Forum Discussion
Colloboration in the Public Sector, Local/State Government - and introduction
We are a small Government agency (~100) and the biggest plus that we've seen so far with users has been them being able to access email with multiple devices from outside our building.
The rest of the features (SharePoint, Groups, OneDrive) have not been embraced. I think they find that the options are too confusing and it is just easier for them to use e-mail and network shares. They now have access, via Terminal Services, to virtual desktops from outside our building and that they've embraced.
Granted, my users are typically non-technical and older, so that may be why they don't embrace it. I have a couple users who have, but they and I can't seem to break through to the others.
If we ever get Planner, Sway, or Teams, one of those might be the break through.
You're in the majority. There's a spectrum of collaboration tool(SharePoint, Groups, etc) usage, and there must be an initial value to convince users to make the effort to change how they're working. If you'd like to increase adoption, I would follow your first benefit - access to e-mail anywhere - with OneDrive usage. I've seen a lot of great adoption when people see that their documents are both on their desktop and on any of their other devices. And that they can also share links with specific people to do drafting.
I remember the days of DOCUMENTNAME-REVISIONDATE-INITIALS as a document name, and if you're in the same boat, maybe you can start showing how SharePoint alleviates some of that repetitiveness ... but I've seen the must success when you start small with a focused group who can then tell other employees what they've been working on and the benefit.
Good luck and let me know how I can help