Call Recording for Local Government: 6 Security Features to Look For

Local authorities provide important services to the general public. This means that councils not only need to prioritise customer experience, but manage personal data in a secure and compliant way.

We’ve talked previously about the major benefits of call recording for government and local authorities to support better service and risk management. But any prospective call recording solution should also include security features that control access to recording information, support internal policies, and comply with Data Protection standards.

We’ve pulled together the six most important security and compliance features to have on your list when looking for a call recording partner:

1. Secure storage

How you record calls and where you store them are equally important. Firstly, check that your recordings are time stamped and encrypted, so they can’t be tampered with. Secondly, consider where you want to store them, whether that’s locally or in a private cloud, and see what a call recording vendor can offer.

2. Custom retention periods

Local authorities often want to vary the length of time that recordings are kept in each department. If that’s you, then make sure your prospective call recorder lets you set a variety of automated retention periods. In addition, you may need to keep some recordings beyond a set period if they become important evidence in an ongoing investigation. If that’s the case, look for features like Legal Hold that will let you tag specific files to prevent automatic deletion.

3. Custom recording rules

Custom rules let you control which extensions, departments and even individual numbers are recorded/not recorded. For instance, councils typically use call recording in their contact centres but want to end it when the call is forwarded on to an individual. This also helps support regulations like GDPR where customers may ask not to be recorded.

4. Managed access

Data Protection Laws, including GDPR, may give customers the right to listen to or request the deletion of their calls, but chances are you don’t want just anyone viewing or deleting recordings. Access to recordings within a call recording solution should be based on user roles. Look for reporting features that track any such activity within the solution to satisfy due diligence.

5. Safeguarding

Sometimes evidence in call recordings needs to be shared with other parties, like social services. When this happens, it’s important to share information as securely as possible. Some recorders will only let you share MP4 files as bulky attachments, but others can generate secure, time-limited links to the relevant recording on the system that can be shared with anyone within the organisation.

6. Card payment security

Departments that take payments over the phone, such as housing or parking, must not record sensitive card data under PCI DSS regulations. Manually pausing calls is open to human error and abuse, so it’s best to look for a solution that offers automated pause and resume functionality. You could even consider adding an IVR payment system to descope payment from the contact centre entirely.

How Oak can help

ClarifyGo call recording for Microsoft Teams includes features that support all of the above. It also fits with your existing telephony structure, which makes it easy to get up and running.

Flexible deployment – ClarifyGo works in a Microsoft Teams only environment or can be deployed alongside Clarify for PBXs like Avaya IP Office and Mitel MiVoice Business.
Call routing agnostic – ClarifyGo taps directly off the Teams Tenant, so you don’t need to change your call contract.
Captures all call types – ClarifyGo uses Microsoft Graph API integration so it can record all types of calls – audio, video and screens. This includes Teams and PSTN lines. It also includes internal calls as well as calls with external parties, although this can be turned off if it isn’t needed.