NEC instrumental in making mass teleworking possible
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, companies looked for ways to keep business running while still following the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines which included social distancing.
One of those solutions was teleworking. At Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) prior to the crisis, telework was used, but not commonly.
“It was primarily for people who traveled or higher ranking leaders,” explained Paul Harley with the Network Enterprise Center (NEC) at YPG. “The average worker did not take a computer home to work.”
When it came time to provide the capability to the masses, there were two components needed.
“The key things you have to have to telework are a laptop and virtual private network (VPN) capability.”
The NEC was equipped with one of the two. “We gave out every laptop we had in stock.”
However the NEC did not have mass VPN capability at that moment. “We didn’t buy extra VPN capability because it all cost money. So we had to beef up quick.”
YPG owned very few VPN licenses. Fortunately, YPG’s equipment partner helped the NEC get stared with a 90-day trial of licenses until YPG was able to purchase them. The NEC also replaced the VPN hardware.
Once employees were teleworking, the next challenge was to keep them in communication. While telephone communication is easy with one-onone calls, it was not sufficient for meetings.
“Now you have whole departments that have to talk to each other throughout the day.”
Once audio conferences were established, the next step was giving the workforce the ability to host video conferences and to share information in real time. This was accomplished with Microsoft Teams, which is a newly implemented Army wide program. The system allows for groups of employees to hold video conferencing meetings from their laptop and simultaneously sharing information such as a PowerPoint presentation. This type of meeting most closely resembles an in-person meeting.
On the testing side, the NEC set up a program that has enabled test customers to view live steam video of their projects remotely. This become an asset when travel restrictions were in effect and customers could not be at the test site in person. It allowed YPG to continue test operations.
Prior to the COVID crisis, YPG had a dozen or so infrequent teleworkers. Once the pandemic hit and teleworking was instituted the installation had hundreds. This was all done within a very short window.
“I do think we were in a pretty good posture to support the pandemic from an IT perspective from what we had on the shelf, and that was refreshing because I don’t think we spent an increased amount of money to get ready to work off site. I think we were already there,” said Lewis Grable, Chief of the Policy and Plans Division with the NEC.
Grable added, “As an IT guy I think things can always be better, things can always be faster, we can tweak something to make it better, but when you do that the security piece is always in the background. There has always been a fight between convenience and security. So you have to strike a balance.”