Feds Slow to VoIP and UC

While the U.S. government has a contract vehicle for purchasing VoIP and IP telephony services, it may be a long time before they move beyond basic voice services and into unified communications, says UC Strategies' Jay Brandstadter.

First, agencies need to buy into the whole concept of VoIP, an uphill battle based upon what high-ranking government speakers were saying at a conference discussing the General Services Administration's Networx telecommunications program. Officials said VoIP was "new" or "economically unjustified" technology, so if you can't get a simple IP phone on the desktop it is going to take a while to talk about  more elaborative unified messaging and collaboration services.

To be fair to America's civil servants, many of them have been more worried about transitioning to IPv6 by an Office of Management and Budget deadline by June 2008 and the potential security benefits of turning on IPSec in a big way. In addition, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is on a 10 year plan to convert over its phone infrastructure into an all-VoIP show.

Maybe a visit by a former Vice President is needed. While Al Gore has been pilloried for being mislabeled as the "Creator of the Internet," he was instrumental in setting deadlines for government agencies to get themselves onto the web and more accessible by taxpayers. If Al could spare some time from saving the Earth, maybe he could push another round of progressive technology usage --with VoIP as the centerpiece -- into the bureaucracy. 

For more:
- Jay's UC on the mild side piece at UC Strategies

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