Large government agencies are buckling under the weight of their large bureaucracies, their increasingly distributed workforce, and higher interactions with private sector consultants. Government agencies with such environments should seriously consider implementing virtual workspaces because the business case for these solutions is clearer for large government environments than for other organizations.

Big Government, Big Headaches
Federal government agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) typically have at least 30,000 employees across multiple geographic locations and deal with hundreds of external consultants. This level of bureaucracy and geographic distribution is largely responsible for the snail's pace at which government functions.

Two factors are causing such large federal agencies to sit up and address their slow response times.
1. E-government.
2. Rising costs of bureaucracy.

Federal agencies must now deliver better services faster and at a lower cost. For example, instead of 18 to 24 months to develop important safety rules, the FAA had to reduce these lag times to weeks.

Make Things Better - Virtually
One solution that deals with these problems is the virtual workspace. A virtual workspace is an application that provides multiple collaborative environments with configurable levels of collaborative functionality. Organizations with different types of employees that work in multiple geographic locations and time zones are ideal candidates for this technology. Figure 1 illustrates the three main components of virtual workspaces.

Real Savings with Virtual Workspaces
Virtual workspaces are not a new product segment; in fact they have existed in various forms over the past ten years. Improvements in application security and reliability, as well as increased user comfort with on-demand systems, have triggered a rise in virtual workspace adoption. The table below lists the benefits of virtual workspaces and their requirements.

Recommendations
1. Assess suitability of virtual workspaces for the agency. A virtual workspace is most effective in organizations that have a large number of geographically distributed employees involved in highly-collaborative processes. Municipal and smaller state government agencies will have difficulty justifying the acquisition of virtual workspace solutions if their environment does not fall within these parameters. Look to vendors like EMC, FileNet, Interwoven, and Vignette for solid enterprise-level virtual workspace solutions.

2. Deal with resistance issues early. Even though employees are more comfortable with Web-based applications, implementing a virtual workspace significantly affects the way employees function. Foster a collaborative environment before deploying a virtual workspace by getting employees to work together to solve problems. Developing such a collaborative environment reduces the level of resistance to change. Remind business stakeholders to reward employees that fully leverage the solution. Ensure they are on board and that they have put clear criteria in place to ensure employee performance goals and consequences reflect the need to make the change.

3. Ensure all organizational units share information. In large bureaucracies where departmental managers control their own information, the virtual workspace may be perceived as a threat to their position. Since information sharing is the very essence of the virtual workspace, any department head that fails to share his or her information can undermine the success of the project. Avoid such situations by ensuring that all departmental managers are on board with the collaborative nature of the virtual workspace. Any managers that stubbornly refuse to share information or use the virtual environment after it is deployed should be removed.

4. Thoroughly train all users. Nearly half of all collaborative initiatives fail within the first two years of implementation because of poor training. To ensure success, focus on training all workspace end users. This includes employees as well as third party consultants and contractors. Since federal agencies usually have a large number of employees, use an incremental/discipleship approach to training. Hold seminars for a small number of employees and equip them with the tools to train the larger groups of employees. Additionally, use the virtual workspace tool as the training environment. This helps the end users see the benefits of the solution while simultaneously becoming familiar with its capabilities and features.

Bottom Line
Government agencies can no longer afford to ignore virtual workspaces. Improve organizational responsiveness, reduce travel costs and wasted employee time by implementing this technology in the organization.