Covid-19 response at Worcestershire County Council: Not just keeping the lights on
Geoff Hedges, digital transformation manager at Worcestershire County Council explains how his organisation is keeping processes running smoothly whilst adding additional services to help both internal and external customers - all whilst ensuring morale remains high
The Covid-19 crisis has tested governments, organisations and individuals worldwide. The disruption has affected every corner of the enterprise, with most staff obliged to work remotely.
The challenge has been compounded by the speed of the virus' propagation, and the escalation of government response, with organisations left with little to no time to prepare users and test systems.
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Worceshire County Council found itself at the mercy of the pandemic, but with a duty to continue to serve residents, some of whom were especially vulnerable. Geoff Hedges, digital transformation manager at the Council, tells Computing that the challenge was eased by the near-completion of the Windows 10 migration.
"We are well down road of our Windows 10 migration, with fewer than 300 people out of over 3,000 staff still on Windows 7," says Hedges. "Things are actually starting to calm down, so we're in a fortunate position to be slightly ahead of the curve," he adds.
Having said that, the council isn't completely out of the woods.
"The disruption has had a massive impact on our remote connection technology," Hedges explains. "Our Windows 10 machines use always-on VPN connections effectively scaled for 6,000 users. That system has been working seamlessly throughout this period. A couple of years back when it snowed the previous remote systems were falling over after 200 people logged on. The highest peak we've seen this time is 2,900 concurrent users on VPN. To have it stand up under those conditions is very rewarding to see, especially since there was no time to test in advance.
The Council's core systems are all hosted in the cloud making them available anywhere, further easing the challenge. However, there were still some jitters within the IT department as the pandemic began to unfold.
"There was some mild nervousness around IT," Hedges admits. "We knew the system was scaled for 3,000 people, with a disaster recovery failover for the same number again. But we were more concerned by the internet circuit capacity, since all remote networking traffic has to come in on that. Internet-based services then go back out through the same pipe, and it's only a 1Gb connection, so that was an area of concern.
"The highest peak so far has been 92 per cent usage, but normally it's around 50 per cent. We put some mitigation in there, quickly agreeing some circuits with another provider as a backup and disaster recovery if the first one started to fill up, so we could re-route it."
He adds that the business was also concerned in the early days, asking IT if the systems would stand up to the challenge.
"We said it'll all be fine, but we didn't really know for definite. So it really is great to have it stand up!" says Hedges.
The Council has also produced and rolled out a digital project to help connect volunteers with residents in need of help during the Coronavirus crisis.
"One thing we wanted to spin up here is a digital area where residents can go to register needs, and organisations or individuals can go to register their availability to help. We wanted to match people who need help with those who can, and do that in safe way.
"In under two weeks we've spun up two forms that enable residents to register a need for help, maybe it's shopping, food deliveries, medication, or general health and well-being. And there's also a form for people to volunteer, whether that's driving, chatting, or something else. And there's also space for organisations to register to do voluntary work.
"We built a database on the back end with a dashboard to process those requests. The system enables staff to do that matching up, connecting people and organisations. It also provides a map to show where the offers of help are, and where the requests are. The we can process the requests using the dashboard, and essentially pull it all together."
Hedges adds that the system is also being broadened across the area's district councils, making it available to even more people.
"It's all been made possible by the low code system at the Council - we use Outsystems. It's enabled phenomenal speed, turning it around in ten days, including the requirements gathering phase up front."
The department has also built some forms for the council's HR service, enabling them to capture information on its work force to identify health conditions, so it can see who needed to work from home before the full lock down.
"We also identified key workers with health conditions, so we could make sure they stayed working from home."
Overall it's been a huge volume of work for the council's 90 IT staff, the vast majority of whom have been working remotely since the lock down began, with just a few on site at any time depending on the requirements of the day.
Hedges says that morale has remained high throughout.
"There's quite a positive spirit within IT. We're all super pleased with how our response has been received by the business, we've had some really great feedback. And we have regular catch ups with our teams within IT, to see how everyone's coping, and to help break up their day.
"You get into a mundane routine of jumping from one Skype call to another, or responding to emails which have flooded in whilst you've been on calls. So you don't get the usual flow of meetings, or bump into people to get away from your desk."
Whilst the globe is still very much gripped by the pandemic, Worcestershire County Council is an example of organisation who have been quick to respond, not just keeping the lights on but building innovative new services to improve its own processes, and the lives of its residents.