isd tech newsletter oct 2013

Vision: to be the Isle of Man Government’s respected partner providing flexible technology support, technology delivery and technology enablement.

ISSUE 1: October 2013

We feel the new help desk hours have gone down well, not only outside ISD (as departments have been trying to log calls before 8:30am of old for some while), but also within ISD (as a lot of staff already come in early). The change has made the support levels become less a er 4pm (instead of 4:30pm when such early staff would leave work), so we have created a rota for not only er 2, but also er 3, i.e. so there is some cover in each area.

Overall though, support being available from 8am, is a good thing – Support calls can be opened by phone for the personal touch etc, but also the support calls can start to be looked at earlier by an engineer. Since ISD normally gets more calls in the morning, this extra 30 minutes gives us a head start on calls and improves the call handling for departments with other support calls which flow in as the day progresses. Help Desk hours: Mon ‐ Thurs: 8am ‐ 5.30pm Fri: 8am ‐ 5pm Telephone: 685556 Email: [email protected]

Helpdesk new hours By Tana Wondergem ‐ Support Manager

Intro by Mark Lewin

Possibly con nued on page 2

As a part of the emailed Service Manager call closure process, we have included the op on for our customers to rate their experience of our call handling of their incidents, requests and queries raised through our Help Desk. This forms an important part of our sa sfac on monitoring process, helping ISD to iden fy and to understand from our Customer feedback your day to day experience and overall percep on on the services delivered by ISD.

The averaged results for the past 3 months are shown below. Access to comple ng the survey (and to results) will also be available through the new customer Portal when this is released. We’d like to encourage all our Customers to complete the call closure survey. Your feedback good or bad will improve our understanding of where we need to target both resource and change exis ng process in order to improve our level of customer service.

Customer Sa sfac on Scores By Mark Douthwaite – Technology Enablement Team.


Over the past few months ISD has had a number of requests to rollout or allow

access to newer versions of the Microso Office Suite. A number of our customers have highlighted how they would like to make use of new features later versions of office include while we as ISD recognise the need for us to maintain our infrastructure and technologies in a supportable fashion with maximum capability. Listening to our customers’ needs we have worked upon making Microso Office 2010 available in the Applica on Catalogue for all users around Government. This delivery mechanism allows individual users to install the Microso Office 2010 upgrade at a me that’s convenient to them (the process takes about 30 minutes and can be ini ated when leaving the office at night). If you would like further Instruc ons to show how this works they can be found here. As some of you will also be aware we are currently upgrading SharePoint

2007 sites in use across the Isle of Man Government to SharePoint 2010. To keep the con nuity in place between SharePoint and Office we made a decision to make this upgrade available now so we are to keep the estate in a consistently supportable fashion, balancing also the age, profile and performance of our broader estate. If you would like to request a specific slot where we can remotely trigger the upgrade for your individual teams of responsibility as we’ve done in the past, then please feel free to contact us to arrange. Our ini al tes ng within ISD highlighted there will be limited (if any) impact on our customer’s day to day workings, however we appreciate that some customers may well have developed complex macros and other features that will operate or be accessed slightly differently in Office 2010. So we believe through allowing individual customers to perform the upgrade themselves at a non‐cri cal me, we can assist with any unlikely issues on a staggered basis resul ng in an overall be er fault fixing service.

Office 2010 upgrades By Nick Leece ‐ Infrastructure, Design and Delivery Manager

ar cle con nued for Mark Lewin

ISD has been working on improving the number of services currently provided out to Isle of Man Government IPads. We have now finished our Mobile Device Manager configura on which allows us to secure Isle of Man Government IPads and then grant access to addi onal features. Current features available for IPads: Mobile Device Management So ware

Security Configura on (similar to the exchange security currently applied)

Virtual Private Network (VPN) Deployment allowing secure traffic to be tunnelled between the device and Isle of Man Government Infrastructure.

BoardPad

Industry leading Mee ng so ware.

