Rugged Handhelds Improve Service Levels For Government Agencies

Citizens of all ages depend on the many services of state and local government agencies to keep their communities safe. Inspectors ensure everything from the safety of food in local restaurants to daycare facilities for children. Maintenance engineers ensure the safety of city infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and buildings. Firefighters, police and other rescue personnel provide needed services in the event of emergencies — from traffic accidents and fires to natural disasters.

But the same economic conditions affecting the private sector are also affecting the public sector. Major budget cuts and rising costs are creating a major challenge: today's state and local government agencies must determine how to maintain and even improve services — with less money.

Inspectors, maintenance engineers, and public safety personnel spend their day out in the field, separated from the many tools on the desk — including back-end agency applications, personal productivity applications such as email as well as the rich voice functionality of the desk phone. To bridge this separation, workers were forced to utilize paper and pen to collect information that needed to be entered into a computer. This ‘double processing' created wasted time in day-to-day processes, increasing costs and the opportunity for errors that can occur in data entry, for example, during the transcription of illegible handwriting.