Writeimage CSB Tunisia Parliament Workload Eases, IT Staff Spend 70 Per Cent of Time On

“Active Directory in particular is giving us a highly secure system and the frequency of problems has dramatically reduced from dozens a day to one or two at most.”

Imed Balti, Head of the Information Division, Chamber of Advisors, Tunisia

The Chamber of Advisors of the Tunisian Parliament wanted a managed infrastructure to replace a decentralised mixture of technologies serving 100 users. Working with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner RFC, the chamber deployed the Windows Server® 2003 operating system and other Microsoft technologies to improve security and reduce costs. Centralised management ensures that staff now spend 70 per cent of their time on proactive support work for users instead of 30 per cent previously.

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Document published January 2009

Business Needs

The Tunisian government created its Chamber of Advisors in 2005 to add a second assembly to its thriving democracy, comprising two thirds elected and one third nominated members. The new chamber—first proposed by lawmakers in 2002 with a minimum 15.17 per cent of women members—plays a critical role in scrutinising legislation as well as budgets from the executive arm of government.

Imed Balti, Head of the Information Division, Chamber of Advisors, says: “IT is closely allied to the political strategy of the country and we wanted to speed up administration, help members work more effectively together, and improve delivery of supporting documents and processes for the work of the chamber. Around 60,000 visitors use our Web site every month. IT helps to show them the transparency of the legislative process in Tunisia.”

When Balti joined the division in 2006 there was no centralised management of the IT infrastructure. “There was no security equipment, which led to lots of interruptions in productivity,” he says. “It was tiresome to manage and fix computers. Each user had to manage his or her configurations, which had a negative impact on the overall work of the chamber and our Parliament as a whole.”

In the meantime, the cost of administering the chamber’s work with diverse IT systems was rising. “The previous arrangement was expensive in terms of person hours spent fixing problems and in the overall management of computers,” says Balti. “There were dozens of fixes to manage every working day. It had become a priority to reduce costs, but that was very hard to do. We also needed to focus much more on security at all levels: portable computers, servers, and the network. We were considering a significant investment in equipment and new security software to protect government systems from external threats.”

Solution

The Tunisian government traditionally used open source technology. But, in 2005, the government signed a cooperation agreement with Microsoft. This was followed by further protocols signed by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer in 2007 to improve and integrate IT infrastructure in education, human resources training, and e-government.

Balti says: “We had a clear choice—work with open source or Microsoft. We chose Microsoft technology because it is easy to configure and manage. It offers total integration of environment, users, and technology administration, plus there is good availability of Microsoft skills in Tunisia.”

Working with RFC, Balti and his team carried out an infrastructure optimisation exercise to benchmark the existing system. Then, with a budget of U.S.$2,100, they started the migration with three UNIX servers as a pilot programme in June 2006. The solution involves Windows Server 2003 with the Active Directory® service for identity management. The 2007 Microsoft Office system was successfully deployed in June 2008 and all users are satisfied with the tools.

Other interlocking features include:

n Windows® Server Update Services for automatic centralised administration of software updates

n Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 to protect the network against virus and malware attacks

n Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007—a set of tools to optimally migrate Windows XP to the Windows Vista® operating system, which started in January 2009.

Riadh Fehmi, General Manager at RFC, says: “The infrastructure optimisation benchmarking was a key element in the project showing the need to simplify desktop management and standardise procedures using Microsoft solutions, especially Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007. The infrastructure optimisation showed that the customer was at ‘basic level,’ where IT is purely a cost centre, in 2006, but the chamber has improved by one level to ‘standardised level’ for most of its IT while data storage has reached level three, which is ‘rationalised.’ The aim is to reach level three for the whole organisation by the end of 2009.”

Benefits

With the centrally managed infrastructure in place, users receive an improved service for decision making and collaborate more easily with less downtime. Administrators now spend 30 per cent of their time on reactive work instead of 70 per cent with the previous system, giving them extra hours to spend on future projects. Balti says: “Active Directory, in particular, is giving us a highly secure system and the frequency of problems has dramatically reduced from dozens a day to one or two at most.”

n Interoperable with other technologies. Windows Server interoperates easily with third-party software and applications from independent software vendors. Balti says: “For example, we have had no problem whatsoever with using two technologies for the firewall.”

n Low total cost of ownership. Balti says: “Once the cost of support and maintenance across the lifetime of the product is taken into account Microsoft is more cost effective than open source.”

n Volume licensing agreement. The Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for low-cost volume licensing of software gives the chamber access to new products from Microsoft as they’re released. Balti’s team has now tested and evaluated 59 Microsoft products.

n Microsoft partner ecosystem. The chamber’s IT team benefits from knowledge transfer from RFC and other Microsoft partners. As a result, it is evaluating a project to introduce Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 collaboration technology.

n Business partnership with Microsoft. Balti says: “We found that Microsoft and RFC responded immediately to our requests for help. This was a huge bonus for the project and gave us complete confidence in the deployment.”