National Capital Authority, Canberra - Case Study

Service Desk services and project work

OPC IT provided contracted IT services to the National Capital Authority (NCA) from 2006 to 2008.

Background

The National Capital Authority (NCA) manages the Australian Government's continuing interest in the planning, promotion, enhancement and maintenance of Canberra as the nation's capital, on behalf of all Australians.

Its aim is to realise the promise of the city plan and the ideals of the founders through the strategic blueprint for the future planning of Canberra, The Griffin Legacy.

OPC was initially engaged to support the Authority’s in-house IT team but ultimately became responsible for the management of the NCA Service Desk and the provision of advice for improving the ongoing Service Management process.

The Challanges

In November 2007, OPC identified the need for a Service Desk software package to manage incidents and problems. Up until then the NCA had relied on emails, face to face communication and phone calls to manage incidents.

We also recognised the need for a network monitoring tool to automate the monitoring of devices such as servers and switches.

Over five months OPC extensively researched management, monitoring and optimisation tools that had the ability to manage heterogenous environments such as NCAs. The tool that was ultimately implemented was not only able to cope with the heterogenous infrastructure but had more than 45 distinct capabilities to control, manage and gather information from agency computers.

In addition, OPC has been responsible for the management of several major projects for the NCA, ranging from set up and configuration of all equipment for events and functions such as Australia Day Live, to hardware and audio visual procurement and deployment strategies, to documentation and disaster recovery planning.

Our Solutions

Identity Manager Implementation Project

In late 2006 OPC discovered that NCA was using a very old unsupported product to synchronise users between eDirectory and Active Directory. OPC recommended that NCA migrate to Novell’s current version of Identity Manager which allows password as well as user details to synchronise between eDirectory and Active Directory.

OPC procured the software and licenses, undertook extensive testing and implemented the solution one organisational unit at a time to limit the risk to NCA continuity.

Desktop Refresh Project

In early 2007, OPC, in conjunction with the ICT Manager, planned the replacement of the Agency’s desktop fleet.

OPC built and tested the DSOE over a four week period and thoroughly documented the build process until completion. All business applications were tested either by direct installation into the DSOE or via a delivered application with ZENworks, and snapshots were made of all version updates.

The rollout process was meticulously coordinated by OPC across the NCA’s 5 locations over a two week period and was delivered within the specified timeframes. Following the rollout, OPC engaged in the sanitisation and return of the redundant desktops back to the finance company.

Hardware and VMWare Migration Project

In May 2007 OPC assisted NCA’s ICT Manager in preparing a recommendation for the Management Committee for a server infrastructure refresh, including server hardware requirements, virtualisation recommendations, test plans and Backup and Disaster Recovery strategies.

OPC developed a strategic plan for the work to be carried out including a timeline, business impact statement, change request, risk analysis, milestones, rollback procedures and costing. Capacity recommendations, utilisation reports, interviews with each business unit and document management reports were all prepared.

The solution saved the NCA the cost of seven new physical servers upfront and over fifteen to date. The reduction of the server infrastructure was made possible with the implementation of VMWare which not only reduced costs but also offered the NCA a robust and redundant solution with High Availability and Dynamic Resource Scheduling, meaning that up to two physical servers could fail without interrupting NCA’s business continuity.

Testing and implementation took place across two weekends and the project was delivered on time and under budget with almost zero downtime (outside planned outages) to NCA End Users.

This project also incorporated a disaster recovery strategy for NCA which was developed in line with the implementation of VMWare. OPC recommended that disaster recovery equipment be housed in an off site location and nominated the National Capital Exhibition Centre as a low cost solution, given that there is already an ICON fibre link between both locations, both have separate power sources and the physical protection of the lake in the event of fire.

CommVault Migration Project

In early 2007 OPC highlighted issues with the NCA’s current backup infrastructure, in particular the backup software (ArcServe).OPC and the ICT Manager researched backup software options and OPC organised vendor demonstrations.

CommVault for Agency backup services was selected and OPC developed an implementation plan.

After the migration to CommVault the backup window reduced from 36 hours to 21 hours when performing a full NCA backup.

GWAVA Project

In April 2007 OPC identified the need to upgrade the current anti-spam product GWAVA v3 as it was not adequately preventing SPAM.

OPC discovered that NCA’s imminent connection to the government’s FedLink network restricted the implementation of our preferred MessageLabs option, so a rollback to upgrading GWAVA was implemented instead. This required the renaming of all directories for the current version.

OPC communicated thoroughly with End Users as external mail would be unavailable during the brief upgrade process and then documented detailed instructions for End Users

Major Building Restructure

In November 2007 the NCA decided on a major building restructure requiring all NCA staff to relocate from three floors down to two, with some staff relocating to the National Capital Exhibition Centre and Commonwealth Place.

As part of the Service Desk responsibilities for moves, adds and changes (MACs) OPC was tasked with ensuring that all workstations and phones (with correct extension) numbers were reconnected once moved.

OPC ensured security measures were enforced by disconnecting links to the third floor and relocated approx 98% of all staff members over a two day period. All users had their existing phone numbers and all PC’s, printers, laptops, faxes, scanners, plotters etc were fully functional. All equipment housed in the ICT room was relocated to the NCA basement.

OPC scoped and planned the moving of staff to Commonwealth Place taking into account that Commonwealth Place had no direct infrastructure link to the NCA and, as NCA had a protected network, no internet VPN could be configured to connect Commonwealth Place to NCA.

Remote Access Server Project

OPC assisted with the strategic direction and delivery of the Remote Access Server project by installing and configuring MS Windows and terminal servers to a virtual server and installing the applications required by remote access users, thereby providing users with an interface the same as NCA.

Thorough testing and provision of tokens for secure remote access was coordinated by OPC.

GroupWise and TRIM Upgrades

OPC advised NCA management that their current version of GroupWise was outdated and that major enhancements had been made to the current version. OPC prepared demonstrations and a test plan for a proposed upgrade which took into account all the Agency’s applications that are integrated with GroupWise such as TRIM (document management application) and Formative (Message classification software).

OPC created virtual NetWare and Microsoft servers for the implementation, configuration and testing of GroupWise 7. A new DSOE was developed providing a stable base environment for testing the new versions of the software.

The project was completed in June 2007.

The Result

‘...I have worked closely with the OPC team and can affirm that the services required under the Contract have been performed in a professional and efficient manner…Major IT infrastructure upgrades have been completed with minimal downtime…

OPC’s contribution to IT projects and continued support of the helpdesk has resulted in improved incident management, executive reporting and improved overall ICT services to NCA staff.’

Mr Gary Rake – Managing Director Finance and Corporate Systems