What government teams need now: Speed, security and smarter collaboration with Slack

Across government, agencies are under mounting pressure to modernize how they operate by streamlining workflows, improving responsiveness and delivering better outcomes to the public. Yet many still rely on legacy communication systems that introduce unnecessary friction.

“There is no work operating system that allows your government employees to stay in the flow without having to swivel to a secondary system,” said Jamison Braun, Salesforce’s vice president of global public sector. 

Civil servants, or “swivel servants,” as Braun put it, are constantly bouncing between systems, logging out of one, into another, and back again just to send a quick update or retrieve a file. This nonstop context-switching doesn’t just waste time — it fractures mission-critical workflows, creating white space where nothing gets done.

Traditional communication methods like email and on-prem chat compound the problem. Agencies have long treated communication as a top-down exercise — “an email sent equals a task received,” as Braun noted. In reality, though, messages bounce, out-of-office replies pile up and no one can trace a clear chain of custody. The result is predictable: missed updates, hidden information and slow decision loops.

“The tools most agencies use were originally intended for more basic communication,” said Jaclyn Figueroa, principal solutions engineer at Salesforce. “A lot of these legacy systems that our customers are using don’t work for the real-time collaboration that they need.” 

Agencies today need tools that support dynamic, cross-functional collaboration; especially as modern workflows see teams spread across time zones or devices.

A game changer for government teams

Slack’s value lies in what it removes: silos, lag and unnecessary complexity. Designed as a secure, FedRAMP-authorized collaboration platform, Slack helps public sector teams meet mission-critical goals, all within a compliant environment.

“Slack is where work happens,” Figueroa explained. Whether it’s case management or internal requests like password resets and time-off approvals, everything can be handled in one place, securely and at scale. Moreover, its integrations allow agencies to embed key processes like approvals, task tracking and document management directly into the communications flow. “You don’t need five apps to complete one task,” Figueroa added. “You just ask, click and move on.”

Slack’s AI-powered capabilities take it a step further. Recaps, summaries and intelligent search functions help users stay up to date, even after time away.

According to Braun, a government operator who manages industrial cranes created individual channels for each machine — like tail numbers on an aircraft. Instead of spending hours on shift changeovers, team members use Slack to track everything in real time. “That gave people two hours back every day,” Braun noted. “That means more ballet recitals, more little league games, more time with their families.”

Supporting government efficiency when it matters most

At a time when public servants are expected to “do more with less,” Slack is helping agencies stay productive without sacrificing security or efficiency.

For example, during a recent violent conflict, cybersecurity teams at multiple U.S. federal agencies used Slack to spin up secure, cross-agency incident response channels — coordinating real-time intelligence sharing in ways traditional methods couldn’t match. Similarly, in 2021, a federal cybersecurity agency used Slack to coordinate a response to Russian disinformation that spanned sectors from banking to energy, force protection to refugee support.

As Braun noted, Slack became the connective tissue for interagency collaboration. When it mattered most, Slack scaled to support hundreds of people across government and NGOs.

To make efficiency accessible, the U.S. General Services Administration recently announced a governmentwide agreement with Salesforce to reduce the cost of Slack for agencies. Under the deal, agencies can access Slack Enterprise plans at up to 90% off, through November 30, 2025.

“This is the right thing to do for all Americans,” Braun noted. “It enables agencies to work smarter — leveraging digital labor, streamlining workflows, and fostering collaboration to better meet mission demands.”

Learn more about how Slack is transforming public sector collaboration.