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In recent months, organizations have faced the unprecedented challenge of rapidly transitioning to remote work. However, we’ve discovered that remote work can be effective when paired with the right technology and strong leadership.
According to a survey by Harris Research, over half of all employed Americans began working from home. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we successfully transitioned hundreds of thousands of employees to remote work setups. To foster collaboration, even when separated by distance, we leveraged tools such as Amazon Chime, Amazon Connect, and Amazon WorkDocs, among others. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly our teams adapted to this new working model.
We aren’t alone in this shift. Some organizations have indicated they may never return employees to a traditional office setting, while others are considering a hybrid approach that incorporates both remote and in-office work. Whatever your strategy, our goal is to empower you to select the tools that best fit your needs and to prepare for whatever challenges lie ahead.
I want to share several inspiring examples that illustrate how various governments have successfully utilized cloud technology to adapt swiftly to these changes and move beyond the previous norms. These stories highlight how solutions born from crisis have propelled the public sector into a new era of IT and offer valuable insights for fulfilling your mission.
Ensuring Continuous Operations
The New Jersey Courts system had already established the necessary infrastructure to transition to remote work. Following their shift from the office, they experienced increased efficiency. In response to COVID-19, many court systems nationwide halted proceedings; however, due to their investment in technology modernization and a transition to the AWS Cloud, the New Jersey Courts system managed to maintain uninterrupted operations, with 99 percent of staff working remotely.
This courts system, which handles seven million cases annually, had already migrated 40 applications to AWS by the summer of 2019. They have utilized virtual courtrooms for criminal hearings for about three years, managing around 20 to 30 cases weekly. Since March 2020, they have facilitated over 50,000 virtual court events with 500,000 participants.
Jack McCarthy, the chief information officer of the New Jersey Courts, remarked, “We already had the doors open; we just made them a lot bigger. Our team accomplished about six months of work in just six days, enhancing our VPN and virtual desktops, expanding our virtual court capacity from 40 to 340, and enabling our staff to work effectively from home.” The virtual courts are expected to remain in place for at least the next few years as the court system adjusts to this new reality.
Work 2.0: Transitioning to Remote Work Effortlessly
Similarly, the LA County Internal Services Department (LA ISD) had rolled out its Amazon Connect solution over a year ago. So when the pandemic hit, they were well-prepared to swiftly transition over 100,000 employees from office to remote work as soon as California’s shelter-in-place orders were announced.
Employees serving 10 million LA County residents were able to maintain service continuity without interruption. LA County ISD successfully transitioned more than 30,000 workers to remote work using Amazon Appstream 2.0. While the pandemic was unforeseen, the county’s established mobile cloud-based strategy allowed them to shift staff accustomed to traditional in-office environments to remote work, providing them with the necessary tools and software for their roles now and in the future.
Looking ahead, LA County ISD plans to enhance its call center solution by integrating advanced services like Amazon Comprehend, a natural-language processing tool for sentiment analysis and topic modeling. Benny Chacko, deputy manager of LA County ISD, stated, “One of our goals is to achieve first-call resolution, so that a call is resolved on the first contact with the center, rather than opening a help ticket and assigning a task.”
Rapidly Establishing Remote Access for Employees
In Italy, the City of Cagliari collaborated with AWS to transition over 600 city employees to remote work during mandatory quarantine measures. Within just over a week, key department staff, including payroll, finance, and legal, were working from home. Without needing to install software, these employees accessed their applications using a Windows 10 web-based client associated with the corporate Active Directory.
In the following weeks, the number of personnel utilizing Amazon WorkSpaces grew to 623, including 50 City of Cagliari engineers requiring access to Amazon Graphics WorkSpaces to support their computer-aided design applications. The city is combining Amazon WorkSpaces with a secure connection from Cagliari’s datacenter through an encrypted VPN channel, ensuring that remote workers can continue essential municipal functions.
Piero Orofino, manager of the IT department at the City of Cagliari, expressed, “During this national emergency, Amazon WorkSpaces has enabled the City of Cagliari to continue supporting our citizens, even while confined to our homes. We, like many others across Italy, didn’t stop.”
This resilient mindset among public servants inspires confidence that organizations can continue delivering services to citizens anytime, anywhere. While these examples demonstrate how governments adapted to the challenges posed by the global pandemic, we want you to feel assured moving forward, knowing you can rely on AWS’s scale, reach, security, and reliability.
Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a discussion at the virtual FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit alongside leaders from the U.S. Department of State, SoftBank Investment Advisors, and GoDaddy. We explored topics surrounding business continuity, how companies are innovating to enhance cross-border operations, and the role of technology in facilitating collaboration and communication during COVID-19. Watch our insightful conversation:
For more information on returning to work during the pandemic, check out this article on what to expect here.
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