By BobViolino
Striving toincrease efficiency and improve services at a time when budgets are tighter, stateand local governments are turning to IT solutions that can help them meet theirgoals. Like many technology users in business, government agencies areimplementing virtualization, cloud computing, and mobile devices andapplications to help keep costs in line and deliver quality services to thepublic.
Virtualization?atboth the server and desktop level?has enabled Iowa’s Workforce DevelopmentAgency (IWD) to save money and improve services. The agency contributes to theeconomic security of Iowa’s workers, businesses and communities through acomprehensive statewide system of employment services, along with education andthe regulation of health, safety and employment laws.
Facingbudget cuts at both the state and federal level, IWD was forced to reduce thenumber of its physical offices across the state from 55 to 19, but it stillneeded a way to provide services. "Even though budgets were being cuttremendously, the need to provide services was not reduced," says GaryBateman, CIO at IWD. "Our citizens still need our services, and we neededto find a better way to provide those services."
Thedepartment had been providing virtual desktops to its employees for a couple ofyears, using software from VMware. When faced with losing physical offices, itdecided to expand the use of the virtual technology to allow citizens access toservices without the need to drive to one of the remaining offices.
Toaccomplish that, IWD teamed with public partners that already had Internetaccess?including libraries, places of worship, abuse shelters, National GuardArmories, and high schools across the state?to offer the same servicespreviously available only in physical offices.
IWD beganthe rollout of virtual access points (VAP) in July 2011 and set a goal ofdeploying a total of 200 sites?with at least one in all 99 counties?by the endof 2011. The agency did more than meet this goal: It far surpassed it, withmore than 500 sites and almost 2,000 desktops by year end.
When theagency started deploying virtual desktops to employees a few years ago, itencountered a problem managing storage for the new virtualized desktopenvironment. To solve the problem of data access bottlenecks and for easiermanagement of data, IWD purchased a storage management system from NetApp.
"HavingVMware coupled with the storage system from NetApp [gave] us the flexibility toreact quickly when we needed to deploy VAPs across the state," says JeanFoshier, lead systems architect with the agency.
IWD is alsobenefiting from a server virtualization strategy that it launched more thanfour years ago using virtualization software from VMware and blade servers.About 85 percent of the department’s Windows and Linux servers are nowvirtualized, and IWD has reduced the number of physical servers considerably,Foshier says.
Thedepartment is also expanding its use of tablets and smartphones to provideemployees with easier access to applications and data from a variety oflocations.
"VMwareallows us to run a virtual Windows 7 desktop on an iPad and reap the benefitsof mobility without the risk of storing data on the mobile device," says CIOBateman. "This technology is allowing us to provide services to morepeople than was possible with physical offices."
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