SharePoint

Access to Departmental SharePoint Sites.

SharePlus

Access to work on SharePoint files offline.

Exchange Ac veSync

As per today, access to email and calendar. Addi onal Applica on access can be provided on request to ISD who will be able to determine if the request can be achieved. ISD are currently working to get this func onality available on Android devices and no fica ons on this will be provided in due course.

IPads By Nick Leece ‐ Infrastructure, Design and Delivery Manager

http://lyndhurst2.reiltys.government.iomgov/CMApplicationCatalog/

http://edrm/sites/ISD/ProdS/ServInfo/General%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx


On Monday September 2nd 2013, the website developed under the ‘Customer First’ programme moved out of public beta to replace Gov.im. In partnership with the Department of Community Culture and Leisure, the Informa on Systems Division (ISD) have developed a new website which provides access to services without the need for people to know which government department provides the service.

One of the challenges for ISD was to reduce the on‐going costs for Gov.im and simultaneously move to a technology pla orm which would support more agile development. Some of the high level requirements included:

A new Content Management System (CMS) that supports rapid change of design and templates for the site, including full version control, rollback func on and management of content metadata. This ensures the site content stays relevant by enforcing review dates

A new, improved search func on and automa c crea on of Site Maps to improve accessibility for visitors and search engines.

Collec on and repor ng of usage informa on to track customer journeys and most used services

The old Gov.im site was custom‐built for Isle of Man Government; which meant that every new feature had to be built from the ground up. To reduce cost, and to take advantage of advances and ongoing development of internet

technologies, we opted for an Open Source approach – which marked an exci ng new direc on in the delivery of Government digital services. Considering our .Net heritage, we chose Umbraco as the CMS pla orm to build, maintain and support the Gov.im website. The Umbraco pla orm is currently used by large sites including Wired, Vogue, Fox and Microso , proving that it could scale to meet our current and possible future requirements. It also had the backing of one of our on‐island development framework partners who could offer addi onal support. This is our first foray into the Open Source world and we have had to learn many lessons along the way. Dealing with the churn of a product which has its own development cycle is challenging and although the so ware is free, we have had to make a significant investment to understand how the product works and so that we can incorporate it with our development prac ces.

From a technology perspec ve, using an open‐source product to underpin Gov.im is something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. However, the increasing maturity of open source products such as Umbraco has allowed us to demonstrate how open source can improve service delivery and ul mately save Government money. In conclusion we’re confident that we have delivered a versa le, scalable solu on that will benefit Government for many years to come.

Gov.im website moves to Open Source So ware By Jill Ruane ‐ Applica on Delivery Team

ISD are looking to move forward with enabling our customers to self provision (what ISD term ‘Self Service’) as much of their requirements as possible. Our first move in that direc on is the introduc on of Self‐service Password Reset (SSPR) to enable any registered user to reset their own password or unlock their own account rather than relying on the availability of a local Computer Liaison Officer (CLO) or ISD’s Help Desk. Between March and June 2013 Isle of Man Government had approximately 1450 reset passwords. This gives us an average of 362 resets per month which would further extrapolate to 4344 password resets per year. If we es mate that each password reset takes about 5 minutes (the user contac ng someone to help, that user logging in as an Administrator, finding the relevant user account, naviga ng to the password screen and rese ng the password, then informing the user of the new password and logging the password reset for audi ng purposes – this doesn’t take into account those users who found their password locked outside of core business hours which would have taken longer of course) and assuming a 37.5 hour working week this indicates that Isle of man Government staff spend about 10 weeks of the year just rese ng passwords. This 10 weeks of effort is dealt

with by ISD and CLO’s around Government (approximately 300 people in total). It was therefore decided that it would be more cost‐effec ve, efficient and convenient for our customers if we introduced a mechanism to enable every customer to reset their own password as and when they needed to. To that end we undertook a review of appropriate products and decided to purchase a product that was rela vely inexpensive and didn’t e us in to lengthy contracts while s ll having all the

func onality we required. Use of Self‐service Password Reset (SSPR) requires an ini al one‐ me enrolment to set up your iden fying ques ons and register your mobile number (which is part of the authen ca on process when you need to reset your password). We are currently trialling the product in ISD and will soon extend that pilot to include General Registry in the coming weeks. With a successful pilot in General Registry ISD would then plan the roll out of SSPR to the rest of Government.

