Dialed In

Voice over IP phone service is slowly gaining converts.

Until a few years ago, federal agencies with aging phone systems had little choice but to replace them with similar ones of tried-and-true reliability and availability, but often at a cost many considered too high.

But as technology advances, more agencies are turning to Voice over IP (VoIP)-voice service delivered in digital form via the Internet Protocol instead of using traditional public switched telephone networks. VoIP has many advantages over standard phone systems, including cost and economies of scale, because voice and data traffic can be bundled.

For the Commerce Department, which has been moving its headquarters facility and the Census Bureau to VoIP for internal phone use during the past three years, cost was a major reason. "If you add up all the components of cost savings, it turns out to be the best way to go over the long term," says Tom Pyke, Commerce's chief information officer. Analysts evaluated not only start-up costs, but the time the IT staff would need to manage the installation and ongoing maintenance.

"We migrated from more than 140,000 smaller phone systems in the headquarters building, and Census had a bunch of phone systems as well," Pyke says. "We were able to go to a single phone system with a single help desk. We now use the same help desk to provide PC support for the Office of the Secretary [and] to get network and phone service support for the entire building."

For Commerce, a VoIP-based system offered another bonus-a way to provide emergency broadcasts to the entire building through the phones.

The Social Security Administration is testing VoIP at 23 facilities with the goal of replacing all phone systems at its 1,600 sites nationwide. Officials evaluating the system already see benefits. Chief among them is the potential to run voice traffic on the same network as data, video and other information, says Phil Becker, associate commissioner for telecommunications and systems operations at SSA.

The Federal Trade Commission is another enthusi-astic backer of VoIP. In addition to significant cost and time savings for the IT staff, the FTC cites other advantages. The VoIP system occupies four to five times less physical space than the agency's private branch exchange-based system. VoIP uses the network's power source, unlike the older system, which needed its own. Also, users can configure such functions as speed-dialing and call-forwarding through the Web and unified messaging, which allows them to hear e-mail through their phones and check voicemail from e-mail in-boxes, says David Lanexang, a solutions architect with CDW Government Inc. of Vernon Hills, Ill., which is involved in the FTC's move to VoIP.

For the Defense Information Systems Agency, a combination of all these factors-and evaluation and testing by contractors Computer Sciences Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Nortel Networks-sealed the deal.

"They realized they would save money immediately as well as long term," says Bob Dunn, vice president of Nortel PEC Federal Solutions of Fairfax, Va. "They also realized we could provide a network that could not only provide plain voice, but video and data, and that we could do it in a secure fashion. And the benefits of owning and managing their own assets meant they didn't have to rely on a carrier to provide services."

Rating Reliability

As with all technologies, nothing is a slam-dunk-at least not without serious evaluation. That means ensuring that a VoIP-based phone system is as reliable and secure as traditional ones. In large part, security concerns have been allayed because most agencies would run their systems on internal data networks, which already are secure, instead of the Internet.

Reliability and availability, however, continue to be major issues. "The service the phone system delivers has to meet the needs of the employees and the public who are calling us, which means we need satisfactory voice quality and the availability you would get from a conventional phone system," Becker says. The SSA pilot is a way to gauge whether VoIP has what it takes, he says.

Service quality also raises concerns. "VoIP adds another layer of traffic on top of the network, so we have to hone our network's quality of service and operating procedures to respect the fact that VoIP is a lot less tolerant of errors and disconnects than data may be," Becker says.

Many agencies, while forging ahead with the technology for internal use, are stepping more cautiously into the world of VoIP for long-distance communications, where voice is translated into packets and sent long distance to be reassembled into a recognizable voice at the other end.

To ensure the smoothest transition, Commerce is holding off on using VoIP for long distance until the General Services Administration's new NetWorx contract is in place. NetWorx, to be awarded in 2006, will offer an array of telecom and data services to government agencies. "We're hoping that solicitation will be structured in such a way that we can choose from among various sources, just like we do now using the FTS 2001 contract," Pyke says. "And we're hoping there will be a capability available to use for long-distance purposes either explicitly or implicitly under NetWorx."

DISA is in a similar position and is holding off on VoIP for long distance. If the agency chooses that route, service could go through its private network or through the Internet. DISA probably would use its private network for voice and use the Internet for data, Nortel's Dunn says.

The FTC also is taking a pass on VoIP for external calling. External calls are converted to analog communications through the agency's gateway and sent via Verizon, the FTC's local and long-distance carrier. CDW-G is evaluating a potential move to a VoIP system with a different rate structure, Lanexang says.

Making a Case

Each decision to implement VoIP must be based on a compelling business case study. That should include a convincing return on investment, an analysis of whether the technology is consistent with the organization's enterprise architecture and a thorough security evaluation.

Commerce prepared a business case more than three years ago for its headquarters implementation of VoIP and developed a separate study for the Census Bureau. Any decision to expand the system further would be based on business cases developed by the individual bureaus, Pyke says.

Federal technologists and vendors believe the future of VoIP in government is bright. "VoIP offers many possibilities-e-mail to voicemail, fax to e-mail, voice to text, instant messaging and more," Dunn says. "VoIP is a growing offering in the world of convergence."