

• Live Transcription
• Smart Gallery
• End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for Zoom Meetings
• Webinar Backstage
• Unified Device Management
• Persistent Whiteboarding
• Zoom Apps
• Software development
  kits (SDK)
• Microsoft Teams integration

The Future of State and Local Government Courts

As courtrooms around the country embrace a new hybrid reality, judicial leaders are tasked with understanding how to use technology to improve experiences and increase access to justice. We gathered a group of experts to speak how they’ve deployed Zoom to achieve exactly that, with Tracie Bryant, SLED Manager at Zoom, speaking with Megan LaVoie, Director of Public Affairs & Special Counsel of the Texas Office of Administrative Hearings; Fred Lilly, Assistant Director of Alabama Office of Administrative Courts; Matthew Maierhofer, Assistant CIO of Fulton County Government; and Anthony Pisapia, Project Manager, Video and Collaboration at New Jersey Courts. 

Here are a few standout insights from the panel, all of which you can find in the on-demand recording: 

Uses cases for the future

• “Zoom works great for misdemeanors, most civil cases, adoption cases, child protection cases. So that’s what we're focusing on for the future…Going forward, we’re going to be looking at which cases should be done remotely. And there’s a lot more that can be done than can’t,” LaVoie said.

Operationalizing a hybrid model

• “Now as we continue to grow with this, we’re doing more of a hybrid model. And we’re trying to find ways to bridge the gap between video production and video conferencing. We want to have the right people on camera, the right angles, so the attorneys can have the feeling that they’re standing in the same room as someone and get the feedback they’re looking for,” Pisapia said.

• “We are largely in a hybrid environment. We have 58 courtrooms, 6-7 devices in each, and they’re all camera-enabled. These devices join sessions automatically, and that promotes participation for folks that are virtual, as well as those in person,” Maierhofer said.

Access to justice & ease of use

• “Zoom technology is critical for us in Alabama to meeting our constitutional goals to provide access to justice to every citizen...It’s also easy to use and integrate with existing case management systems,” Lilly said. 

Zoomtopia also features two other impactful, court-related sessions. There was “Zoom and the Future Hybrid Courtroom,” which discussed equipment and features Zoom judicial users could leverage to build a successful hybrid courtroom, and “Reimagining Court Proceedings and Processes With zConnect and Zoom,” which demonstrated how to use the Zoom Developer Platform to develop a tailored judicial workflow system for major U.S. state courts. 

Whether you’re employed by the Federal Government or serve your community via state and local government, it’s important to understand how you can strategically use technology to evolve the way you work, improve service delivery, and better prepare for tomorrow’s challenges. 

To learn more about how you can transform your agency, speak with a government specialist today.

Editor's note: For the most recent information on Zoom for Government's authorizations and certifications, please visit this blog.