The State of New Mexico builds a secure, modernized IT foundation for 76 government agencies using Microsoft 365

From providing resources to veterans to managing natural resources, the State of New Mexico strives to advance the quality of life for all New Mexicans. Established in 2007, the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) provides enterprise services, compliance and project management solutions, and cybersecurity support to 76 state government agencies. Accessing documents and business applications is essential for these agencies to deliver services to the public.

DoIT, along with New Mexico’s other state agencies, governs its own IT environment. Resource disparities had resulted in a lack of standardization across software and infrastructure, hindering collaboration and leaving some networks vulnerable to security threats. To overcome these challenges, DoIT built a cohesive IT foundation using Microsoft technology, which has reduced licensing costs, provided equitable access to a feature-rich collaboration suite, and boosted communication and efficiency for more than 20,000 government employees.

Envisioning a secure, cloud-based IT foundation for government employees

One of the challenges that DoIT faces in fulfilling its mission is that each agency has its own IT department. Although agencies were using a common environment for email, most still maintained their own on-premises directory services for local device access. Agencies also had differing versions of Microsoft productivity apps, making it difficult to share information and promote security across agencies. “Every agency is different and funded individually,” says Caleb Raymer, Chief Information Security Officer and Infrastructure Manager at the Energy, Mineral, and Natural Resources Department for the State of New Mexico. “Our administration wanted to move forward with a common security model that would be reportable and reliable and would improve collaboration across agencies.”

DoIT decided to onboard all government employees to a standardized, cloud-based collaboration suite to begin the process of creating a single identity for state users. “We wanted to build a truly comprehensive, modern digital platform,” says Jason Johnson, Deputy Chief Information Officer (CIO) at DoIT for the State of New Mexico. “We aimed to standardize access to device management and antivirus protection across the board, fostering a unified statewide identity.”

The State of New Mexico considered different products. It ultimately chose Microsoft 365 as an all-in-one solution for its productivity apps, desktop and client access services, and information protection and compliance capabilities. “Microsoft 365 is a comprehensive solution that is helping us stay underneath one product suite, create equity amongst our agencies, and provide everyone with access to the same software versions and tool sets. It helps us gain economy of scale, both from a cost and administrative perspective,” says Johnson.

Migrating 20,000 users to Microsoft 365 in under four months

DoIT collaborated with IT leadership from New Mexico’s state agencies to implement a holistic solution. With step-by-step support from the Microsoft FastTrack team along with support from a systems integrator, the DoIT team quickly migrated from on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers to the Microsoft 365 cloud with minimal disruption to daily operations.

In less than four months, DoIT onboarded 20,000 government employees to Microsoft 365. DoIT started with 10,000 Microsoft 365 G3 licenses and quickly consumed another 7,100 in addition to 3,000 Microsoft 365 for Frontline Workers licenses. By transitioning all government employees to a common, cloud-based collaboration suite, DoIT was able to save on costs by purchasing licenses in bulk.

All state employees can access the built-in productivity features and applications offered through Microsoft 365, helping them collaborate more efficiently. They can use Microsoft SharePoint as an intelligent intranet to share documents and sensitive files, and Microsoft Teams has simplified hosting meetings with internal and external stakeholders. “The Microsoft Teams application is absolutely instrumental to team collaboration,” says Johnson. “It’s truly a centralized communication hub where people can share files, link apps, subscribe to different channels, push out announcements, and tie conversations to systems and files, helping teams maintain institutional knowledge. It’s been phenomenal for improving our communication within teams and across agencies.”

Using Microsoft Security solutions to modernize identity authentication and streamline user groups

While transforming its IT foundation, DoIT wanted to strengthen the state’s security posture. It turned to Microsoft Defender for incident-level visibility, automatic disruption of sophisticated events, and accelerated response across endpoints, identities, cloud applications, and more. “Microsoft Defender is the crown jewel of this transformation,” says Johnson. “It provides a holistic view across most of our systems, which can be monitored from our security operations center. This initiative has helped us provide these security elements to agencies so that they have access to the same tools and feature set to protect and defend their environments.”

To create statewide cohesion, DoIT is collaborating alongside New Mexico’s government agencies to restructure and connect their users and devices under a shared organizational forest model using Microsoft Entra ID. This model will give agencies the ability to independently manage their user groups and devices within the organization. By consolidating user credentials, all government employees can use a single identity to access state systems as well. “Before, employees had two sets of identities—one for email and another for logging into government systems and devices,” says Johnson. “Our vision, once implemented, will create a single identity for employees to log in using modern authentication, including biometrics and personal identification numbers. Not only will it improve the user experience, but it will also enhance our security stance.”

Driving statewide efficiency with feature-rich, modernized technology

DoIT is working alongside many of New Mexico’s state bodies to create cloud-only agencies as they move toward using Microsoft Entra ID for the management of users. By the end of the project, nearly half of the state agencies will be cloud-only. 

The State of New Mexico can continue accelerating its path toward modernization with a strong IT framework. “Collaborating with our state’s CIOs and systems administrators has been the highlight of my career,” says Johnson. “We worked hard to set up the back end and prepare for this transformation; meanwhile, our agencies were hustling to install new software for their teams. The collective effort and teamwork that we achieved and continue to sustain is truly inspiring.”