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The Chamber of Deputies is a key part of Brazil’s Legislative Branch, with 513 elected representatives from all states and the Federal District. It is responsible for legislating, overseeing, and representing society, playing a vital role in the country’s democracy.
The Chamber is supported by more than 10,000 staff members, including legislative consultants, IT professionals, and teams in security, healthcare, logistics and administrative services, all essential to its operations.
The Challenge: Enabling secure digital collaboration in a hybrid work environment
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to a remote at first and then a hybrid work environment at the Chamber of Deputies. Thousands of public servants in different areas had to adopt this new method of working, therefore collaborative tools for messaging, file sharing, and video calls became essential to maintain productivity.
Adapting to this new reality came with complications:
- Many staff members relied on personal apps like WhatsApp, which blurred work-life boundaries, and couldn't provide the level of security needed for institutional communications.
- At the same time, existing administrative services faced mounting inefficiencies, often relying on multiple manual inputs that delayed critical processes.
As a public institution responsible for handling sensitive information, the Chamber needed a secure and internally hosted collaboration platform that could guarantee data sovereignty and legal compliance, while also maximizing operational efficiency through automations and integrations.
“It is extremely important for the Chamber to have a communication platform that serves the internal public and facilitates collaboration.”
~Fábio Surrage de Medeiros
The Solution: A secure platform for efficient collaboration
The process of adopting Rocket.Chat at the Chamber of Deputies began with testing the Community Edition within the Directorate of Innovation and Information Technology (DITEC). With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocket.Chat was also introduced to several departments that required a communication tool.
These departments recognized several standout capabilities such as:
- The ability to operate the platform in an on-premise environment and its open-core nature, which ensured greater transparency and data sovereignty, both critical aspects for secure institutional communications.
By leveraging these benefits, the Chamber’s IT and administrative teams began using Rocket.Chat in two main ways:
- As the foundation for internal service and administrative systems: automating various operations with bots that previously required multiple manual steps. Here, they also saw the opportunity to fully realize their vision of operational efficiency through Rocket.Chat Enterprise’s extensive customization and integration possibilities.
- To improve interdepartmental synergy: By creating rooms with specific areas dedicated to unique discussions, asynchronous work became more efficient. For example, different teams were often working on identical initiatives without realizing that these were underway in other areas. Today, new initiatives are shared in a channel, ensuring that everyone is informed and can participate.
“The difficulty of communication between the various teams within the Chamber of Deputies has always been an area for improvement within the organization. With the use of Rocket.Chat, communication has become much easier.”
~ Fábio Surrage de Medeiros
Results: Improved efficiency for more than 3000 public servants and an average of 90% decrease in request resolution time
Currently, more than 3000 public servants at the Chamber of Deputies use Rocket.Chat across several departments, leveraging it not only for their internal collaboration but to also deliver services.
For example, when an issue occurs, such as a network outage, the IT team can quickly create a dedicated room in Rocket.Chat, bringing all the necessary departments to resolve the incident. This significantly speeds up resolution time by eliminating the need for multiple phone calls between departments to find a solution, all information is centralized in one place, with the direct participation of everyone involved.
Automations with bots has also transformed internal services. Requests that previously took several hours or even days to be completed are fulfilled in just a few minutes. These are a few examples of those services:
The Digital Cabinet of the Parliamentary Support Department (DEAPA):
Previously, an employee would submit a request to a department, which then had to allocate various resources to fulfill the demand, often generating additional reservation requests during the process. To handle simpler requests, the turnaround time was at least 24 hours, while more complex ones could take up to 3 days. Now, with automation, the same procedure is completed in just 5 minutes.
Omnichannel Assistance for the Researches Requests Center of Documents and Informations (CEDI)
Previously, to request research or information, it was necessary to send an email or fill out a form on the portal, and often the following response would indicate that insufficient information had been provided. With the implementation of the bot, all information is automatically verified, and the process is carried out directly through it, which also provides a protocol number and an estimated response time.
“The response time for general staff requests used to range from 24 hours up to 3 days; depending on the complexity of the request. After implementing Rocket.Chat, the average response time for these requests dropped to about 5 minutes.”
~Fábio Surrage de Medeiros
In 2025/26, the Chamber of Deputies will acquire additional citizen engagement and collaboration licenses to expand their usage:
They intend to create new integrations that will improve more routine administrative services and also to provide a wider security of internal confidential communications and decisions in drafting law projects for example.
Additionally, the Chamber of Deputies intends to launch a new citizen support channel via WhatsApp, integrated with Rocket.Chat, in the next semester. By unifying both internal and external communications within the same platform, the Chamber will advance towards a Total Experience model of communication.
“Rocket.Chat was chosen for its stand-out features, and its use intensified due to the urgent need to address demands arising from the COVID-19 pandemic context. After that, the software was officially designated as the Chamber of Deputies' official communication tool.”
~Fábio Surrage de Medeiros
