Standardizing Collaborative Tech
McKeon-White says that organizations are continuing to evolve their video collaboration environments after the boom in the technology over the past several years.
“The main change we’ve seen, really fueled by the pandemic and the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, is the increasing need to centralize and standardize on a single system,” he says.
While the District Court of Oregon also supports other videoconferencing technology, Bolles says the organization has largely standardized on the new tool. “At one point, there were so many different platforms that it felt like staff had to learn something new every couple of days,” he says.
The organization continues to use its existing hardware — including cameras and monitors — in its courtrooms, but the new tool has made the video collaboration process much more intuitive, Bolles says.
“The advantage is that it’s transparent to the outside user. They just connect to the server, whereas before, we spent a lot of time dealing with videoconference protocols,” he says.
“If we’d never connected to a site before, we had to set aside time to do testing. Today, you just dial the seven-digit number, turn the system on and you’re ready to go.”
The court system also uses the technology to facilitate regular meetings between judges and staff at its several sites around the state, as well as to enable daily employee-to-employee collaboration.