How Videoconferencing Has Changed the Mindset of Officials

We recently built a unified videoconferencing center in one of the country’s regions, which covered all municipalities, city administrations, and state institutions. Before that, each separate department had its own system and they were not connected with each other. The unified videoconferencing center was designed to reduce the cost of ownership of these systems in general and to introduce a certain standard that would allow all departments to communicate more easily with each other.

From the implementation of the project, we received unexpected bonuses that we did not even think about. When a pandemic force majeure struck, having a single unified center made it easy to prioritize capacities when needed. This was impossible to achieve with separate servers, but with a single server, it can be done easily and effortlessly.

Previously, the thinking of officials was like this: “The introduction of technologies entails too many problems: it needs to be legalized, you need to justify it, find a budget, you need to find those who will serve all this … Everything already works for us, we don’t need such technologies.” Now that the system has been implemented, we see a different way of thinking: “We have videoconferencing, this is a huge resource, and now we need to transition all processes online”.

Consultations in a particular department during the pandemic were forced to move online, however, officials decided to keep the possibility of online consultations after the pandemic due to several additional benefits. The process of submitting documents to various authorities has been greatly simplified. It has become possible to establish communication with vulnerable segments of the population (including those who find it difficult to leave home). The opportunity to communicate better with startups and to reduce the outflow of talented minds from the regions.

I am glad to see how more and more officials are beginning to understand this. And, how strongly this will affect both their image and the image of public services in general.

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