Staying Connected With Teleworking

Walk into the Pentagon and you'll find a dry cleaner, a Department of Motor Vehicles office, a slew of fast-food chains, a pharmacy; the list goes on and on. It's as if the Department of Defense wants to give employees no reason in the world to leave the building. And for a long while, it seemed that mentality extended to how all federal agencies regarded teleworking. Keep employees in the office, even if a mandate says to do otherwise.

Recently, however, that mind-set seems to be changing, perhaps because of legislation that calls for $5 million in appropriation funds to be withheld from agencies that don't comply with the mandate to extend the option of teleworking to qualified employees. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reported a 37 percent increase year over year in the number of federal employees teleworking, growing from 102,921 in 2003 to 140,694 in 2004. And according to a report released this year by CDW Government (CDW-G) that specifically looked at federal IT professionals, 28 percent of 235 surveyed said their agency supports the teleworking of all qualified employees. That compares with only 5 percent in 2005.

Even the Pentagon is coming around. Brad Miller, vice president of Arlington, Va.-based Vertical Integrations, works as a contractor in the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics department of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and says two employees work from home. "They get patches, updates and so on--same as here," he says. "We, of course, get hacked, but it's not happening through them."

The motivation behind telework initiatives is twofold.

First, with congestion around the Beltway among the worst in the country, telework is a matter of convenience--improving quality of life for federal employees and, in turn, driving higher attrition rates for agencies. Second, telework solutions provide continuity of operations in case of emergency. Should the home office be closed down because of natural disaster or attack, employees can continue working from alternate locations. The Internal Revenue Service stands as a prime example, closing its doors in June after a flood destroyed electrical systems and computer equipment. Service and tax enforcement continued, however, as 2,400 employees worked from home, temporary offices or one of the other Washington-area IRS locations.

NEXT: Opportunities for solution providers.

With momentum growing, telework solutions are a ripe market for the channel. "This is probably the No. 1 topic our partners are leading with today," says Tom Gillman, director of federal channels at Juniper Networks. "Everyone is interested, and eventually every agency is going to make it available. It's a great way to get in and start a conversation that leads to so much more--from access to policy-control capabilities. It just opens the door for partners."

Juniper offers a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-based solution that takes advantage of the security built into Web browsers. An appliance sits at the headquarters or within the span of control to allow remote users to be authenticated and secured, with nothing to install in advance on the remote computer. The vendor also offers a special licensing program that lets users instantly open new licenses, in case there is an emergency that forces more employees to access the telework solution.

Of course, before any technology can be implemented, integrators have to educate the agencies, which still question the functionality, reliability and security of telework solutions. Fifty-three percent of IT professionals that responded to CDW-G's survey named security as the top obstacle, and 26 percent pointed to service and support.

"Can you provide me with the applications I need for my job, will I have to deal with getting kicked off persistently, and will my data remain secure?" says Imran Abbas, supervisor of the solutions architect team at CDW-G. "Each implementation requires something different; from our perspective, it's a matter of making it fit the customer environment." That could vary in the degree of broadband required, for example, or in the authentication requirements, he says. The reseller is currently working with the Federal Trade Commission on a telework solution.

Once the agencies are convinced that telework solutions won't mean a loss of productivity, integrators have to move on to the plumbing. At the simplest level, a telework solution is a VPN. But given that telework, by definition, goes beyond a home office, flexibility is a higher priority.

"Telework solutions require the ability to support multiple types of scenarios or users, such as home workers, alternate work locations and/or mobile road warriors," says Laurie Mosca, director of Technology Leadership and Planning at AT&T Government Solutions. The solution provider manages the IRS Enterprise Remote Access Project (ERAP), which provides IRS offices and audit sites with connectivity to applications and resources located at IRS data centers. More than 26,000 IRS employees use the ERAP for remote data communications.

"A telework solution needs to offer the ability to support multiple types of access--broadband, Wi-Fi and cellular, to name a few," Mosca says. "It needs to provide security in terms of authentication, encryption and control of the remote devices for compliance with the defined policies for firewalls, antivirus and antispam. And it needs to be adaptable, supporting your networking and application growth for things like VoIP."

NEXT: VOiP gains momentum.

In the government, VoIP is just starting to gain momentum. Teleworking certainly has the capability to drive that technology forward, as agencies recognize the advantage from a security and practical standpoint of having all data travel through the same pipe. And regardless of whether VoIP is implemented for teleworkers, integrators should enable the technology for possible use down the road.

That's not as much of a challenge as one might think, thanks to the adoption of broadband access and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for speeding up data communication over combined IP/ATM networks. MPLS-based networks make it possible to manage end-to-end quality of service required for voice and video, Mosca says. They also provide a standardization mechanism that separates and keeps traffic on individual VPNs while utilizing a shared infrastructure.

So with that in mind, what does a full telework solution incorporate? A basic profile for an agency headquarters location would include a T3 data circuit with a 768-K frame relay for access, an IP/MPLS VPN, 10/100-Mbps Ethernet and a network-based IP-telephony system for VoIP service. The profile for the remote user would include DSL or cable access with a router or cable modem used for data and voice, a certified IP phone and VPN remote access.

"A VPN aggregation point is needed to authenticate and authorize remote-access users," CDW-G's Abbas says. "This involves a process that can validate software patches, antivirus updates and so on."

According to Abbas, from a functionality perspective, every user would have some sort of a broadband connection to the corporate office. They would have a softphone installed on their computer or a physical VoIP phone that would connect to their home office and communicate with a VoIP infrastructure through the VPN connection.

"This method would encrypt all subsequent phone calls and data passing through the VPN connection," he says.

With so many components involved, the biggest challenge for channel players is figuring out how to integrate them together effectively and efficiently.

To ease that process, the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a not-for-profit organization, was formed as a consortium of vendors that offer standards for interoperability. For example, a company providing a telework solution can check for TCG member Symantec's virus-definition files or the integrator's high-assurance capabilities on the platform.

"The opportunity lies in helping agencies and customers understand how to connect the dots," says Alex Hart, director of the public-sector channel at Symantec. "I'd say to get smart on the opportunity, breaking it down into pieces. Realize it's not just about technology; there are business and cultural drivers, and there are politics involved." Then look at the core components the customer already has in place and help them understand how to expand upon them, he says. There is, of course, the most basic concept--"that partners sell technology. VARs understand that. But they also need to understand the individual customer."