Self Service By Russell Hawke ‐ Service Delivery Team


ISD has created and appointed two trainee posts as one year limited term appointments, which will provide opportuni es for school or college leavers to start their career in IT. These posts offer trainees valuable experience in a variety of IT disciplines and so help them make that key first step on the career ladder. This is the first me in 3 years that trainee roles have been recruited. The posts were adver sed in July over 4 weeks and 6 candidates were shortlisted for interviews which were held at the end of August. David Collins started on October 7th

and is now working under Juan Bridson on the MannGIS project and will gain experience of Government mapping; Andrew Mar n will join the Online Services team on October 15th and will ini ally work under Carl Watson and will gain experience of applica on development and the online technical infrastructure. Although there will be no guarantee of employment at the end of the one year term, the trainees will have developed the necessary skills and experience to be considered suitable for many IT vacancies that will arise within the public and private sectors.

Appren ceships

By Elaine Litherland ‐ Head of Corporate Services

Many congratula ons to Debs and Geoff Gwinnell and all the staff at Typhoon House. Debs informs “Well this rather crept up on us but 20 years ago today (4th October) this whole print madness began. Geoff set up the company in a shed in Port St Mary. And just like Topsy we have grown and grown. Below, Cloud and his new adopted brother Bracken are hatching plans as we speak to celebrate our 20th Anniversary”.


Iain has recently been appointed to the new role in ISD of the Microso CRM Enterprise Pla orm specialist. This is a role recently created along with the Sharepoint and BizTalk Enterprise Pla orm specialists, eventually working in a small team with the GIS specialist. Iain's role is to support, manage and grow Microso Dynamics CRM within the Government. CRM stands for Customer Rela onship Management and the Microso product is one of the market leaders in its field. Currently it is used in the Department of Economic Development, principally by Tourism for Homestay Accommoda on Availability, but it is also used by Employments, Financial Services, Gaming and Marke ng, and in the Manx Na onal Heritage for subscrip ons to the iMuseum. 'Out of the box' it is an applica on for managing customer contact informa on, however it is so hugely customisable that Fire Services have been looking at it for a Fire Incident Management system. Iain comes to the role a er having spent over 4 years working in Produc on Services in ISD, where he primarily looked a er Applica on Consolida on. He took on this role a er the closure of the HostMann Project and became a vital cog in the process of ge ng applica ons installed or

upgraded in the Data Centre. With ISD's strategy for consolida on of applica ons it was crucial that changes did not break any of them, hence tes ng was performed in a pre‐live environment known as CAT (Consolidated Applica on Tes ng). Iain was also part of the Tag (Technical Architecture Group) Team that approved designs and ensured documenta on was in order. On top of this he also covered a third line team support role for SQL, BizTalk and SCOM (server/applica on monitoring). Prior to this Iain spent several years as a technical resource on the OneMann Project which is more widely now known as e‐Services, but his me in ISD goes back to 1988 when he joined as a trainee analyst/programmer, not quite fresh faced from being a student in the UK at Liverpool Polytechnic, but via a small s nt in the private sector whilst wai ng for a job as a programmer. He spent most of his early years in ISD wri ng and maintaining Cobol code on the COSMOS/CHASSIS DHSS mainframe system. In 1990 he was appointed to the Analyst/Programmer grade, con nuing to work on CHASSIS but being so successful, he was asked to help out with the Tax Mainframe System. Eventually this led to a role on the Help Desk when the Tax system was migrated to a new mainframe pla orm with a gui front‐end, along with ISD's role out of Windows 95 in the mid

