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would be a large change management effort to normalise remote working , as many of our organisational stakeholders were not that tech-savvy .” Procurement and configuration of hardware , training , embedding collaboration tools , softphones , the VPN and pinning down dual factor authentication made this look like a two-year programme of work .
But two years was not an option when the virus struck . “ We had to think up creative solutions ,” Dimovski notes . “ So , it was about considering ‘ how
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could we chunk down what we said we would do in two years when we need it right now ?’. We formed a resilience group with the other council managers to revise our disaster recovery and business continuity plan . Within IT a 25-person strong resilience group was established to plan for the new reality . We created a movement , a single unit with a single purpose . Nobody once said ‘ this can ’ t be done !’.”
On the tech side , they upgraded internet links to deal with the expected increase in traffic . Once they had chunked down the tasks of getting Teams , the VPN , licensing and other prioritised IT , it didn ’ t take too long to get these in place , Dimovski says . “ We had to fast track solutions that were needed immediately , making sure the security was in place and fixing issues as they arose .” There were a few hurdles , resolved in very short order , with full cooperation from the end users . In the end , the original two-year programme was actually delivered in three or four weeks .
Preparation for this achievement was however started back in January . Before then , she explains ,
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