In the last decade, globalization and immigration have created more diverse, limited-English speaking populations in all parts of the country. For government organizations, the complexity of today’s global environment has significant implications for the way agencies communicate with their constituents.
In addition to linguistic diversity, a number of critical factors – including the proliferation of digital technologies and evolving regulatory requirements – are causing agencies to rethink how they engage with limited-English populations. With the explosion of mobile devices and online channels, consumers now have sky high expectations and demand access to real-time information across a variety of channels, in their preferred language. These expectations are carried over to their interactions with government agencies.
Furthermore, maintaining compliance with rising regulatory requirements is more important than ever. In fact, current executive orders in the United States require federal agencies to provide equal access to information to limited-English proficiency (LEP) speakers.
Failing to provide language support to all constituents can have legal implications. But most importantly, it prevents citizens from acquiring access to critical information that impacts their everyday lives, such as instructions on how to pay taxes or apply for social security benefits.
So, how can government agencies streamline communications and provide support to all citizens, while staying within ever-shrinking budgets? The key to success lies in translation and interpretation technologies, such as over-the-phone interpretation and real-time translation for self-service and agent-assisted communications channels.
These technologies enable federal agencies to address the following market trends and ultimately provide efficient, cost-effective multilingual support to all constituents:
- Digital Transformation: From banking to retail, many of today’s industries have already embraced digital solutions to reach target audiences, but for the public sector, digital transformation is still in early phases. In the local government arena, several Departments of Motor Vehicles just recently added online chat options for constituents as a communication channel.Federal agencies are looking to similarly expand their constituent outreach. As more digital options come on board, it will be crucial for agencies to make these available across its diverse language populations. The rise of real-time translation technology makes adding multilingual capabilities to these new communications vehicles more cost-effective.
- Do More with Less Mentality: The public sector has been especially impacted by hiring freezes and downsizing, limiting the availability of employees and resources. But, expectations for support across new languages and channels continue to rise, leading to major staffing challenges. By leveraging enterprise-grade translation and interpretation tools, agencies can make the most of limited resources and better serve their diverse constituent base, while improving overall workflow
- Increase Language Breadth: Government agencies need to reach constituents beyond the common languages that the business world typically supports. This means providing support beyond Chinese and Spanish to less common languages, from Acateco to Zulu.However, hiring staff to support a broad language breadth can be expensive and cumbersome. Instead, agencies should leverage real-time translation and over-the-phone interpretation solutions to provide seamless access to all languages without needing to hire multilingual support staff.
As populations become more diverse, government agencies must address the needs of all constituents in their native language. By embracing new technologies, organizations can tackle the challenges of globalization and regulatory pressures, while uncovering new opportunities to ensure effective communications and a positive experience for all constituents.
