Modernization Matters: A Lesson from the U.S. Department of Education

Without question, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on teleworking, and federal government contractors and agencies are no exception.

This month, Meritalk highlighted how. Because of an IT modernization push supported by GDIT that began more than three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education managed to:

• Move to 100% telework in a matter of days with no disruption in service
• Distribute $31 billion of stimulus funding over a period of weeks
• Utilize online collaboration tools to support more than 370,000 calls
• Cut its helpdesk speed-to-answer times in half, even as call volumes surged

GDIT is a proud partner to the Department of Education, and our work on its Portfolio of Integrated Value-Oriented Technologies - Integration (PIVOT-I) project enabled much of the agency’s ability to quickly respond to the needs of its workforce during the coronavirus crisis.

When the department’s workforce was moved to telework in the spring of 2020, the GDIT team responded in days to enable the virtual private network (VPN) to handle the increase in demand, moving from 20% to more than 90% VPN utilization. We also enabled collaboration tools to support the remote workforce, supporting a 500% increase in calls per month.

Working with the department, evolving its infrastructures to be ready for the unexpected, and understanding the agency’s mission enabled us to support them in a crisis – when things like reliability and performance mattered most.

Read the full article.