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November 19, 2020

DWP delights users while simplifying IT administration

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the largest UK Government department. Its 90,000 employees actively serve 25 million British citizens and around £200 billion of taxpayers’ money flows through the department every year.  Over such vast operations, even small changes and improvements can have a huge impact in terms of efficiency and cost savings.

DWP

What’s the future?

“Our commitment is to be constantly looking at what’s next… seeing if there are any technologies available that we can leverage in DWP to benefit our users and our claimants ultimately,” says James Irving, IT Programme Manager (Cloud First) at DWP.  “A key element of our ability to be successful is our collaboration with Microsoft.”

A key aspect of the modernisation of DWP’s technology infrastructure is its Cloud First programme.  As a result of this approach, DWP is less reliant on expensive and hard-to-maintain on-premise hardware.  It has also gained the ability to scale really quickly.

Efficient rollouts of new devices

At the same time as moving to a Cloud First strategy, DWP began a project to increase the agility of individual users with the rollout of faster, more lightweight and flexible laptops and tablets for staff.  As a cloud-native device, Windows 10 powered Microsoft Surface Pros were an ideal choice.  

Individual configurations were created for user profiles and distributed from Microsoft Azure using Autopilot.   By pairing these technology choices with Surface devices, DWP has removed complexity and eliminated time-consuming corporate re-imaging.  Every Surface ships from the factory enabled for Autopilot, so DWP can deliver hardware direct from the manufacturer to the user with zero-touch deployment.  Now DWP finds is easy to deploy these devices wherever the end user may be. 

“Cloud First really helps us to simplify the build and deploy stages,” says David Dunbar, Deputy Director Digital Workspaces at DWP.  “From opening the box, very, very quickly, over the air, anywhere, that machine knows what it is, who it belongs to and how it needs to build.”

Secure from chip to cloud

The advanced security which the integrated Microsoft solutions deliver is highly valued by DWP, reports Nava Ramanan, Workplace Computing Lead Technical Architect at DWP.  Given the nature of the customer data DWP holds, it is essential the data is secure both in transit and at rest.

Ramanan explains this was one of the key reasons for selecting Microsoft Surface devices, because it would help DWP to ensure its advanced security standards are applied from chip to cloud. “We are making sure the entire solution covers all of these security standards without limiting the users experience,” he says.

For Ramanan, the Surface devices form a strategic part of DWP’s security stack.  DWP can ensure its devices are optimised with Windows 10, Microsoft software and cloud security provisions and this supports the department to drive a highly-orchestrated, centrally managed, zero-trust security solution to protect its users, apps, and data from the latest cyberthreats.

Delighting users

As well as helping the DWP team to drive improved security and efficiencies, the new Microsoft Surface laptops are loved by users.  Users are empowered to work more collaboratively and efficiently.  

Jacob Smith-Longman, Engineering Project Lead Cloud First at DWP, says: “Users don’t have to worry about going to this device or that device, they can just open it up really quickly, look at the device with Windows Hello, login to the device and get the software up and running that they need for that day… the relationship with Microsoft has been fantastic and we’ve achieved a lot.”

Dunbar says, “The response we got from our colleagues when we introduced the Surface Pro devices was phenomenal.  It was an absolute step change from where they were before.”

“The response we got from our colleagues when we introduced the Surface Pros was phenomenal.”

David Dunbar, Deputy Director Digital Workspaces, DWP

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