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New Research from CDW on Workplace Friction

Learn how IT leaders are working to build a frictionless enterprise.

Jul 22 2026
Digital Workspace

A Practical Approach To Improving Digital Experience Across Federal Agencies

Find the best and most practical way to ensure federal employees have a seamless user journey.

Federal organizations are doing more with less, while expectations for how people work and how services are delivered continue to become more complex. Inside government, digital experience is often misunderstood as a front-end issue or something separate from core IT. In reality, it sits right at the intersection of productivity, security and service delivery.

When teams can easily see and hear one another, share information without jumping through hoops and work in a common digital space, decisions happen faster and coordination improves. That matters whether teams are supporting citizens, managing programs or operating in distributed environments across the country or around the world.

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1. Video Collaboration Only Works if It Works Everywhere

Video is everywhere in the commercial world, but adoption across federal environments is still uneven. That’s rarely because agencies don’t see its value. More often, it’s because secure environments, facility constraints and network limitations make it harder to deploy well.

A reliable video experience goes beyond installing a camera in a room. It includes thoughtful room design, proper acoustics, microphone placement, lighting and intuitive controls. Just as important is consistency. Users shouldn’t have to relearn how meetings work every time they walk into a different space or join from another location.

Network readiness is also critical. High-quality video requires more bandwidth and lower latency than older systems. Without the right infrastructure in place, video quickly becomes unreliable, which pushes people back to less secure alternatives. When video works seamlessly, it becomes a tool people trust and use regularly.

2. Cloud Collaboration Keeps Teams Aligned

Even with return-to-office initiatives, federal work is more distributed than it was a few years ago. Teams are spread across regions, offices are being consolidated and organizations are regularly onboarding new personnel. Cloud-based collaboration is what keeps all of that functioning.

The real value isn’t just remote access. It’s the ability to work together in real time, share files securely and maintain continuity even as teams change. Instead of emailing documents back and forth, people can collaborate in shared spaces with clear version control and built-in governance.

CLOUD EFFICIENCY: Streamline your federal agency’s operations.

This becomes especially important when new employees come in from outside of government. They arrive with modern expectations for how work gets done. When collaboration tools feel outdated or overly restrictive, people look for shortcuts. Cloud collaboration, done correctly, removes that pressure and keeps work happening inside approved, controlled environments.

3. Better Experience Often Leads to Better Security

One of the most practical security lessons is simple: If people don’t have an easy, approved way to collaborate, they will find their own way. That’s how shadow IT happens.

Providing usable, secure collaboration tools reduces risk because it gives people a better option. When agencies can control how communication and file sharing happen, they gain visibility, enforce policy consistently and reduce the likelihood of sensitive information ending up in the wrong place.

In this sense, digital experience isn’t separate from security. It is the foundation of securing the user experience.

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