Federal Public Service Improves Staff Productivity and Taxpayer Service Using Cisco IP Telephony
October 5, 2005
By Jason Deign, News@Cisco
Thoughts of lunch have led to a hunger for innovation at the Belgian Federal Public Service Finance.
The government ministry department has recently finished installing a 4,000-phone IP telephony system from Cisco Systems® after its networking boss was inspired by the idea that staff might use their phones to check canteen menus and order food.
"The menu for the restaurant is on the phone every day," says Luc Lornoy, coordinator of Networking and IP Telephony at the Belgian Federal Public Service Finance.
"In time we will also put in real-time applications such as the ability to invite colleagues to lunch or order specific dishes."
Naturally, this is far from the only reason the Federal Public Service Finance embarked on its IP telephony project, which represents one of the biggest telephone platform tenders in Belgium in half a decade.
The upgrade was prompted by a change of headquarters, from the Brussels Tower of Finances to the city's North Galaxy complex.
Top of Lornoy's menu of requirements was a system that would be future-proof and easy to install and maintain, while allowing the ministry to integrate all its communications channels - phone, fax and Internet - to ensure a smoother service for taxpayers.
These criteria led naturally to a decision to use IP telephony in place of a traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) system, says Lornoy.
IP telephony is rapidly becoming the new standard for public sector bodies and services modernizing their infrastructure. At present, more than 100 Belgian companies and institutions have already integrated their telephone and data-processing systems with Cisco infrastructure.
Almost all have experienced benefits in terms of cost reduction, ease of use, interoperability of systems and potential to support new applications.
On this occasion, Cisco was appointed to carry out the work, alongside IBM, on the basis of "price, technical quality and project organization," Lornoy says.
In 2003, Cisco and IBM unveiled a broad-based initiative to help organizations of all sizes integrate and implement converged voice, video and data systems.
The initiative extends the value of new and existing IBM and Cisco offerings to independent software vendors and service providers. This will ultimately give organizations and their employees the ability to access information any time, anywhere, from any device.
New offerings will contain elements of mobility, integration and security, and tap the strengths of both companies.
IP telephony's flexibility and ease of use was demonstrated at Federal Public Service Finance as soon as the relocation project began in earnest. For a period of some 10 weeks at the height of the move, around 200 new people were entering the North Galaxy building a week.
In addition, some of these were moving more than once as new furnished space became available, resulting in a logistical operation that would have been difficult to manage without the 'plug-in-anywhere-and-phone' simplicity of IP.
Other benefits of IP telephony have rapidly become apparent. For example, each civil servant now has voicemail plus telephone screen and Internet-based directory access which replaces the costly and bulky paper directories formerly needed.
Besides the North Galaxy site, the Belgian Federal Public Service of Finance is using IP telephony in about 10 other buildings, giving it a total installed based of up to 5,000 phones, with a further 2,000 scheduled for introduction before the end of 2005.
In October 2005, for example, a new building in Ghent was being equipped with 900 IP phones.
Lornoy plans to introduce IP telephony right across the ministry, covering up to around 30,000 employees, as quickly as budgets will allow. "I do not want to invest in TDM switches to IP-enable them," he says. "It is much easier and cheaper to install new IP phones.
"By relocating six of the ministry's services to one new building in Lokeren which is equipped with IP phones we managed to reduce communication costs by half."
The ministry currently uses a range of IP telephones, including the Cisco IP Phone 7912G, 7940G and 7960G models, along with Cisco Catalyst® 6509 and Catalyst 3750 Series switches, the latter with inline power and Cisco AS5350 Universal Gateway modem pools.
Other Cisco equipment being used in the network includes Cisco CallManager software, Cisco Unity unified messaging systems, an IPCC Express Edition IP contact center package for 80 agents and CiscoWorks 2000 IP Telephony Environment Monitor applications.
Other technical components of the system include a NetWise switchboard, voice recognition technology from Ubicall and Captaris RightFax fax servers.
The technology, which was installed without a hitch, has been studied carefully by other Belgian government ministries, some of which have embarked on IP telephony projects of their own.
The Belgian Federal Public Service Finance's work also caught the eye of judges presiding the annual awards handed to information and communications technology directors by Data News, Belgium's top technology publication.
This year they gave Luc Lornoy the top distinction in the telecommunications category, with a prize of a trip to Boston. With recognition like this, it seems unlikely the ministry's appetite for IP telephony will be diminished for some time to come.
Jason Deign is a freelance writer based in Barcelona, Spain.
