Public Sector budget pressures drive the need to extract more benefit from existing mobile and agile working initiatives

As mobile computing has evolved and equipment and service costs have decreased, more government agencies are realizing the productivity increases garnered by equipping workers with laptops, tablet PCs and smart handheld devices. Now a wide array of government organizations from child and family services to public works, field inspectors and public services like utilities are deploying mobile computing technologies to improve public service, increase worker productivity and make better use of budgetary resources.

Working across public sector accounts in the UK and elsewhere in the world we see a few trends increasingly coming to the fore as organisations mobilise their workforces :-

• Hidden productivity Cost Drains in using existing infrastructures not well suited to wireless,
• Secure Working to meet regulatory compliance issues, and last but by no means least
• The significant operational cost benefits by ensuing Real-Time operational access rather than store-and-forward working

A new primer just published, "Mobilising Public Service" addresses the first two issues, the hidden costs of lost productivity through poor connections or repeated coverage dropouts, and the increasing awareness of the need for end-to-end security which does not disrupt the end user in any way

The Unseen Challenge: Seamless Applications Connectivity

Continuous connectivity is not always present in a wireless environment. When users lose their connections, sessions drop, applications often crash, and users have to re-authenticate to the network.

All too often, these problems do not become evident until after an organisation has deployed a system, or added applications that are not mobile-aware. Especially unfortunate, agencies often live with the problems, accepting decreased functionality and productivity because they are unaware that solutions exist. Read on to find out more on how, implementing a mobile VPN, you can solve these problems, quickly and efficiently for your organisation.

This paper outlines examples of mobile technologies within different government agencies and details the key components that any organization should consider as they consider investing in, or wish to improve the return of investment of, automated systems for their mobile workforce.

Unlock more transformation benefits from your mobile and agile working strategy - ensure secure real-time access at the point of activity

The third drive in public sector organisations is achieving cost savings and revenue benefits from real-time processing (as demonstrated by Westminster Council gaining significant process cost savings and revenue benefits with their parking enforcement initiative) rather than a "store and forward" offline operation. IT designers in the past have often avoided real-time operational and database access, as it is difficult to achieve with a legacy VPN (SSL or IPSec Virtual Private Network). With the NetMotion Mobility XE mobile VPN being created from the ground up specifically for wireless, the positive impact on the business by ensuring real-time access to data can be significant. Such savings are not always in the most obvious areas - for example, automating the cleaning service in one organisation allowed them to achieve 400% improvement on a business measure that was critical to them (see below). A couple of excerpts from the case studies attached illustrate this.

• St. Luke's Hospital saw a 400% improvement in bed capacity management - simply because reliable real-time access allowed them to trust that the data held in the database is up to date. (I have attached the original 2006 case study and a more recent update). Their pilot project evolved into a multi?facility network with most of St. Luke's staff now accessing data via wireless devices - real?time, 24 hours a day. A visit to St. Luke's today finds physicians and nurses using wireless laptops and tablet PCs to track and chart patient care.
  • Medicines are dispensed after clinicians scan medication barcodes on patient ID bracelets with wireless barcode scanners.
  • Case managers access information on?the?fly as they verify patient records and coordinate services with insurances companies.
  • Even the hospital's nutritionists plan menus with patients and transmit those orders wirelessly to kitchen staff for later preparation.
  • By giving the cleaning staff mobile devices equipped with MediLogistics BedCentral and NetMotion Mobility software, the staff is able to see immediately which rooms need to be cleaned and update status in real time. Quoting the customer "That has increased the availability of our ICU beds by 400 percent."
  • They reduced environmental services staffing by 24 percent, increased ICU occupancy by 150 percent and increased patient satisfaction scores because patients were transferred more quickly between departments.

• The business requirement at Westminster City Council was to provide a real-time feed to the parking enforcement ticket Issuing back-end system to allow an invoice for the fine to be mailed on the same day. Using the store-and-forward techniques that had previously been in place meant a delay in invoicing of 24 hours. This has had a marked impact on operational effectiveness with improved revenues and timeliness (the back office actually knows that a penalty notice has been issued when an irate member of the public calls in, rather than being ‘blind' until the next day). NetMotion Mobility XE was selected as the best of breed secure agile working infrastructure platform after a lengthy and exhaustive comparison of alternatives by Westminster Council and the integration partners that work with the Council. (Please see the link alongside for more detail).

• The requirement at Johnson Controls had as one of its key parameters the severe SLA requirements in working for the likes of Shell and BP etc across Europe to deliver a worldwide mobile maintenance system. The solution delivers real-time information to a Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions' team of 250 engineers across 27 countries and is said by the customer to have significantly improved and streamlined its facilities management services. NetMotion Mobility XE delivers mobile VPN security and applications persistence for key providers such as the Maximo/Syclo application from IBM. Andy Norman, Solutions and Design Director at Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions, who heads the mobile project team, states "We now have greater control over the work we deliver to our customers. So when our engineer is on-site, they can now access a complete list of the jobs outstanding for that location and can thus deliver a far more efficient and proactive service". Armed with their new mobile devices, Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions' engineers now receive real-time updates on their maintenance schedules. If an urgent call is received, it gets pushed out immediately to the device. This may involve requests such as fixing a leaking pump at a petrol station, repairing a refrigerator or mending a broken till. "We now have greater control over the work we deliver to our customers. So when our engineer is on-site, they can now access a complete list of the jobs outstanding for that location and can thus deliver a far more efficient and proactive service," confirms Andy. Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions is using a best practice model to introduce the mobile devices around the world. With a phased approach, 20 devices are issued at a time to engineers who use them in parallel with their existing work management procedures for a week before switching over. The system initially went live in Austria, Germany, the Philippines and the UK and is being rolled out globally.