Before You Modernize Government Workspaces, Experience What Works
A firsthand look at how collaboration technology and workspace design are shaping modern government work.
Across government, CIOs and IT leaders are being asked to modernize collaboration environments while agencies redefine where and how work happens.
Government teams now move between offices, field locations, and remote settings. Meanwhile, agencies are balancing return-to-office expectations while consolidating and better utilizing facilities. Meeting spaces originally designed for fully in-person collaboration must now support both on-site and distributed participation, delivering consistent communication and user experiences across buildings and departments.
These decisions carry lasting operational impact. Workspace and collaboration investments influence IT support models, workforce productivity, and service delivery for years to come. Once deployed, they are difficult and costly to reverse. Yet modernization rarely occurs all at once. Agencies must align workforce expectations with procurement timelines, existing infrastructure, security requirements, and long-term operational accountability.
For many government IT leaders, the challenge is not simply selecting new technology. The challenge is understanding how workspace design, collaboration platforms, and user experience perform together in real operating environments before advancing large-scale change. The Steelcase and Logitech Connecting Communities Tour offers an opportunity to do exactly that.
What Government Leaders Often Come to Evaluate
IT leaders attending the Connecting Communities tour are typically working through active modernization or workplace planning efforts rather than exploring future concepts.
Common questions tend to center on consistency and practicality. How can meeting experiences remain reliable across facilities? What environments encourage adoption instead of workarounds? How can collaboration upgrades simplify IT support rather than introduce additional complexity?
These same priorities are reflected in recent government modernization efforts highlighted in Logitech’s article, Celebrating Government IT Efficiency and Workforce Innovation, which explores how agencies are improving productivity and workforce enablement by standardizing collaboration environments and simplifying workspace technology management. The lesson shared across agencies is consistent: successful modernization depends as much on usability and manageability as it does on performance.
Seeing environments in operation helps leaders evaluate how workspace decisions translate into day-to-day use, often providing clarity before moving forward with pilots or broader deployment planning.
Seeing Modern Government Workspaces in Practice
Technology evaluations are often conducted through specifications, virtual demonstrations, or isolated product reviews. What is harder to assess is how collaboration environments function once employees begin using them in real working conditions.
The Connecting Communities tour provides an opportunity to walk through fully operational workplace environments where Steelcase design and integrated collaboration technology function together as a complete ecosystem. Instead of focusing on individual devices, the experience shows how agencies support hybrid meetings, shared workspaces, leadership coordination, and cross-team collaboration.
Many leaders find that experiencing these environments firsthand changes how modernization discussions unfold internally, shifting conversations from individual upgrades toward repeatable workplace standards.
Why Workspace Strategy Is Increasingly an IT Conversation
Workspace decisions are no longer limited to facilities planning alone. Across government organizations, collaboration environments now directly influence network performance, device management, cybersecurity posture, and long-term operational support.
This is particularly evident in defense and mission-critical environments, where collaboration systems must deploy consistently across secure infrastructures. Logitech’s perspective in Modernizing Defense Collaboration highlights how standardized deployments help agencies streamline collaboration while maintaining operational readiness across distributed defense environments.
For many IT leaders, modernization success increasingly depends on aligning workspace strategy with platform standardization and lifecycle management from the start.
How One County Approached Workspace Modernization
Many government organizations are already moving toward more standardized collaboration environments as part of broader modernization strategies. Wake County, North Carolina, faced a familiar challenge, supporting a growing hybrid workforce while ensuring meeting experiences remained simple and consistent across departments. By standardizing collaboration environments, the county created a reliable and intuitive meeting experience for both in-office and remote employees, as outlined in the Wake County Government collaboration case study.
County leadership found that consistent collaboration environments not only improved meeting effectiveness but also supported workforce flexibility and talent recruitment across a rapidly growing region, shifting collaboration from individual room upgrades to a scalable workplace strategy aligned with long-term operational goals.
Inside Modern Government Workspaces
Across government organizations, modernization increasingly begins with the spaces where employees actually work. IT leaders are being asked to support a growing mix of assigned workstations, shared touchdown areas, small meeting rooms, hybrid boardrooms, and open collaboration environments while maintaining a consistent and intuitive experience across buildings and departments.
During the Connecting Communities tour, leaders move through these environments in sequence, experiencing how workspace design and collaboration technology operate together as a unified ecosystem rather than isolated deployments.
Home Base: Supporting Focused Work and Employee Well-Being
Home Base environments reflect how individual workstations now serve as primary collaboration spaces rather than isolated desks. Government employees frequently move between focused work, virtual meetings, citizen engagement, and interagency coordination throughout the day, making comfort, visibility, and audio quality critical to sustained productivity.
