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Government
AVD Migration Project for a Government Department
The sprint to transition this state government’s department to home-based working was spurred by COVID-19 – but it’s proven so successful that some of the changes to the workplace could well become permanent.
The Government agency delivers an array of critically important services across the State including employment screening, disability programs, childcare, youth justice as well as domestic violence support services. Around 3,000 people work for this state government department – most are employees, but the workforce includes some contractors as well.
An executive from the department explains that when the virus struck, they urgently needed to find a way to continue providing these critical services – but also to protect the health and wellbeing of personnel.
While the organisation had developed a cloud-first strategy that would guide future digital transformation, at the start of 2020 it still operated multiple legacy systems and needed to provide a way to allow staff to access those services securely but remotely. Previously, when people needed to work from home, they were provided with virtual private network access. This had proven somewhat clunky, not entirely reliable, and would not scale to the extent that their state’s social isolation rules required.
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The executive also needed to remain mindful that there was a broad range of technical capability among the department staff – some were very tech savvy, others less so. “COVID-19 was a big deal. I had 1,500 people, that I needed to be able to get services to,” the executive explains.
In late 2019, this state government department had started to explore Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) – but at that stage it was technology still at the edge of the executive’s radar. By early 2020 it came into sharp focus.
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The need to rapidly and securely transition 1,500 people to remote working spurred the executive to run a Proof of Concept trial with AVD, first securing approvals from another state government department in charge of cyber security.
The executive explains that the fact they run a significant number of legacy systems drove the decision to move to AVD so quickly. “All we ended up needing to do in many cases was redeploy an application into the Azure Virtual Desktop environment, which is a reasonably simple process, or just make firewall changes to allow access from the Azure Virtual Desktop back into, for example, our mainframe systems. And those mainframe systems, generally speaking, worked pretty well just after those firewall changes.”
Microsoft and Microsoft partner cubesys supported the state government department’s rapid transtormation. As a relatively new technology there were some wrinkles within their deployment to address early on – but those were tackled and the resulting implementation has set a new transformation benchmark for the organisation. According to the executive; “I’m still surprised at how quickly it was deployed. We’ve been talking about digital transformation in government for years and years and years. We basically went digital in about three weeks. From the minute we had COVID-19 to now, there’s almost zero paperwork in the organisation.”
“It’s all being done digitally. I’m still staggered that we were able to do what was probably three vears’ worth of work, and be able to turn that out in as many weeks. I’m still staggered by it, and it’s being used, it’s being used in production every day.”
The executive freely acknowledges the catalysing role of the pandemic and notes that to keep the solution in permanent production there are some approvals still to be secured; “But we’re working through that. I’ve got no reason why it won’t stay as part of the permanent platform post-COVID-19.”
Paul Heaton, CEO of cubesys, notes that one of the reasons that the transformation went smoothly was that AVD allowed the user experience to remain pretty much unchanged, ensuring that people with a computer and internet access at home were able to sign on and get to work pronto. From home employees accessed the the state department’s public facing website, clicked on a login button, input their credentials and then leveraged the state government’s licence for Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication. This ensured secured access to the systems they were authorised to use to perform their work.
From there the executive says; “There was no training per se. We made the assumption that they already knew how to use the applications because they’re using them on a daily basis. And we said what we need to do step by step. We published via email and on our intranet the various instructions for setting up the multi-factor authentication and for logging in and using Azure Virtual Desktop with screenshots and all that really, really basic stuff – click this button, enter this here, enter that there. And it worked pretty well.”
“If you had access to a particular application prior to COVID-19, you have access to that application now. And that’s how we did it and we minimised some of our risk and maximised some of the user experience at the same time.”
There was a spike in calls to the help desk initially, which has since abated, they remarked. People have also had to be reminded to log off completely rather than just close their browsers – but otherwise it was a straightforward transition.
According to the executive, “I think it really is a testament to how easy that it is to use or simple to put in place. To go from very little or no user experience to that’s what we’re using every day to log on and work.”
They add, “Most people are having the same experience from a speed and capability perspective, as they would have had in the office.” Access to Microsoft Teams is also helping to keep the workforce connected and collaborating.
The biggest benefit however is the preservation of service continuity, says the executive. “Residents are still getting the services from DHS that they were getting before. On top of that, because of our COVID-19 response, they’re getting extra services which we are able to deliver without having to all be in the office. And I think that’s the key to what we’ve been able to do from a technology perspective.”
For example, the state department has been able to manage concession changes implemented by both Federal and State Governments and manage its call centre remotely so that people have not had to wait to apply or inquire about concessions.
“I think that there’ll be an expectation of a lot more work flexibility, hours and location. And I think from a government perspective, what l’ve seen in my experience in the last couple of months with COVID-19 is a move to more of an outcome-based focus rather than an attendance focus.”
“People have got taste for it. People don’t like commuting in the best of times. People now are at home with their kids having dinner. Adelaide’s a pretty good commuting town, but in some of the larger cities where you’re spending an hour and a half in the car each way each day, you don’t need to anymore. You can actually work from home. And I think that’s going to have a lot of positive benefits for society, generally.”