IPMA Home | IPMA News IPMA News : August 2003 Edited By Mary Ellen Bradley and Andy Marcelia

Upgrading to Windows XP at L&I

-- by Kim Keifert, Department of Labor and Industries

Introduction

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) has a standard PC environment in place that includes Microsoft as its operating system. All PCs are leased and refreshed on a regular basis, as is the standard suite of software (about 23 applications including Microsoft Office Pro). This standard environment and lease process was approved in 1997 by L&I management After 2 biennia, it is now fully implemented and we are now operating in a refresh/update mode.

We recently completed an upgrade to Windows XP and are finding this operating system to be extremely stable and fairly low "maintenance".

Challenge

We needed to move to a more stable operating system, reducing support required. This upgrade had to be done in a 3–4 month timeframe; the installs themselves needed to take less time and needed to have little human intervention to decrease the chance of errors.

In the past, upgrades were done manually, with an installer taking out a handful of CDs and/or diskettes to get the install done. A typical upgrade took about an hour and a half to two hours to complete. There were several pages of steps that needed to be performed by the installer for each PC upgraded. It was tough to get a consistent installation for about 2,800 PCs.

Additionally, making the move to Windows XP proved to be a challenge for several of our legacy applications, older hardware, and some older off-the-shelf software.

Configuration & Testing

We realized part way through the configuration and testing of the new image that we had several problems with older software and hardware.

Several adjustments were made to accommodate these problems.

1. We extended our timeframe for testing. This allowed developers of our homegrown applications and vendors of several other applications to make adjustments to the software so that it would run in Windows XP.
    
2. A test environment was set up to allow developers to make changes and quickly test those changes in Windows XP.
    
3. Once we were comfortable that the majority of our applications were ready we went into Pilot mode. Initially, only development staff and some IT support staff were involved. Over time, we opened up the pilot and included staff from other areas giving us a fairly broad group of pilot members.
    
4. All staff are local administrators on their PCs. This ensures that our applications run as needed and that staff are able to install other software as their job requires.

Installation Solution

We combined several solutions to come up with our installation process.

PowerQuest

We had been using a product from this company that allowed us to create an image and duplicate it out, via CDs, to our PCs (both desktop and notebook). Last year we decided we needed to investigate their new DeployCenter Suite. We found that there were several features/products available within this suite that would be extremely beneficial to our upgrade process.

PowerCasting allowed us to distribute an image to any PC that we were upgrading (versus replacing). We found that we could distribute the image (slightly over 3 Gigabytes) to about 25 PCs at one time. The distribution process took about 20-30 minutes per PC. This saved us about 1 hour per upgraded PC.

Virtual Floppy allowed us to store an image on our network and then IT Support (or installers) could use that to create a DOS boot environment on the local PC and download the image. Again, this saved time—but also made the process more efficient from a support standpoint.

DataGone allowed us to wipe all information from the hard disks of the PCs that were being replaced. All of our PCs are now leased. DIS is the owner and we return all of our equipment to them after wiping the hard drives. This is extremely important since most of our PCs are then moved into the "Computer 4 Kids" program and distributed to needy schools. We had to ensure we weren’t sending out any confidential data (any data at all).

DELL

About 1,500 PCs were going to be replaced during this upgrade. We were able to create our image (one for each platform—one for notebook, one for desktop, one for Imaging desktops) and send it to DELL. After some initial testing, all of our new PCs came in with our image already on it. This saved about 20-30 minutes per PC.

Instructions

Using the above processes/applications allowed us to automate a good portion of the operating system upgrade process. This in turn cut down on the number of manual steps that an installer performed to complete an installation. We cut down on the time required and made the process simpler to use.

Conclusion

We saw a minimal increase in the trouble calls during the actual implementation. Because of the low impact, we avoided hiring additional support for the Help Desk to cover calls. Support staff have all noticed a drop in the number of trouble calls received overall because of the stability of Windows XP.

While training was made available to customers, many of the classes were cancelled. Customers found the transition easy with the documentation they received and the knowledge that staff would be available the morning after they were upgraded to handle immediate questions.

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News from Other Sources

"How to Survive in the Public Sector -- As the former CIO of Wyoming learned, it's not easy staying on top of the political bull"

This article in the July 1 issue of CIO Magazine is an interesting footnote to the current enterprise trend in government and should provide those in Washington state government with a greater appreciation for our IT and business leaders. See the CIO Magazine story.

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News from the Past

5 Years Ago -- August 1998 IPMA Newsletter

10 Years Ago -- August 1993 IPMA Newsletter

15 Years Ago -- IPMA Newsletter not published in August 1988

20 Years Ago -- August 1983 Association of Data Processing Managers Newsletter (Not available at this time)

25 Years Ago -- August 1978 Association of Data Processing Managers Newsletter

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Summary of July 10, 2003 IPMA Board Meeting

Members Present: Jim Albert, Mary Ellen Bradley, Thomas Bynum, Phil Grigg, Sheryl Hall, Dennis Jones, Dennis Laine, Andy Marcelia, Mike McVicker, Christy Ridout, Darrel Riffe, and Shelagh Taylor. Phil Coates, CFO, and Jim Andersen, the Forum Events Manager, were also present.