Standardized workstation setups demonstrate how agencies can create consistent personal workspace experiences across departments while simplifying deployment and long-term IT support.
A typical Home Base configuration may include:
MX Keys Combo for Business, providing consistent, high-performance input devices that support precision and familiarity across departments
MX Brio 705 for Business webcam with auto-framing that adjusts automatically as employees move between seated and standing positions, supporting height-adjustable desks increasingly used in modern government offices
Zone Wireless 2 headsets that deliver professional audio quality and active noise suppression, helping employees remain focused in open or shared work environments
Establishing standardized peripheral configurations helps to optimize employee performance and comfort, while helping agencies reduce device variability, simplify deployment, and minimize ongoing support requirements.
Although not shown within the tour environments, agencies can also explore dedicated ergonomic solutions positioned where long-duration computer use or specialized accessibility needs exist, supporting workforce comfort, safety, and injury prevention initiatives increasingly prioritized across government workplaces.
Open Touchdown Spaces: Enabling Shared and Hybrid Work
Beyond assigned workstations, Open Touchdown environments demonstrate how shared seating and hoteling models support mobile and hybrid staff as agencies consolidate facilities and make better use of limited office space. Here, employees experience how consistent personal workspace technology allows them to move between desks without sacrificing productivity, familiarity, or meeting readiness.
In practice, employees can easily find and reserve available desks through integrated workplace booking platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom Workspace Reservation, Appspace, or Logitech’s desk booking. Upon arriving at the workspace, employees can check in directly through Logi Dock Flex, a managed docking station designed to support personalized desk booking and shared workspace management.
Once a laptop is connected, Logi Dock Flex automatically confirms occupancy, activates connected peripherals, and personalizes the workspace experience. This helps shared desks function as predictable, ready-to-use environments while also providing IT and facilities teams valuable insight into workspace utilization.
A typical shared workspace configuration may include:
Logi Dock Flex to support desk reservation, workspace check-in, and integrated docking experiences
MK625 for Business Wired Combo providing reliable, IT-managed peripherals without Bluetooth pairing or dongle management
Brio 505 (TAA-compliant) webcam supporting secure, professional video participation for regulated environments
- Zone Wireless 2 or Zone Wired 2 headsets delivering consistent, high-quality communication experiences across shared desks
Standardizing wired peripheral configurations further simplifies the employee experience while reducing operational overhead for IT teams. By eliminating common connectivity challenges associated with dongles, Bluetooth pairing, or inconsistent device configurations, agencies can reduce help desk calls, streamline device management, and maintain consistent performance across high-use shared environments.
For many agencies, these environments highlight how small operational details, such as desk booking, consistent peripherals, and predictable connectivity, can significantly reduce friction for employees while simplifying long-term support for IT teams. As hybrid work models continue evolving across government, these practical considerations are becoming central to workspace modernization strategies.
Huddle and Small Collaboration Spaces: Simple Meetings, Anywhere
As individuals move from shared workstations into quick coordination discussions with colleagues, smaller collaboration environments become some of the most frequently used meeting spaces across government facilities. These rooms support quick coordination, confidential discussions, and hybrid participation, often without dedicated technical support available.
Because of this, ease of use and meeting reliability become critical design priorities.
Solutions such as MeetUp 2 demonstrate how agencies can extend standardized video collaboration into compact meeting environments without requiring complex installations or room redesigns. Paired with Logitech Tap, employees benefit from a familiar one-touch meeting experience that allows meetings to begin immediately without managing cables, adapters, or device setup.
A typical huddle room configuration may include:
MeetUp 2, an all-in-one video bar designed for small collaboration spaces
Logitech Tap touch controller to enable one-touch meeting start for Microsoft Teams or Zoom
Standardizing these smaller rooms helps reduce meeting delays, minimize user error, and significantly decrease support requests, allowing IT teams to scale collaboration capabilities across facilities with fewer operational resources.
Hybrid Boardrooms: Standardizing Medium and Large Meeting Spaces
Medium and large meeting rooms often support leadership briefings, interagency coordination, and operational decision-making. These environments must support clear communication between participants in the room and those joining remotely.
The Hybrid Boardroom environment demonstrates how agencies can standardize larger collaboration spaces while maintaining consistent meeting experiences across facilities.
Deployments built around the Logitech Rally family, combined with Logitech Sight, enhance visibility of in-room participants so remote attendees remain fully engaged in discussions involving distributed teams.
