Like people in so many industries, people working for the federal government feel more empowered to decide how, when and where they work.

In fact, “they’re demanding more autonomy, flexibility, and most importantly, the need for technology to support the new way of working,” said Michael Adams, the chief information security officer at Zoom.

That new way of working means teleworking a substantial part of the time. Agencies have made substantial investments in tele- and remote work capabilities. Now, Adams said, employees and agency executives sense the need for a new round of capability that integrates functions now coming from multiple, separate applications.

“This is something we want to support,” Adams said. “We want to further empower people to accomplish more, and for a virtual experience on Zoom to be as good, if not better, than an in person experience.” He envisions a merger physical and digital environments …  create inclusive, immersive, really collaborative experiences.”

That will be important in the future because the bulk of office employees will be neither in the office nor teleworking 100% of the time. Most people will be hybrid in terms of location out of choice. Adams said a Qualtrics study Zoom commissioned recently “underscored the reality that employees crave that flexibility above all else.”

Security and data protection will remain a foundational requirement of the emerging approach to hybrid, Adams said. Agencies will need a zero trust architecture coupled with solid identification and validation procedures. Agencies will also have to support bring-your-own-device (BYOD).

“A bring your own device program where employees authenticate from their personal devices is an especially powerful program,” Adams said, so long as agencies accompany it with continuous security training.”

Zoom products themselves, he said, come with 256-bit AES encryption for meetings, together with features to prevent unauthorized users from gaining access. Crypto keys are only available to known devices. Third-party software integrated into the platform must also pass security muster, Adams added. Zoom for Government has moderate level clearance under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management program and provisional authorization for Impact Level 4 from the Defense Information Systems Agency, he noted.

More than meetings

With the needed security controls in place, what does a more fully collaborative platform look like?

Adams said “platform” is the key word for Zoom, which has added many more functions to the original video conference which established its place in federal systems in 2020.

“But now it’s not just Zoom meetings, it’s Zoom phone, it’s team chat, it’s Zoom virtual agent and on and on,” Adams said. He said agencies are looking to get past the traditional mode of un-coordinated multiple channels. He said that during his own years as a federal employee, a day would start with checking phone messages, than booting up a computer to see email and perhaps notices or changes in other applications, then maybe moving on to a video chat.

Now, he said, Zoom is extending the frictionless nature of its video conferencing platform by adding a contact center, phone calls, chat and virtual agent tasks.

“Then we added some very specific platform innovations that are designed for that hybrid work environment,” Adams said. These include a reservation system for a workspace for when people go to the office and a virtual receptionist using a computer in kiosk mode. There’s also an online whiteboard, which he described as “a power virtual hub for real time and asynchronous collaboration.”

The integrated platform approach moves individual tools from something an employee chooses for a particular task at a particular moment, to an environment in which people work naturally. It reduces the episodic nature of the tools.

“The idea, in part, is to take away the need to really process and think about all these disparate resources I may have,” Adams said, “and instead to bring them together and allow you to just go and do and be productive and enjoy your experience much, much more.”

Adams named three practices agencies he recommends managers follow as they work to establish a fully hybrid workplace.

First is gathering employee feedback and embracing what Adams called bottom-up management. Second is ensuring that the collaboration experience is equal for all employees, regardless of where an individual is working. Third is choosing a technology platform “to facilitate that frictionless experience for all employees and to enable productive collaboration.”

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