Mike McVicker, IPMA Chair, opened the July 2003 meeting of the IPMA Board of Directors at 7:40 a.m.

REPORTS

Secretary/Treasurer: The minutes from the June 2003 Board meeting were approved.

The Board approved the June 2003 financial status and activities reports.

Business Planning: Christy Ridout will contact Keith Cameron and schedule him to meet with the IPMA board at the August meeting to discuss the organization’s financial management alternatives.

Philanthropic Alternatives: Jim Albert led a discussion of the philanthropic alternatives currently before the board. A motion was made, seconded and passed unanimously, to fund the $18,000 South Puget Sound Community College Technology Scholarship endowment in its entirety immediately.

A second motion was made, seconded and passed unanimously, to commit to the funding of an Evergreen State College Technology Scholarship endowment for $25,000. The amount to be funded in 2003 will be determined at the October Board meeting when the total financial obligations for the year will be known.

Forum 2003: Jim Andersen presented the forum status report.

Corporate Sponsors: Twenty-four vendors have committed to be Corporate Sponsors for next year. Payment has been received from 22, with the remaining two expected in July or August.

Vendors: All 47 vendors have paid for their Forum 2003 booths.

Forum 2003 Portfolio: Five of the six vendor special contributions to help defray the cost of the portfolios have been received. The Microsoft payment is expected in July.

Forum attendance: The processing of the registration forms has been completed.

Post Forum committee meeting: The Forum committee met and suggested the following changes for Forum 2004:

• Retain the current format for the Forum brochure.
• Add a supplement to the forum brochure that lists vendors by subject area. The additional pages probably would be an insert.
• Enhance the brochure to do a better job of highlighting the sessions.
• Return to the half room and two quarter rooms for speakers.
• Use one of the quarter rooms for vendor specific presentations on a first-come basis.
• Reduce time allotted to each presentation from 1.5 to 1.25 hours. Most speakers don’t use the full allotted time. Consider staggering the session start times.
• Open the vendor displays after the keynote speaker is done. Hours would be around 9:30 to 4:30 on Tuesday and 9:30 to 3:30 on Wednesday.
• Create and distribute posters to market Forum in April.
• Create and distribute a flyer to market Forum in March.
• Do more to advertise Forum to cities and counties next year.
• At registration, have attendees classify themselves as front office, back office, or data administration.
• Look at developing an online registration process for Forum attendees.
• Retain the lunch box program. Need to improve the distribution process.
• Find a different place to meet and not use St. Martin’ College for Forum committee meetings.
• Declare raffles off limits if there is no other option.
• Kick-off the Monday sessions with a welcome/introduction from the IPMA.
• Evaluation forms should be used for the speaker sessions, vendor booths and to gather ideas for next year.
• Turn over the Monday sessions to the Professional Development committee.

Executive Seminar 2003: Phil Grigg presented the Executive Seminar status report.

Seminar planning is on target for September 23-25.

• Registrations:
  • Thirty-seven state people have registered to date.
  • Need second level managers to register
  • Need help contacting others - volunteers please
  • Three board members need to register
  • Sixteen state agencies represented in registrations thus far. Last year there were 33 represented.
  • Twenty-four Corporate Sponsors expected to attend.
• Speakers are an issue. The IPMA will have to spend money on speakers this year.
• Thursday morning will be facilitated sessions.
• Logistics with Campbell’s are being finalized.
• Transportation:
  • Thirty-five people have signed up for the bus.
  • The bus will leave Hawk’s Prairie at 7:00 a.m. sharp.
• Tokens of appreciation have been ordered.
• Charles Mason, educator and field guide, will return as the Tuesday dinner speaker.

Professional Development: Dennis Jones reported on the June 25th session titled "Building Successful Teams - Inside and Out."

The speakers were: Bill Dye, Tom Crawford and Diane Vasarkovy. The panel members were: State Representative Glenn Anderson, Stuart McKee, Thomas Bynum and Allen Schmidt. Sixty five of the 96 who signed up attended the seminar. The ratings for the class were almost all 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Sheryl Hall reported on the status of the next Professional Development scheduled for August 14 from noon to 5:00 p.m. at the Worthington Center of St. Martin’s College. The seminar is titled "Managing Transitions - tips, tools, and techniques to deal with nonstop changes in the workplace and in your personal lives." The presenter is Vicki Legman of Legman Communication. She is an accomplished instructor, course designer, consultant and speaker. Her style is highly interactive, lively and entertaining and her focus is on giving people tools that they can begin using immediately.

The final seminar of the year is scheduled for October and the subject will be ".NET" and plans are progressing on schedule.

Communications: Mary Ellen Bradley reported that the current issue of the IPMA News will be available at the web site July 11, 2003. It contains an article about electronic voting by the Secretary of States Office. L&I is scheduled to have an article in the August issue.

OTHER BUSINESS:

Board Meeting Location: It was determined that the August board meeting would be held at the OASIS Cafe.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:07 a.m.

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