Federal Office of Administration | Success Story

01.
Challenges

By taking on central cross-sectional tasks, the BVA promotes the concentration of federal authorities on their core tasks and at the same time contributes to greater quality and efficiency in public administration. With its consulting, coaching services for other authorities and institutions in the areas of strategic management, organization, human resources and information technology, the Federal Office of Administration plays a decisive role in the modernization of public administration. In these areas, it provides its own IT products, such as the document management and workflow system FAVORIT®, the knowledge management system and employee portal OfficeNet (ON), the Government Site Builder and the electronic personnel, organization and job management system EPOS.

BIT therefore placed high demands on the BVA monitoring system to be implemented. A uniform, platform-independent monitoring system was required, as well as the ability to integrate new processes quickly and in a standardized manner. In particular, the integration of additional IT management tools was necessary, such as the HP OpenView Service Desk, the HP Network Node Manager, UC4 and the EMC SAN Management.

Particularly in the context of implementing the technical requirements, the – partly individual – wishes of the system administrators and – for the area of reporting – of course also those of the employees of the specialist departments and customers were to be taken into account in order to achieve the greatest possible acceptance of use and satisfaction with results among these groups. This was achieved, among other things, by the Monitoring Information Portal ( MIP ) developed in the further course of the project – which also provides a comprehensive insight into the current architecture, as well as the status of the entire IT infrastructure, not only for the before mentioned group of people, but also for the management of the company.

02.
Solution

As part of the redesign of its IT service management, the Federal Office for Information Technology – in cooperation with NETWAYS – first converted the house-wide system monitoring to an Open Source solution and in a second step developed a web-based monitoring information portal, which extends and simplifies the operation of the monitoring software. This now makes it possible for a large number of users to call up information tailored to their needs on a web-based basis. A uniform, platform-independent monitoring system was required, as well as the ability to integrate new processes quickly and in a standardized manner. In particular, the connection of additional IT management tools was necessary.

For starters, NETWAYS performed the basic installation of the monitoring software server. In accordance with the team-oriented structure of the IT operation, Windows, Solaris and Linux were not integrated into the monitoring on a platform-specific basis, but gradually. The monitoring of applications – specially tailored to BVA – was also transferred to the new system. Then the alerting system was installed, which notifies the teams by phone call, SMS or e-mail in the event of a fault.

03.
Success

Monitoring Software implementation at the Federal Office of Administration and all Open Source components used, including extensions developed by BIT in cooperation with NETWAYS, are under the General Public License. Other users were also given the opportunity to use and further develop them free of charge. The MIP is constantly being expanded with additional information options, and by now – in addition to an inventory solution and a system management tool – a comprehensive reporting system has also been integrated. Depending on demand and in close coordination with the users, additional extensions will follow.