Keeping Employees Safe by Supporting Remote Work

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic drove the global workforce to work remotely to ensure the safety of all workers. The use and benefits of remote tools and applications became crucial for Howard County, Maryland to ensure productivity, sustain an active workforce, and serve residents safely. On March 15, 2020, the Department of Technology and Communication Services (DTCS) was tasked to equip all County employees with the ability to telework. As Howard County was nearly 100% on-site for work before the pandemic, this change required a huge amount of technical support and a new mindset for DTCS. In a matter of days, the Service Desk Team implemented a laptop deployment strategy in which devices were issued to employees. These laptops were imaged to mirror all applications that employees had on-site. In addition, the department was tasked with moving more data to the cloud while ensuring that data accessed outside of the environment was secure, and increased security measures were implemented to provide overall data security. In a short timeframe, Howard County implemented a variety of tools and applications to sustain productivity and provide employees access to all government resources, keeping residents served and employees safe during a challenging year. Platforms include: Bomgar, Cisco Any Connect, Horizon VMware, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, DocuSign, Multi-Factor Authentication and Cisco Jabber.