Public sector innovation begins at the edge

For many years, we’ve talked about the need for government agencies to transform their IT systems and operations to better serve their missions and meet the needs of their constituents. While every agency may not have achieved all its modernization goals just yet, significant progress has been made. Lumen Technologies is proud to be a partner to agencies in what has been accomplished thus far in many cities, states, schools, higher education institutions, first responder systems, and the vast federal government, including critical infrastructure providers. Communication, data access and efficiency have recently improved to such an extent that they provide a new baseline for thinking about the future in public sector IT.

However, additional improvements need to be made and now is the time to be bold. Data is king nowadays. How to optimize the use of data is should be a focus going forward to help government meet its mission and make a difference in people’s lives. It’s not enough to simply modernize government IT systems anymore. As we enter the third decade of the 21^st century, powered by a growing 4th Industrial Revolution, it is time to really innovate as well as automate. What new constituent-focused services need to be created? What new forms of resiliency can be built into the network? What is your next moon-shot effort?

The Lumen platform – featuring adaptive networking, edge cloud, connected security and collaboration services – can form the foundation for architecting these innovations. As we talk about the future, there are two big issues to consider: minimizing network latency and optimizing your use of data. One is a potential limiting factor for your innovations, while the second is the fuel that will power them.

One particular part of the Lumen platform – working in concert with the rest – is especially noteworthy here. Building edge computing solutions into your network and cloud architecture can help significantly minimize latency and optimize data harnessing. Doing so moves many of the functions of the cloud out into your network, closer to the edge where the data is produced and actions need to be taken.

Application performance everywhere

The movement to the cloud is well underway across public sector IT departments. When we think about applications and assets in motion or the importance of various interactions, we now must consider the milliseconds it takes for bits of data to move across the edge of your network to the cloud and back again. Milliseconds matter.

Latency causes problems for tracking things in real time and interaction-intensive situations such as citizens needing critical services. Reducing latency and securing your network is done more effectively at the edge in many instances.

Most cloud data centers are already connected to Lumen’s fiber-optic networks. With our edge cloud solutions, we can help agencies move the benefits of the cloud environment closer to the edge of their network, thus significantly reducing latency. With edge cloud solutions, your applications will perform virtually from anywhere and you can introduce connected security solutions to protect the proliferation of devices at the edge.

Data for control and innovation

The public sector – with all its public safety, research and education components – produces and consumes massive amounts of data every minute of every day. Data is created and consumed everywhere, from the police car moving through traffic to the fighter jet on a training mission, from government workers coordinating projects from their homes to citizens filling out forms on the web.

Public sector agencies are increasingly asking themselves: Am I able to gather all the data I need and am I able to use all the data I have?

With edge solutions, Lumen architects can link the Internet of Things (IoT), the cloud and edge computing resources that efficiently enable public sector entities to acquire, analyze and act on these massive amounts of data. This can be done cost-effectively, securely and with low latency. We can effectively create a data “base camp” to control the acquisition of data, including securing it, and performing essential processing at the edge so that only data required for analysis in the cloud traverses the network and then back again to the edge.

The future calls

Citizen expectations of the public sector’s IT capabilities continue to skyrocket. The need for agencies to continue to innovate and improve their IT services has never been greater.

Edge cloud addresses your application’s ability to perform anywhere and your ability to truly be data-driven. You can move beyond automating the public sector to innovating a new era of public sector services.

It’s a time to be bold. Let’s build the future together.

Join me in a virtual briefing with FedInsider to hear from government experts and learn more about how Lumen can help.

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