A Microsoft approach to end user computing in UK Government

In my last post, I introduced the Microsoft Flexible Workstyle strategy, and talked about how that approach aligns to the ideas set out in the Government End User Device Strategy. It deliberately avoided talking too much about technologies, focusing more on the “how” rather than the “what”. 

In this post, I’ll talk more specifically about U.K. Government desktops today, and introduce Microsoft’s response to the forward-looking U.K. Government End User Device Strategy. Whereas last time around I started by talking about the reasons why all of my customers are looking at desktop refresh projects, this time around I’ll start with a pen portrait of the current generation of Government desktops.

• Roughly speaking, there are something like 650,000 desktop and laptop devices in UK Government today. The vast majority run Microsoft software, and the vast majority of those still run Windows XP and Office 2003.  
  - as fantastic as those platforms have been for the last decade, they are now showing their age
  - they often compare poorly with the more modern devices and IT experiences which people have outside of the workplace.

• There average Government desktop is so much more than just a copy of Windows and Office…
  - there will be management and security software to meet Government’s specific requirements
  - there may be desktop and application virtualisation technologies on there
  - there will be line of business applications, and sometimes multiple versions thereof
  - the user’s personal data and information will often be stored on the device.

• None of these elements will fit into neat compartments...
  - many older applications will write files all over the C:\ drive
  - and chances are there will be at least some information related to the user’s personal settings outside of their “Documents and Settings” folder.

• Most Government devices adopt a “one size fits all” approach and are designed to operate in an IL3 environment – even when the user may have no requirement for handling such information
  - worse still, the previous generation of devices are normally wedded to a specific department’s (or supplier’s) environment
  - generally speaking it is at best cumbersome, and usually impossible, to pick up a laptop from department A and work productively from department B.

• The technologies and practices used to deploy and manage devices is often as old as the device build itself. These can be inefficient, costly to maintain, and inflexible
  - For example, when any element of the desktop stack are changed, there is often a lengthy and costly process of integration testing from the hardware up to the applications.

• And lastly, addressing the elephant in the room, many current Government devices will take a good five minutes or more from pressing the power button, to the desktop being ready for the user. Horror stories of twenty minutes plus are not unheard of…

As a result, the cost of the desktop service is increased by software license and integration costs, whilst agility, mobility and users’ productivity are decreased. Instead of continuous service improvement, desktops often remain stagnant for years before a costly, risky, unpopular, and disruptive “big bang” upgrade.

Even applying service packs and hotfixes can become a time consuming and costly exercise…

None of this compares well to the experience people have with their personal devices, nor does it help Government achieve its goals. Things have moved on since the “XP generation” of Government desktops were designed, and requirements can now be met using current software without necessitating bloated, poorly performing desktop environments. 

This is about designing the next generation of Government desktops in the right way, so as to avoid a repetition of the lessons of the past, and where Microsoft firmly believes the Flexible Workstyle approach offers an answer. But it is not simply a case of taking a ten year old XP-based environment and “doing Flexible Workstyle” to it.

For several years Microsoft has talked about the Optimised Desktop. An Optimised Desktop is one where the Device, Operating System, User State and Applications have been de-coupled from each other using virtualisation. (Hopefully this sounds reassuringly familiar to anybody who has read and digested Government’s strategy) I won’t go into the benefits here, I’ll just say this clearly is a much better thing than having a single device containing all of those elements, inextricably linked for all time and near-impossible to change independently from one another.

Having lived and breathed Optimised Desktop and Flexible Workstyle within Microsoft, and having talked to my Government customers about them for some time now, it is great to see the Government End User Device strategy so closely mirror them. The Microsoft and Government approaches can be justifiably argued to be mutually enabling – if you do one, you’ve done the other.

• Both emphasise the importance of defining personas, workloads, and requirements, before considering IT.
• Both promote abstracting the device, operating system, management tools, user information, and applications.
• Both seek to end the “one size fits all” approaches of the past.

It would be impossible within a blog post to fully explore both, and properly align the Microsoft and Government approaches. To this end, we have published a white paper exploring and aligning the two in more depth.

The paper is available for public download here. In the final post in this short series, I will talk about the process of developing the paper, how it has already benefited customers and their suppliers, and how the ideas contained within it can be taken forward and further developed.

Posted by Richard.