\u201cThis situation has proven that with the right means, support and trust, you can remove half of the desks in your building \u2013 and in that sense, I don’t think we\u2019ll ever see 700 people at the same time in the office again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ron Lamers, Project Manager at Raad van State, is talking about the acceleration of technology during COVID-19 and how a remote-working solution has changed his organization forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Council of State is one of the oldest governmental organizations in the Netherlands and has two primary tasks \u2013 advising the government and Parliament on legislation and governance, and serving as the country\u2019s highest general administrative court,\u201d explains Lamers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are highly intelligent people who prefer the traditional way of working \u2013 lawyers and judges speaking face to face, and that\u2019s something nobody felt technology could replace. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt least that was their opinion before COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raad van State is the Netherland\u2019s Council of State \u2013 a constitutionally established advisory body to the government that includes members of the royal family and crown-appointed members with a political, diplomatic or military background.<\/p>\n
The council employs around 700 people, mainly lawyers or judges with around 40% administrative staff such as IT and registrars. With a small IT landscape made up of a few legacy systems, Raad van State had always discouraged employees from working remotely. But once COVID-19 restrictions prevented people coming into the office, the council needed to make some quick decisions to allow everyone to keep working from home \u2013 which started by moving to the cloud. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point you need to decide \u2013 are we going to invest in our data centers or outsource to a third party?\u201d says Lamers. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat became the driver for our \u2018Reis naar de Cloud\u2019 (Journey to the Cloud) project, which we launched at the start of 2020 to explore the possibilities of Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raad van State had first experimented with Azure as part of a small trial in 2017, to create an application to help lawyers file appeals online. But security concerns over cloud data prevented the council from doing anything further with the platform. It wasn\u2019t until they announced their new cloud vision for 2020 that Azure was properly reviewed again under the \u2018Reis naar de Cloud\u2019 project.<\/p>\n
\u201cPre-COVID-19, we were already looking to move all our applications to the cloud, so we decided to see how Azure and Windows Virtual Desktop could help people work from home too,\u201d explains Lamers. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur previous remote-working tool needed up to 15 new servers to support everyone remotely, which would take months to put in place. But Azure gives us the flexibility to scale up much faster in the cloud and add more servers or services as and when we need them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith support from Microsoft, we did a proof of concept for around 30 users a week before the Dutch government lockdown,\u201d he says. \u201cTwo weeks later that grew to 250 and now our system can handle 400 sessions. It\u2019s a huge improvement and helped us avoid an enormous backlog of cases when COVID-19 hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as helping people access their desktop from home, Raad van State needed to guarantee security and data storage \u2013 a big priority for the council \u2013 which made educating staff a crucial part of this digital transformation. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo-one is allowed to take a piece of paper outside the building, so you can imagine how moving the whole organization to a virtual world was a big step,\u201d adds Lamers. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe organized workshops to educate everyone on things like multi-factor authentication and Microsoft Teams. They then had the freedom to configure these new tools to suit their way of working and we could be confident that every chat and video call was secure.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Windows Virtual Desktop now implemented across Raad van State, the council has been able to continue carrying out its duties in a safe and secure manner. A shift to remote working that Lamers is sure the organization will take into the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our work can be done from home, but discussing the actual cases still needs to happen in the courtroom,\u201d he says. \u201cThe buildings have been adjusted to meet social distancing so a courtroom that could hold 60-80 people now has room for 20. Through Teams, everyone else can join virtually and shown on a big screen so they can still be part of the discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamers adds, \u201cthe council never had an audio-visual team, but now they\u2019re a key part of the organization to keep all these cameras, screens and devices running \u2013 and in that sense I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever go back.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since May 2018, the council has also had to consider GDPR rules around personal data, creating hesitation around working with third parties and leaving important client data vulnerable. But after careful and thorough high-level conversations between government and Microsoft officials, Raad van State has been able to migrate their data to the cloud with confidence. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve built trust with Microsoft and now believe our data is more secure in Azure than it is on-site,\u201d says Lamers. <\/p>\n
\u201cMicrosoft can spend more money securing their environment and servers than the council, and with all the Microsoft tools we\u2019re using the trust lies much deeper than simply using Azure.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very proud of what we\u2019ve been able to achieve, and it\u2019s helped change the council\u2019s way of thinking towards technology,\u201d says Lamers, talking about how future projects will be affected by the events this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWithout the cooperation with Microsoft, we wouldn’t have been so successful,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we’re now looking to roll out new laptops and mobile devices remotely managed through Intune, as well as bring our development and testing environment to Azure. <\/p>\n
\u201cGovernmental organizations have always been bad at working quickly, and that’s because of regulations they have to go through. But now we all depend on IT \u2013 so if we can provide facts to show how a project will add value to the council, we can get faster approvals to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThis situation has proven that with the right means, support and trust, you can remove half of the desks in your building \u2013 and in that sense, I don’t think we\u2019ll ever see 700 people at the same time in the office again.\u201d Ron Lamers, Project Manager at Raad van State, is talking about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":426214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1804,1911,1829],"class_list":["post-426211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-stories-en","category-digital-transformation-en","category-security-privacy-en","specials-work-productivity-en","verticalIndustries-government-en","stories-how-can-i-work-secure","stories-working-secure-en","businessPriorities-digital-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426211"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427079,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426211\/revisions\/427079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulse.microsoft.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}