Major Government Agency

Shift from reactive to proactive for a positive user experience

Similar to many government agencies around the world, this organization manages seasonal demand when the performance and availability of its systems are put to the test. With a complex infrastructure there was a lack of integration across tools with only a fraction of the environment being monitored. The organization is supported by Intact Technology. Intact’s CTO Derek Truesdell comments: “Unfortunately, a lack of observability allowed a high-profile outage to occur which impacted citizens. The internal analysis which followed showed the need for improved configuration and change management, as well as more comprehensive monitoring.”

The organization’s IT Operations Command Center (ITOCC) already leveraged OpenText™ ITOM solutions. OpenText Service Manager was used to route service requests and solve issues quickly. OpenText Asset Manager provided unified asset management for all infrastructure and software assets across the hybrid environment. OpenText Universal Discovery and UCMDB was leveraged for on-premises infrastructure and software asset discovery, proactive impact analysis, and service dependency mapping. Even though the solutions were in place, they were used in a siloed manner; teams with different objectives and perspectives coming to different conclusions based on the same information. The organization needed to take this data and orchestrate it into a comprehensive change management and incident response approach.”

This called for a culture change and a shift from being reactive, in fire-fighting mode, to proactive. Online citizen interaction has exploded in recent years and with system availability of paramount importance, executive sponsorship was secured for a digital transformation to introduce change governance across the environment. “The need for visibility, system availability, performance, and improved collaboration between business and IT was driven by an increase in online citizen interaction, and fast changing regulatory requirements that the organization needs to respond to. Overall, the customer experience for internal and external users had to be positive,” says Jesse White, CEO of Intact.

With improved system availability, this new Micro Focus (now OpenText)-centric monitoring solution has increased user productivity and decreased the time to complete citizen transactions by 80 percent.

Improved stability and availability, with accelerated processing cycle

To meet this new mandate the team selected OpenText Operations Bridge based on product capabilities and integrations, total cost of ownership, and quality. This automated event and performance monitoring solution provides a consolidated, end-to-end view of the environment. For quick results, Intact’s Rapid Outcome Framework was leveraged. The framework dictated the guidelines to support the agency in every step of their OpenText software implementation journey. A comprehensive implementation plan outlined the strategy, communication, solution design, deployment, and post-implementation strategy necessary to help the agency succeed in their digital transformation.

The Intact team worked closely with OpenText Professional Services on integrating Operations Bridge with Service Manager. This employs auto-ticketing of outages against critical applications and services. Ticketing data and asset information are also consolidated in operational reports. Truesdell comments: “The effective combination of Micro Focus (now OpenText) ITOM solutions gave us a clear reduction in major incidents. System availability and stability improved notably, so that we were able to reduce our data capture and citizen transaction processing was accelerated by 80 percent, from weekly to daily completions. This means we can respond to internal and external customers much faster.”

Although auto-ticketing has been of huge benefit already, the operators still need to execute the remediation. In a next phase, plans for fully automated issue remediation are underway, where common issues will not require escalation and can be fixed without delay. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the system will eventually diagnose and fix issues with minimal human intervention before they cause problems, with notifications to relevant parties.

Successfully automated systems monitoring processes

Supported by Astadia and OpenText (formerly Micro Focus) , the organization introduced a transformational solution to successfully automate its systems monitoring process. This allows their teams to proactively identify issues in all systems before they negatively impact any users. System owners receive daily health checks on their infrastructure with a single view of every server in the environment. A great benefit according to White: “With improved system availability, this new Micro Focus (now OpenText)-centric monitoring solution has increased user productivity and decreased the time to complete citizen transactions by 80 percent.”

Prior to each peak season, a free full health check is conducted on the organization’s system. A comprehensive gap analysis highlights any areas that need to be reinforced and enables the team to improve system health and performance, ready for a busy season. White comments: “The key to success was to focus not only on technology and processes, but on adoption and enablement, proactively addressing cultural challenges. The combination of Micro Focus (now OpenText) best-of-breed software and Intact’s Rapid Outcome Framework enabled the agency to be in the best position for success and get maximum value from their software investment.”

He concludes: “Supported by Micro Focus (now OpenText) solutions and expertise, the organization serves its internal and external customers better and more efficiently, improving customer satisfaction. The shorter citizen transaction processing cycle makes it more responsive to regulatory changes, and the integrated monitoring platform provides real-time data on infrastructure and application availability. Knowing that the team has these capabilities helps the Director sleep better at night.”

The combination of Micro Focus (now OpenText) best-of-breed software and Intact’s Rapid Outcome Framework enabled the agency to be in the best position for success and get maximum value from their software investment.