Typical hybrid boardroom environments may include:
Rally Bar or Rally Plus systems to support medium and large meeting spaces
Logitech Sight, an AI-powered table camera that provides remote participants a clearer view of in-room conversations
Logitech Tap controllers to deliver consistent one-touch meeting experiences
For many government organizations, collaboration deployments must also align with procurement and security requirements. Logitech collaboration solutions are available in TAA and NDAA-compliant configurations, supporting deployment across regulated and mission-critical environments while simplifying acquisition through approved contracting vehicles.
These requirements are increasingly central to defense modernization initiatives, as explored in Logitech’s article on modernizing defense collaboration in secure government environments.
Open Collaboration Zones: Flexible Spaces That Adapt to Mission Needs
Government work increasingly happens outside traditional conference rooms. Teams frequently gather in open collaboration areas for training discussions, operational planning, or quick coordination sessions.
Open Collaboration Zones demonstrate how agencies can support these flexible environments without requiring permanently installed infrastructure.
Flexible solutions such as Rally Board 65 combine interactive collaboration and video conferencing into a single integrated solution that can be deployed on a mobile cart, wall mounted, or installed on a freestanding stand to support a variety of collaboration spaces.
These environments allow agencies to support collaboration in spaces such as:
training rooms
shared project areas
emergency operations coordination spaces
reconfigurable multi-purpose environments
Because the technology can move with the space, organizations can adapt collaboration environments without redesigning rooms around fixed infrastructure.
This flexibility is increasingly valuable as agencies continue consolidating facilities and redesigning workplaces to support hybrid operations.
Managing Collaboration and Workspaces at Scale
Not every capability supporting modern collaboration environments is visible within the mobile showcase. However, these technologies play an important role in helping agencies manage collaboration spaces and maintain consistent experiences across distributed workplaces.
As agencies modernize offices to support hybrid work and shared environments, workspace utilization is becoming increasingly important. With many organizations balancing return-to-office expectations while consolidating facilities and making better use of existing real estate, visibility into how meeting rooms and collaboration spaces are actually used is becoming essential.
Several technologies support this broader workspace management approach:
Tap Scheduler provides clear room availability visibility and scheduling coordination, including spaces without installed video systems.
Logitech Spot, an occupancy and environmental sensor, helps organizations understand how collaboration spaces are used while monitoring conditions such as occupancy and air quality.
Logitech Extend enables secure bring-your-own-device connectivity so employees or visiting partners can launch meetings from agency or guest laptops while maintaining consistent room experiences.
Logitech Sync provides centralized management, updates, and device insights across buildings and locations.
Logitech Select services support long-term reliability through proactive support and lifecycle management for collaboration systems.
Together, these capabilities help agencies move beyond deploying collaboration technology to managing workspace environments more holistically while simplifying operations for both IT and facilities teams.
What IT Leaders Often Take Away
Many organizations arrive at the Connecting Communities tour focused on evaluating individual collaboration tools. What many discover instead is how workspace design, user experience, and standardized technology must operate together to support modern government work.
Seeing these environments in operation often inspires leaders to recognize several practical takeaways:
Consistent meeting room experiences reduce friction for employees and increase adoption of collaboration platforms.
Standardized peripherals and simplified meeting start-up reduce support calls and help IT teams scale deployments across facilities.
Integrated workspace strategies spanning personal workspaces, shared desks, and meeting environments create more predictable and manageable technology ecosystems.
Early evaluation opportunities, including proof-of-concept programs and TAA-compliant deployment options, help agencies move forward with modernization initiatives more confidently.
Rather than leaving with a list of products, many government leaders leave with a clearer roadmap for modernizing collaboration environments in ways that empower employees, simplify IT operations, and support mission delivery across distributed teams.
Evaluate Collaboration Environments Before Advancing Modernization Plans
The Steelcase and Logitech Connecting Communities Tour is entering its final phase, with only seven remaining cities across the United States.
For organizations planning collaboration upgrades, workspace standardization initiatives, or facility modernization efforts, this represents an opportunity to evaluate proven approaches before making long-term investment decisions.
Upcoming Tour Locations
Los Angeles, CA | March 16 – March 27
Nashville, TN | March 23 – April 3
Santa Clara, CA | April 13 – April 24
Philadelphia, PA | April 20 – May 1
Seattle, WA | May 11 – May 22
Detroit, MI | May 18 – May 29
St. Louis, MO | June 15 – June 26
Request a Guided Tour
Modernization decisions carry long-term operational consequences. Experiencing collaboration environments in realistic settings allows agencies to better evaluate approaches prior to deployment and move forward with greater confidence.
Unable to attend a tour stop? Contact our Public Sector team to discuss your modernization initiatives or learn about available evaluation programs.
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