State Government Computer Tracking for Work at Home Equipment

The infectious nature of COVID-19 has forced millions of people to work from home. For the last four months, people in all positions have been working remotely and adjusting to a new way of doing business. The same goes for many positions in state governments.

While there are some government services that require people to go to the office (such as licensing divisions and county clerks), there are many others that allow for work from home operations. Most of these positions have settled into the rhythm of working from home, and are expecting to be in this mode for several more months to come.

When it comes to state-issued hardware, computer tracking is a vital aspect of running your business. Government equipment often has access to sensitive information that must be kept from getting out into the public. Nowhere is information security more important than when it comes to private information regarding the people many government positions are sworn to serve.

However, when your employees take equipment home with them, it makes computer tracking more difficult.

Improving Work at Home Computer Tracking for Government Positions

There are several options you can choose from when it comes to remote computer tracking.

You can choose to go with the benefit of the doubt and trust your employees to take care of your equipment in the absence of supervision. However, depending on how sensitive the information your employees have access to, that may not be a good idea. If your government branch requires confidentiality or security clearance, you’ll need some way to monitor what your employees are doing at home.

Many employers have invested in employee monitoring software. Most of the time, this monitors what your employees do in a given day by taking screenshots, keylogging, using a web cam, and tracking internet history.

You can also institute firewalls that prevent your employees from visiting sites, such as social media. This will make it more difficult for them to procrastinate on important tasks or spread sensitive information, even inadvertently.

Trusting Employee Integrity

If you feel like it would be too invasive to use employee monitoring software, there are other measures you can institute that would improve employee responsibility.

One of these methods includes a monthly equipment check-up, such as a virtual diagnostic check, to view the health of your employees’ equipment. This can check things like potential malware, broken files, general health of the operating system, and so on. If the check-up catches something problematic, you can investigate further and take measures as needed.

Another method involves having your employees use and regularly update company-wide computer tracking software. When you connect this to an equipment database, it’ll help you get a better picture of how work from home measures impact equipment lifecycles, and what you can do to improve them.

You can also combine these methods and require your employees to write up a weekly report detailing what they accomplished, log any wear and tear on their hardware in a computer tracking system, and track any support they might need from your IT department. No one likes writing reports, but implementing an easy system they can access from their mobile devices or laptops can make the process easier. When your employees know you’ll be monitoring them by requiring them to report in about their equipment usage, they’ll be more inclined to treat their hardware better and keep it functioning well.

Many of us have adjusted to the work from home lifestyle. But there are still other issues to solve. Check back with our blog regularly as we cover the different aspects of how COVID-19 has changed our business landscape.