Top 5 Telework Challenges that Government Agencies Face

As large parts of the world settle into the new reality of remote work, government agencies in particular are faced with unique challenges. Because it’s essential for employees and contractors to maintain continuity and responsiveness in their roles, federal and civilian agencies need to stay informed about how they can modernize and evolve to meet the demands of their remote workforce.

For many, remote work extends beyond just access to email and web clients. There are large datasets that need to be accessed securely, from any location. For example, engineering and product design professionals rely on technology that’s fast, responsive, and able to support large, graphics-intensive projects.

Here are some challenges that have arisen over the past few months—along with tips on how to overcome them.

1. Poor User Experience
   • THE CHALLENGE: “When using video collaboration applications like Zoom and Skype, or even streaming videos, my desktop doesn’t perform well. The result is a very choppy, slow experience on my virtualized desktop.”
   • OUR SOLUTION: Modern workers have changed the way they work and require modern, graphics-rich applications to be productive. See how GPU acceleration provides a smoother experience, boosting the productivity of remote employees.
2. Overextended IT Resources
   • THE CHALLENGE: “Now that we’ve moved to a remote work environment, managing client devices has become cumbersome and overburdens our IT resources.”
   • OUR SOLUTION: Moving to a VDI environment centralizes desktops in the data center where they can be easily managed by IT and data remains secure. NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software enables IT to share GPU resources among multiple virtual machines (VMs), and resources can be scaled up or down as needed, increasing utilization. With NVIDIA vGPU management and monitoring tools and support for vGPU live migration, IT can proactively upgrade and maintain the environment, minimizing downtime. IT staff productivity benefits are measurable. One customer achieved 75% leaner IT with simplified management.
3. Security Breaches
   • THE CHALLENGE: “We’re concerned about employees copying data to their local machine while connected to the VPN. This can lead to data security and versioning issues.”
   • OUR SOLUTION: While moving to a VDI environment enables you to keep your data secure in the data center, NVIDIA vGPU software enables you to deliver predictable performance to end users with flexible vGPU scheduler options. Select the right scheduling policy and allocate the right amount of resources so that your users remain productive.
4. Access to In-Office Applications
   • THE CHALLENGE: “While VDI works great for office productivity applications, I’ve struggled to ensure engineers can also work remotely. They need access to 3D professional applications like CATIA, Siemens NX, Creo, and ArcGIS Pro, and I need to make sure that the data they’re working with is secure.”
   • OUR SOLUTION: NVIDIA^® Quadro^® Virtual Data Center Workstation (Quadro vDWS) software delivers fully capable 3D workstations that follow employees wherever they go. Data stays in the data center to enhance the security posture.
5. Slow Download Time
   • THE CHALLENGE: “We’ve already rolled out remote physical workstations to our engineers, but they’re less efficient offsite because they sometimes have to wait hours for large files to download and upload to do their work.”
   • OUR SOLUTION: By moving to a virtual workstation environment with NVIDIA Quadro vDWS, some customers, like Mitsubishi, have dramatically reduced wait times from more than an hour to just minutes.

This new remote work environment has completely transformed the everyday workflow across the public sector. By staying ahead of the curve, agencies will be better equipped to weather unforeseen events and still offer enhanced flexibility with a high-quality user experience, all at a moment's notice.

To learn how you can implement a secure, efficient, and powerful teleworking infrastructure, check out these NVIDIA remote work resources.