OIT Case Study
OIT Colleagues:
The past several months have been extraordinarily busy ones for OIT and our organization is transforming rapidly. We’ve established a good collaborative momentum that is serving us well as we press forward to wrap up the fiscal year (FY) with a strong finish.
In my last message to you, I described the priority projects that OIT planned to concentrate on in FY15. We specifically set out to fulfill a two-fold objective: strengthening our infrastructure and elevating the service we deliver to our customers. As I look back on this past fiscal year, I am very pleased with the headway we made in reaching those strategic goals. Thanks to your hard work and commitment, we’ve accomplished quite a bit together and I’d like to recap …show more content…
a few of our successes.
Strengthening EOIR’s Infrastructure: Stabilizing and Securing our Network
Throughout FY15, OIT invested significant time and energy in initiatives to reinforce EOIR’s infrastructure and secure the enterprise environment.
The Infrastructure Modernization (IM) project, OIT’s priority project for FY15, has made great strides in a short period of time. This cornerstone IT initiative updates EOIR’s hardware to a more contemporary solution that will optimize enterprise applications and provide system stability for years to come. IM Phase 1, which upgraded outdated hardware and implemented a data backup solution at EOIR Headquarters, is now complete. The IM team is currently building out Phases 2 and 3 of the project, which will upgrade servers at the Data Center in Rockville, MD and implement an enterprise data backup solution, as well as a backup mirror. In order to enact some important security measures, we have elevated Phase 5 of the IM initiative. As a result, we are upgrading the file/print servers at EOIR courts slightly ahead of …show more content…
schedule.
We have also been actively working to enforce a number of DOJ cybersecurity policies aimed at protecting our users, improving our security posture, and safeguarding our network. The work that OIT has done in this area has placed us well ahead of the cybersecurity curve within DOJ. Because of our team’s dedication to serving as good stewards of enterprise assets, I’m pleased to report that EOIR is now 100% PIV card compliant. This is a major accomplishment and we should all be proud of the steps we’ve taken to preserve our environment.
Although OIT’s infrastructure stabilization and security work is ongoing, the progress we made in FY15 leaves us well-positioned for achieving even greater success in the next fiscal year. It’s rewarding to know that we are already hearing positive feedback from our customers on the improvements we have rolled out thus far. These efforts are not only beneficial to our users – they are vital to the future of our business. Having a more reliable, stable environment in place will allow us to shift gears from reactive maintenance to business improvement and modernization. That shift will be crucial as we look at defining the next generation of modern court applications over the course of the next few years.
Elevating Service Delivery: Meeting Customer Needs
In FY15, we began making changes designed to revamp OIT into a more customer-centric organization.
Talking with our customers about the routine challenges they face in the field enabled us to identify concrete ways of swiftly relieving a number of IT pain points. One way we’re striving to alleviate user frustration is by enhancing our support approach to make it easier for users to request and obtain the support service they need. To this end, OIT is currently in the process of assigning field site administrators (FSA), who will serve as on-site technical resources for all IT-related issues and service requests in their respective regions. By the end of August, we will have deployed 4 out of 5 FSAs to their designated sites. Our IT service request system is also being overhauled, as we transition to Microsoft Service Manager – a tool that will both facilitate improved workflow and boost our ability to resolve issues in a timely, efficient manner. EOIR’s Help Desk is already using Service Manager internally and we plan to open up a self-service portal to users by the end of
August.
We know that inadequate, failure-prone equipment is another daily challenge for our users. This is why we are working to refresh some of our outdated equipment, both at Headquarters and in the field. Plans are in place for replacing the printing equipment at court sites with more modern and dependable printers and scanners. We are also updating EOIR’s voice over IP (VOIP) system by upgrading switches and some of the outdated phones still in use. Additionally, OIT has deployed 122 new Video Teleconferencing (VTC) units deployed to court sites so far.
In addition to support changes and equipment upgrades, OIT’s ongoing business improvement and application initiatives are yet another key aspect of our renewed commitment to customer service. We are now holding regular one-on-one sessions with each component to discuss priorities for EOIR’s mission-critical applications. Going forward, our strategy for application development and support will be to “work smarter.” We plan to leverage more modern technology solutions and industry best practices for configuration and change management, as we search for better long term ways of meeting our customer’s needs. Below are some highlights of the recent progress we’ve made on just a few of the business improvement projects we have been pursuing in FY15: eInfo: OIT successfully rolled out eInfo, a web-based application allowing attorneys and fully accredited representatives to view their clients‘ case information and retrieve and filter case information.
Digital Audio Recording (DAR) System Upgrade Project: The first phase of the DAR project is complete, with 93 workstations upgraded to date.
CASE: We have completed disaster recovery planning for CASE; procedures are now in place to ensure business continuity for the CASE application.
In the long run, the infrastructure stabilization and customer support changes we set in motion in FY15 will help free us up so that we can sharpen OIT’s focus on modernizing our business. Thank you for helping us lay a solid foundation for all that comes next. In FY16, we will be turning our attention to policy. We will be revisiting a number of OIT’s governing policies and procedures, in search of areas that we can streamline and simplify as much as possible. I look forward to sharing more of our policy plans with you in my next message.
Each day, I see our team acting on good ideas that are changing OIT for the better. My door is always open to your feedback and I welcome your thoughts on how we can continue to improve. Please contact me at Terryne.Murphy@USDOJ.GOV with any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.
