Overview:

With reduced budgets and IT sustainability goals, federal agencies are looking for ways to lower their expenses, reduce their travel-related carbon footprint, and improve their employees’ productivity. 

Using GSA Telepresence, government employees can reduce the time, costs, and carbon emissions associated with travel. GSA Telepresence delivers an in-person meeting experience that allows you to share ideas and have an interactive, open dialogue in real time with employees, suppliers, and stakeholders in multiple locations around the United States.

Improve Collaboration

This immersive virtual meeting tool is as simple to launch as a conference call and can be as effective as having a face-to-face meeting.  GSA Telepresence displays participants at their real size, in high-definition video, along with directional high-quality audio to convey tone, facial expressions, and body language.

GSA Telepresence allows you to connect multiple sites, whether intra-agency, agency-to-agency, or agency-to-business to help you conduct:

• virtual meetings
• interviews
• service calls
• presentations
• demonstrations
• consultations 

Availability

Working with the General Services Administration (GSA), AT&T will install 15 telepresence rooms across the United States, including 5 rooms in the Washington, D.C. area. Federal agencies can use these telepresence rooms on a pay-per-use basis.  Please view the list of GSA locations for more information.

Connect Government to Industry

Agencies can also collaborate with over 100 companies and organizations connected to the AT&T Business Exchange and connect to over 2,000 telepresence rooms, including public telepresence rooms at select Marriott locations.

Reduce Travel-Related Carbon Emissions

Telepresence will help federal agencies comply with Executive Order 13514: Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance, which requires agencies to increase energy efficiency and to measure, report, and reduce agency greenhouse gas emissions from direct and indirect activities.  GSA Telepresence will assist agencies in reaching their environmental goals by reducing federal employee travel and commuting.

As detailed in the 2010 study “The Telepresence Revolution,” replacing some travel with telepresence can result in significant global environmental and financial benefits for organizations that deploy telepresence. Specifically, a large business implementing four telepresence rooms can reduce its CO2 emissions by 2,271 metric tons over five years. These reductions are equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over 400 passenger vehicles.  Across the whole economy, large U.S. firms can reduce CO2 by a total of almost 4.6 million metric tons in cumulative cuts in CO2 by 2020. These reductions are equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from almost 880,000 passenger vehicles.

Benefits:  

GSA Telepresence can help you to:

• Conveniently conduct meetings at any of 15 GSA locations across the country.
• Gain better insight and understand participant’s viewpoints by clearly seeing their body language and expressions.
• Reduce project time, along with the cost and hassle associated with traveling today.
• Reduce your agency’s travel-related greenhouse gas emissions and environmental footprint by substituting telepresence for some travel.
• Improve effectiveness by increasing productivity and collaboration among employees, suppliers, and stakeholders in remote locations.
• Foster increased innovation and rapport through live, face-to-face, immersive meeting experiences.
• Telecom managers, create value for your agency by leveraging GSA’s pay-as-you-use conferencing solution, rather than capital investment
• Instantly widen your community of interest with the ability to connect to other public and private locations on the AT&T Business Exchange.

Features:

GSA Telepresence provides immersive video conferencing and offers:

• Easy-to-use web-based application for scheduling and directory assistance
• "Meet-me" capability for multipoint inter-entity meetings via the AT&T Business Exchange
• A pay-per-use model through the GSA network, thereby avoiding individual agency startup costs
• Dedicated conference rooms that can accommodate varying numbers of users (up to 6 or up to 18)
• High Definition Video (1080p), actual size images and realistic, directional audio
• Remote help desk service provided by AT&T
• Audio bridge, enabling audio-only participants
• Encrypted connections are available 
• Initiate a meeting with a single button
• Interoperability through the AT&T Business Exchange with standard and high definition video conferencing equipment (H.320 and H.323)
• Auxiliary screen for sharing PC/laptop content with other participants
• Document camera for displaying non-electronic documents or physical items

Features & Benefits

Resources