CGI helps government agency achieve the largest ever migration of workstations to Windows XP in the history of the Government of Quebec

“Months before the Windows XP implementation was completed, things were going so well that I basically considered the job done. The CGI team demonstrated considerable autonomy despite the wide range of needs and tight timetable. The success also can be credited to CGI's excellent work with respect to the architecture, configuration, testing, change management and planning of the implementation.”

Benoît Gagnon, Department Head Technology Infrastructure and Specialized Services, MESSF

The Ministère de l'Emploi, de la Solidarité sociale et de la Famille du Québec (Quebec department of labor, social partnership and the family) has a three-fold mission: to fight social exclusion and unemployment, to value the family and children, and to foster the development of youth. To fulfill this critical role with Quebecers, the Ministère operates no less than 200 offices across the province, and its activities require almost 15,000 workstations (including laptop computers and public kiosks).

The Challenge
When it was created in early 1998, the Ministère installed the Windows NT 4.0 operating system on its workstations. The system was of course adapted to the government's very strict configuration, utilization and security standards. By the end of 2001, with the arrival of Windows XP and the increasing shift to online government services, it was time to plan for a significant upgrade. However, it was also crucial that the upgrade be completely transparent for users and present no disruption, however brief, to the services offered by the Ministère. Only a few IT partners were solid enough and had the rigorous management structure needed to participate in a project of this scope. Among them was CGI, which through a call for tenders won four of the six mandates involved (Architecture, Configuration and Testing, Deployment, Change Management) and therefore played a key role in the technological and organizational aspects of the migration. The automated application installation package conversion and application conversion elements were handled by another supplier and the Ministère itself respectively.

The project teams faced multiple challenges. With respect to architecture (a phase overseen by the Ministère), it is easy to imagine the critical importance of issuing orientations and creating a technological architecture that would be fully accommodated by all of the targeted workstations. In a government environment of many understandably strict standards, this task demanded numerous clearly-focused strategic decisions (which applications would be used for which types of workstations and under which conditions, etc.).

“When the Configuration component began, we also faced major challenges in linking the project's various components,” stated Benoît Gagnon, the Technology Infrastructure and Specialized Services Department Head for the Ministère. “CGI had to interact efficiently with the teams responsible for the other components that were being worked on simultaneously. In other words, its deliverables depended on input from the project's other teams. Each deadline therefore had a direct impact on the overall success of the project, and the CGI team found itself called upon at every turn. Moreover, at least six standard configurations and thousands of interconnected parameters had to be taken into account to respect the Ministère's crucial standardization and centralized management principles.”

The deployment challenges were also complex. Involved was the establishment and subsequent management of a timetable for 200 sites across Quebec, while bearing in mind the Ministère's overall constraints and the various local limitations that existed from one office to another. Few companies would have been capable of handling a mandate of such scope and complexity. However, added to the challenge was the need to conduct all of the migrations on the weekend to ensure that users arriving Monday morning find a workstation so familiar that even the desktop be personalized and the computer running without disruption.

With respect to the Change Management component, it was necessary to support the user community through a number of dynamic, balanced and innovative collaboration initiatives (committees, consultation groups), communication strategies (intranet site, presentations), training support strategies (computer-assisted training tools), and documentation strategies (toolbox, knowledge base).

The Strategy
Continuous teamwork contributed significantly to the recognized quality of the technological architecture established by CGI and the Ministère. In fact, this component involved a joint CGI-client team in which everyone collaborated in a completely transparent manner right from the beginning. A detailed project structure was established that precisely outlined the responsibilities of each individual, the follow-up and coordination mechanisms that must be respected, etc. The results obtained are a testament to the impact of this strategy.

“During the critical Configuration component,” added Mr. Gagnon, “I was able to observe the CGI team at work and witness firsthand the effectiveness of their management approach, not only in terms of the process and timetable, but also with respect to content validation (through highly structured configuration testing, for example). This impeccable service clearly contributed to the smooth flow of the subsequent steps.”

The CGI Deployment team also adopted winning strategies to assure the project's ultimate success. Notable was the team's general approach to plan initial contact with the manager of each office at least six weeks prior to the planned migration date and to establish a true contract of involvement that set out a detailed description of the nature and scope of the work. Other success factors included the concentration of implementation activities on weekends and on-site user support by the same team members during the following two working days. As Mr. Gagnon explains, “From the moment the offices opened on Monday morning, citizens would be arriving to obtain services essential to them. The least technical snag or employee discomfort with the system would have had an immediate impact on our services to the public. It was therefore necessary that the CGI implementation team ensure that users be in control as soon as they arrived at work.”

Given the number of sites and their organizational diversity, it was also crucial that CGI function with a great deal of autonomy to coordinate the ten month implementation period and the team's action plan.

“Of course credit is due to the Ministère for responding to this critical need for autonomy,” stressed Mr. Gagnon, “but CGI demonstrated that it was up to the challenge. Autonomy of this kind requires an in-depth understanding of the organization and its objectives.”

And finally, the user group very much appreciated the support role played by the Change Management team and was also pleased with the participation of managers on the user committee.

The Technology

• Windows XP Professional Operating System
• Office XP Pro Suite; InfoConnect, Entrust, Kyberwin, Secure Desktop, Aviva, NETCDS, and many other applications used by the Ministère

The Results
Between February and October 2003, close to 15,000 PCs were completely migrated at an average rate of 500 per weekend in 10 sites. And while the new operating system rigorously conforms to the standards of the Ministère, it also allows for much more flexibility than the old system - not only because XP technology gives greater control to users without compromising overall security, but also because the Ministère and CGI were able to translate the increased flexibility users had been asking for over the years into concrete solutions.

In the Ministère's IT division, where one might have expected an increase in help requests that normally follows a migration of this size, calls actually decreased slightly. IT representatives also received kudos from users. “Months before the Windows XP implementation was completed, things were going so well that I basically considered the job done,” said Mr. Gagnon. “The CGI team demonstrated considerable autonomy despite the wide range of needs and the tight timetable. The success also can be credited to CGI's excellent work with respect to the architecture, configuration, testing, change management and planning of the implementation. And although CGI was not responsible for all of the project's components, it was nevertheless constantly committed to our overall success. This strategic concern for the client was even put before contractual considerations. This best defines a solid partnership, and it is demonstrated in the perfect marks we awarded CGI in this respect, among other very high satisfaction ratings.”