Anyone working in government over the past decade knows that mobile devices have transformed agency workflows, cultures and outcomes. According to a FedScoop survey underwritten by VMware and published in July 2017, more than half of federal government personnel rely heavily on mobile devices—including personal devices—to do their work.
Compared to industry, however, more than half of federal workers experience moderate-to-high levels of friction when using a smartphone or tablet—ultimately impeding productivity and efficiency. There are many reasons for this, including an overall distrust in the security of field mobility by some government agencies, IT infrastructure that is unable to support integrated digital workspaces across all applications and devices and poor user experience.
The digital workspace is quickly becoming a ubiquitous term for seamless remote access to company data and applications. VMware defines the digital workspace as the IT platform that provides the necessary infrastructure to deliver any app to any device across any location. It’s software-defined; identity-based; and cloud, device and operating system (OS) agnostic.
If you pare down what government workers want in a digital workspace, you’ll find that they’re simply expecting the ability to access the files, apps and data required of their mission regardless of device, network or location. For government IT, this means virtualizing and standardizing infrastructure across mobile and cloud-based environments to deliver anytime, anywhere access to information.
Wherever you may be along your agency’s digital workspace journey, at the minimum recognize that identity-based authentication, single sign-on and a consumer-simple internal app catalog are some of the most steadfast ways to improve user experience and reduce mobile friction.
Same goes for virtualizing the digital workspace environment—including the desktop, applications and network—to better respond to today’s dynamic mission requirements. For example, isolating desktops and applications from the operating system allows for real-time, over-the-air app delivery, management and security, while reproducing the physical network into software means attaching policies to individual workloads to automate networking operations and enable a fundamentally more secure data center.
For more information on how VMware can help your agency securely modernize and mobilize IT infrastructure, visit vmware.com/go/federal.
Learn more about solutions for government workforce productivity:
- New @ VMworld: Industry Workshops & Showcase for Financial Services, Healthcare, Government & Retail
- VMware Workspace ONE Updates: Elegant Experience for Employees & Government-Grade Security for IT
- Introducing the Government Digital Workspace for Dummies: A Handy Guide to Securely Mobilizing Agency Workforces