1990s. This is s ll running today but has been through several major pla orm changes which Iain was involved with, most notably the migra on from the mainframe to a SQL pla orm. Prior to this, he spent 3 years as a project manager rolling out unified messaging across the Government. This was ISD's first introduc on in providing voice mail on phones and desktop faxing, but the most challenging part was trying to sell it, as it was the first me that ISD charged customers for an applica on. It cost £100 per user and at the end of the project in 2003 there was in excess of 1600 users. Away from work, Iain is interested in military history, classic cars, follows sport and has recently started to learn Manx Gaelic. He has been involved with the Manx Avia on Preserva on Society, owned a World War Two jeep for nearly 20 years which had some TV history in the A‐Team and which he drove to Normandy for one of the D‐Day commemora ons. He plays for Valkyres Cricket Club and has recently started playing Badminton again but with colleagues from work. If you've like to know more about CRM and how it may help your department then please contact Iain in ISD on 685357 or via email at [email protected].

We are upgrading our remote access service to support a wider range of clients. As well as providing internet access from home PCs the updated service will enable connec ons from Apple Mac and some slate devices as well. The systems are currently being tested with ISD staff and when completed we will start external pilots followed by a full roll out. Updated user guides and a system compa bility list will be published when the service goes live.

New remote access portal By Steve Parker ‐ Infrastructure, Design and Delivery Architecture

Staff Profile on Iain Walker ‐ Enterprise Applica on Manager


Desktop/Technical Health Tip By Karl Millar ‐ Service Delivery Analyst

Guide to set up the printer

1. Click Start 2. Open Devices and Printers

3. Click on Add a printer.

4. Select Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer.

5. Click on Find a printer in the directory, based on loca on or feature, click Next.

6. Name Field *tag number of the printer*

Leave Loca on field blank. Click Find Now.

7. Double click on the found printer.

The installa on will be started.

Once installa on completed, the window should look similar to this one. Click Next.

8. Tick the box if you want to set as the default printer and click Finish

If there’s something you have difficulty with that you would like us to feature as a technical how‐to p please submit your sugges ons here.

mailto:[email protected]


Over the last few months ISD and Manx Telecom have been pu ng a large amount of effort (and resource) into upgrading the core of the network. This consists of 6 main switches, 4 of which are used to connect all the servers in the data centres to the network, the other 2 are to connect buildings to the network. This work has been required to ensure we maintain the supportability and resilience of the network. Since the end of July, following careful planning and lots of weekend working, we have upgraded the 4 server switches and by the 18th October we will have replaced the remaining

2 switches. During the process we have had a number of issues which have delayed and caused impact to services, however it has also enabled us to test and rec fy a number of problems which means we are now in a be er posi on in terms of resilience. Once all the switches have been upgraded we will be tes ng a number of failure scenarios to ensure that the network behaves as designed. More informa on will be provided once the planning for this is complete.

Network Performance By Brian Osborn ‐ Service Support Team

ISD Top Level Structure


Contact details

Tell us where we work well or where we have failed to meet your expecta ons. If you have recently had an Incident Ticket closed and would like to leave feedback on your experience, please do so here at the Incident Management Survey The ISD Help Desk can be contacted by telephone on +44 1624 685531 or email [email protected]. If you have a need to make a formal complaint against anyone in ISD (for misconduct, harassment, etc.) please contact Elaine Litherland at [email protected]. For any other sugges ons or comments regarding ISD please contact us here.

Informa on Systems Division

St Andrews House Finch Road Douglas Isle of Man IM1 2PX

+44 1624 685556



http://edrm.reiltys.government.iomgov/sites/ISD/ProdS/ServInfo/Lists/customersurvey/NewForm.aspx?Source=http%3A%2F%2Fedrm%2Ereiltys%2Egovernment%2Eiomgov%2Fsites%2FISD%2FProdS%2FServInfo%2FLists%2Fcustomersurvey%2Foverview%2Easpx
