IT perspective on SEMCOG response to COVID-19 isolation

As you read this article, enjoy a brief tour of some of SEMCOG’s home offices.

For those of us whose job it is to support others trying to do their jobs, the week of March 9^th posed new challenges. Local governments were figuring out how to safely continue essential services to residents while also transitioning staff to working remotely, often for the first time.

At SEMCOG, we were also preparing for a 100 percent remote work environment, while determining how we could provide value to our members. A coordinated team effort, along with implementation of various tools and technology, helped us do both.

For our members

That week, all our efforts were about staying connected to our local government members, finding ways to provide support, and determining how to shift priorities while continuing to make progress in our “normal” work.

Within the first several days, we were able to:

• Provide a live forum for communities to gather and share experiences, best practices, and resources.
• Facilitate resource-sharing to enable members to continue serving residents. In one example, we were able to modify Orion Township’s At-Risk Population call tracker into a template that could be used by any community.
• Continue to develop and share relevant applications, such as SEMCOG’s Census Self-Response Rates tool.
• Move forward with our responsibilities, such as approval of an amendment to the Transportation Improvement Program.
• Evaluate and communicate how state and federal developments could affect local governments.

Standing workstation, since upgraded

Being well-positioned

To make implementation of these things possible and relatively seamless, we relied on a series of IT infrastructure choices and investments years in the making. One of the countless takeaways of this pandemic is yet another example of why it’s so important for elected officials and other leaders to make business continuity discussions in coordination IT leadership. It also doesn’t hurt to have a bit of good luck along the way.

Whether a disruptive event like the COVID-19 pandemic is taking place or everything is “normal,” it is essential to have ongoing conversations with lots of ‘what-if’ questions. Because SEMCOG has prioritized a working relationship between IT and executive leadership, our transition did not involve reinventing the wheel. It has been simply about scaling up processes that were already planned and underway:

• Years back, when we were approaching the end of life for our server room hardware, we decided to take this opportunity to move to a cloud environment.
• When our local network administrator retired, we decided to use managed services to tie our cloud environment with on-site operations and business.
• We have retained and continued training our awesome IT staff for day-to-day operations, so we remain ready to support in real-time and with continuity of institutional knowledge.
• Between our SEMCOG IT support team and our managed services team of experts, we have backup for all critical support.
• In a lucky bit of timing, we had just increased capacity of our firewalls and already had two virtual private networks (VPNs), so transitioning from having some staff work from home on occasion to connecting everyone remotely just required opening up the resources we had in place. If we had capacity issues, we could divert some of the load with no additional technical assistance.
• When we moved into our current offices in Downtown Detroit, we planned for the potentiality/eventuality of a more mobile workforce. Staff work daily on laptops and cell phones in place of desktop computers and telephones. Here’s another lucky tidbit – we had just completed our cycle of aging out laptop and phones, so staff left the offices with up-to-date equipment.
• We let staff take home whatever they needed to get their work done, including monitors, so they could be as efficient as possible.

On the soft side

Having a good infrastructure in place is important, but what’s on top of it lets it shine!

• Our employee portal is accessible via the internet inside or outside our firewall, while maintaining security. This gave real-time access to our extensive “How-to” documentation and answers to common technical questions.
• Because of a deep knowledge base and cross-training of our in-house IT staff, we were able to provide fast and individual assistance to staff who had less experience using our tools for working and meeting remotely.
• Because our internal processes were running smoothly, we had the capacity to assist individuals from member communities, who found us in our staff directory, when they needed assistance using our online meeting tools. We were thrilled to get them online so they didn’t miss out on important information and insights.
• We developed a toolkit for working remotely. This was a one-stop shop for all things required for a successful work-from-home experience. Nothing was new, per se, but ramping up from a few tech-savvy first adopters to training a whole agency of users had the potential for giant headaches. Thankfully, we are blessed with an exceptionally smart, flexible, and patient staff.
• Our executive team did a marvelous job of communicating with staff and provided a forum for IT to walk staff through all they would need on the technical side to work from home. This was literally as they were walking out the door – remember how fluid and fast-moving decisions had to be over those days?
• Knowing that network access is only as good as a person’s home Wi-Fi connection, we offered a cell phone hot-spot for staff without reliable internet at home.
• We checked up on each other on work progress; but perhaps more importantly, we used our toolkit to make sure everyone was hanging in there okay. It was comforting to get a call, or join a face-to-face video chat, for a sense of normalcy.

Distractions from coworkers can still be an issue.

What about those tools?

There are lots of online tools out there. Some are free. Some are costly. Some offer solutions somewhere in-between. Thankfully, we built this toolkit over several years and maintain a good array of solutions that are efficient and cost-effective.

Our staff use too many tools and tricks to name here, but the following seemed to work very well to keep SEMCOG working and serving our members:

• Secure remote access to the network for all using VPN (virtual private network).
• A free conference call line for each staff person.
• Our webinar tool – GoToWebinar.
• Our primary video conference tool – GoToMeeting. These two tools are under a dual subscription.
• Zoom video conference tools were expanded to meet the increased need, and staff training was provided to ensure security protocols were understood.
• Slack is our direct messaging tool, and we expanded to allow even more video chat for small groups. This was an underused tool that has risen to the challenge and offered simple, fun, and informal ways for staff to connect.
• Basecamp is another collaboration tool that lets our staff set up projects and easily track them, assign tasks and deadlines, message, and even allow multiple editors on a document at one time.
• Everyone has their favorite tool, and while we can’t support all of them, we work with staff the best we can. We have folks who love Skype, Google Hangouts and docs, and probably some I’ve never heard of.

By far, our most important asset continues to be our people, their care, and dedication!

The whole process was a little surreal, but because of the thoughtful communication and flexibility of our leadership, we remain gratefully in position to continue working and serving our region.