The past several months have been extraordinarily busy ones for OIT and our organization is transforming rapidly. We’ve established a good collaborative momentum that is serving us well as we press forward to wrap up the fiscal year (FY) with a strong finish.
In my last message to you, I described the priority projects that OIT planned to concentrate on in FY15. We specifically set out to fulfill a two-fold objective: strengthening our infrastructure and elevating the service we deliver to our customers. As I look back on this past fiscal year, I am very pleased with the headway we made in reaching those strategic goals. Thanks to your hard work and commitment, we’ve accomplished quite a bit together and I’d like to recap …show more content…
a few of our successes.
Strengthening EOIR’s Infrastructure: Stabilizing and Securing our Network
Throughout FY15, OIT invested significant time and energy in initiatives to reinforce EOIR’s infrastructure and secure the enterprise environment.
The Infrastructure Modernization (IM) project, OIT’s priority project for FY15, has made great strides in a short period of time. This cornerstone IT initiative updates EOIR’s hardware to a more contemporary solution that will optimize enterprise applications and provide system stability for years to come. IM Phase 1, which upgraded outdated hardware and implemented a data backup solution at EOIR Headquarters, is now complete. The IM team is currently building out Phases 2 and 3 of the project, which will upgrade servers at the Data Center in Rockville, MD and implement an enterprise data backup solution, as well as a backup mirror. In order to enact some important security measures, we have elevated Phase 5 of the IM initiative. As a result, we are upgrading the file/print servers at EOIR courts slightly ahead of …show more content…
schedule.
We have also been actively working to enforce a number of DOJ cybersecurity policies aimed at protecting our users, improving our security posture, and safeguarding our network. The work that OIT has done in this area has placed us well ahead of the cybersecurity curve within DOJ. Because of our team’s dedication to serving as good stewards of enterprise assets, I’m pleased to report that EOIR is now 100% PIV card compliant. This is a major accomplishment and we should all be proud of the steps we’ve taken to preserve our environment.
Although OIT’s infrastructure stabilization and security work is ongoing, the progress we made in FY15 leaves us well-positioned for achieving even greater success in the next fiscal year. It’s rewarding to know that we are already hearing positive feedback from our customers on the improvements we have rolled out thus far. These efforts are not only beneficial to our users – they are vital to the future of our business. Having a more reliable, stable environment in place will allow us to shift gears from reactive maintenance to business improvement and modernization. That shift will be crucial as we look at defining the next generation of modern court applications over the course of the next few years.
Elevating Service Delivery: Meeting Customer Needs
In FY15, we began making changes designed to revamp OIT into a more customer-centric organization.
Talking with our customers about the routine challenges they face in the field enabled us to identify concrete ways of swiftly relieving a number of IT pain points. One way we’re striving to alleviate user frustration is by enhancing our support approach to make it easier for users to request and obtain the support service they need. To this end, OIT is currently in the process of assigning field site administrators (FSA), who will serve as on-site technical resources for all IT-related issues and service requests in their respective regions. By the end of August, we will have deployed 4 out of 5 FSAs to their designated sites. Our IT service request system is also being overhauled, as we transition to Microsoft Service Manager – a tool that will both facilitate improved workflow and boost our ability to resolve issues in a timely, efficient manner. EOIR’s Help Desk is already using Service Manager internally and we plan to open up a self-service portal to users by the end of
August.
We know that inadequate, failure-prone equipment is another daily challenge for our users. This is why we are working to refresh some of our outdated equipment, both at Headquarters and in the field. Plans are in place for replacing the printing equipment at court sites with more modern and dependable printers and scanners. We are also updating EOIR’s voice over IP (VOIP) system by upgrading switches and some of the outdated phones still in use. Additionally, OIT has deployed 122 new Video Teleconferencing (VTC) units deployed to court sites so far.
In addition to support changes and equipment upgrades, OIT’s ongoing business improvement and application initiatives are yet another key aspect of our renewed commitment to customer service. We are now holding regular one-on-one sessions with each component to discuss priorities for EOIR’s mission-critical applications. Going forward, our strategy for application development and support will be to “work smarter.” We plan to leverage more modern technology solutions and industry best practices for configuration and change management, as we search for better long term ways of meeting our customer’s needs. Below are some highlights of the recent progress we’ve made on just a few of the business improvement projects we have been pursuing in FY15: eInfo: OIT successfully rolled out eInfo, a web-based application allowing attorneys and fully accredited representatives to view their clients‘ case information and retrieve and filter case information.
Digital Audio Recording (DAR) System Upgrade Project: The first phase of the DAR project is complete, with 93 workstations upgraded to date.
CASE: We have completed disaster recovery planning for CASE; procedures are now in place to ensure business continuity for the CASE application.
In the long run, the infrastructure stabilization and customer support changes we set in motion in FY15 will help free us up so that we can sharpen OIT’s focus on modernizing our business. Thank you for helping us lay a solid foundation for all that comes next. In FY16, we will be turning our attention to policy. We will be revisiting a number of OIT’s governing policies and procedures, in search of areas that we can streamline and simplify as much as possible. I look forward to sharing more of our policy plans with you in my next message.
Each day, I see our team acting on good ideas that are changing OIT for the better. My door is always open to your feedback and I welcome your thoughts on how we can continue to improve. Please contact me at Terryne.Murphy@USDOJ.GOV with any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.