The new normal: How state and local governments can benefit from virtual desktop-as-a-service to support remote workforce

The COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone into uncharted territory practically overnight. Government offices that were bustling with people one day were silent the next as workers shifted to remote working environments. This shift put a strain on technology teams, who suddenly had to deal with securing and scaling a workforce spread across multiple remote locations that all needed access to critical applications.

It quickly became clear that state and local governments needed to accelerate modernization efforts to support the new working normal. Agencies that were still reliant on decades-old mainframes had to migrate to the cloud—and fast. Technology teams looked to solutions like virtual desktops, which played a critical role in connecting the new remote workforce to mission-critical applications so they could continue delivering citizen services and keep the business of government running smoothly. Now they’re looking to continue that journey to further operationalize and scale their virtual desktop environments.

Supporting a long-term remote workforce
The pandemic is still with us, along with remote work environments. Employees and entities have realized that they can remain fully productive in a remote world with the right tools. With the work-from-home benefits that many employees and agencies have discovered—including increased flexibility, lower costs, and better recruiting opportunities—the reality is that working from home is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

According to the Biden administration’s return-to-work guidelines released in June of this year, much of the Federal workforce had no issue successfully completing their duties while working from home during the pandemic. Remote work for the Federal government has historically lagged the private sector, but the pandemic changed the game. Research found that while roughly 59 percent of the Federal workforce worked from home during the first 15 months of the pandemic, productivity did not suffer and the flexible working arrangements were rated highly among employees. The guidelines further state, “Evaluation of an employee’s performance should be based on factors such as accountability for results or quality of the work and should not be affected by whether an employee is working in the office, teleworking, based remotely, or working a flexible work schedule.”

In addition, a recent survey from the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) revealed confidence in telework becoming a more permanent option in state government. The number one answer state CIOs gave when asked which efforts they expected to last beyond the pandemic was remote work.

What were once stop-gap solutions to overcome a crisis situation now need to become an integrated part of the IT team’s regular toolkit. As agencies continue to fortify and mature their desktop virtualization strategies, security, scalability, and management burdens are taking a toll. Mission-critical workloads and sensitive enterprise data can’t be reliant on technology that was quickly designed as temporary solutions.

To support technology teams so they can focus on the mission while providing remote workers with the tools they need to be successful and productive, agencies should look to look to solutions like virtual desktop-as-a-service.

Virtual desktop-as-a-service
The “X-as-a-service” solution paradigms have been around for a long time and are thoroughly embraced by technology teams—and for good reason. The same benefits of choosing an as-a-service model for other technology solutions can be realized with virtual desktop.

With virtual desktop-as-a-service, agency teams can partner with an experienced provider that can design a work anywhere strategy for the agency’s workforce. This usually involves assessing the current remote work situation and developing the agency’s strategy; designing, building, and deploying the right infrastructure; and deploying the virtual desktop solution at scale. Partners then take on the ongoing management and support—monitoring the solution, remediating issues, and escalating incidents as needed.

Remote workers increase the threat surface, which is a significant concern in today’s environment where government entities are key targets for hackers looking to spread ransomware or worse. Virtual desktop-as-a-service has security baked in, providing transparency across the entire virtual landscape to monitor organizational resources, internal usage, and to see—and stop—external threats.

Virtual desktop-as-a-service elevates overall productivity as workers can access key applications anytime, anywhere, and from any device. IT teams can work more efficiency while delivering a superior user experience with declines in latency when the virtual desktop is in the same environment as cloud applications.

User experience and reliability are paramount to supporting remote work and agencies should look for partners and solutions that have extensive experience with hyperscalers as well as leading applications providers to provide remote workers with unique offerings that can boost productivity and minimize end-user disruption. As an example, Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed desktop-as-a-service offering that enables users to securely access the applications, documents, and resources they need from anywhere on their mobile devices. It provides a simple, cost-effective, and familiar desktop experience at a global scale, with enhanced security and simplified management.

Another example of this kind of offering would be Work Anywhere Solutions, a virtual desktop environment built on industry-leading cloud technologies, powered by Azure infrastructure and available from in the cloud anywhere. The offering provides an easy and quick transition into Microsoft 365 tools, combined with the security of the Microsoft Azure Cloud and expertise from experienced partners.

The pandemic fundamentally changed how people work. The technology exists to keep the new working environment running smoothly, with both the agency and the worker realizing the full benefits of remote work. Agencies don’t have to go it alone though. Experienced partners can customize virtual desktop technology to fit any need or provide turn-key solutions and support to relieve the pressure on already stretched teams, enabling state and local governments to continue mission-critical citizen services post-pandemic and beyond.

Rick Rosenburg is the vice president and general manager of Rackspace Government Solutions at Rackspace Technology. He oversees services in support of government agencies and holds 35 years of leadership experience across companies that have supported the Federal government’s technology needs. Prior to Rackspace Technology, he held leadership roles at NTT Data Services, Seros, and Dell Services Federal Government.