Dept Foreign Affairs: global staff alerts

With increasing incidences of extreme weather, Ebola and other crises the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was looking for a way to communicate at short notice with staff both in Ireland and in Irish consulates and embassies around the world. The immediacy of SMS as a communication channel and the fact that it is available even without 3G coverage made it an ideal fit for this requirement.

“Email and social media are great for communications that aren’t time-sensitive, but SMS continues to be the best and most ubiquitous messaging platform.”

Púca: 3 Reasons why SMS is still the best solution for Alerts.

In mid 2019 the Department began using impower™ which is the latest iteration of Púca’s messaging platform. impower™ gives the various user groups within the Department the ability to communicate by SMS securely and at a moment’s notice with embassy staff. 

Unlike push notifications or email, SMS is “always on” and 98% of all text messages will be read. SMS has been especially useful during the Covid crisis when information and travel advisories were changing at very short notice.

Using impower™ has given the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade the ability to store message templates and set up mass alerts very quickly from a PC or smartphone.

“The Department has used Púca’s SMS platform to communicate with different groups of staff at short notice such as Covid updates, Crisis alerts, IT alerts and weather warnings. We find SMS is extremely effective for all types of urgent communication, and the Impower console is very easy to use”

ICT Operations Manager, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade