Name:

Dutch Government New world of work

Categories:
Information Worker Solutions, Communications and Collaboration Solution Partner of the Year

Optional:
[Public Sector, Government Partner of the Year]
[Unified Communication Partner of the Year]
Introduction
After a comprehensive testing and pilot period, the new collaboration and communication
environment (part of the new Dutch governmental Digital Workspace DWR), went on-line in 2010.
Scalable (Intended) to service up to 120.000 public servants, including all ministries and government
agencies, the platform is based in whole on the Microsoft Office Server and Desktop suite.

Functionality provided
Collaboration Real-time collaboration and communications
• Document management; • Instant Messaging;
• Collaboration; • Presence;
• Shared agenda; • Web-conferencing
• Polls; o Application sharing;
• Search; o Document sharing;
• Workflow; o Desktop sharing;
• Discussions; o Polls;
• Wiki’s and blog’s o Support for MS PowerPoint;
o Chat;
o Audio/video.
• Audio/video-conferencing;
• VoIP using desktop;
• Logging/archiving.

The platform is based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, including Active Directory.

Premise
Like many governments, the Dutch government is
fragmented. All ministries and agencies have their own
IT architecture, infrastructure and applications. In 2008
the Ministry of the Interior started a program to
provide shared services to all ministries and agencies.

These services include, among others, web

portal/intranet facilities, a common desktop, a uniform
search option and collaboration and communication
facilities (the so-called Samenwerkfunctionaliteit or
DWR-SWF).

As the Dutch government is required to tender all contracts and many suppliers offer different
platforms, the shared services compromise a collection of multiple technologies.

Web portal: SAP Netweaver

Search: Autonomy
Desktop: Microsoft Windows/Office
Content integration: EasyWCM

These technologies are to be integrated in order to provide one shared service to the Dutch
government on a whole.
The goal of the collaboration platform in particular is to enable collaboration and communications
across the inherent borders of the many ministries and government agencies. Additional goals are:

1. to introduce state of the art technology, which includes Windows 7 and Office 2007 for the
common desktop and Office Communicator R2;
2. to introduce new functionality, including presence, web-conferencing and blogging.

The shared IT services provided to the Dutch government are intended to be used without
reservation or any comprehensive modifications to existing (network or desktop) infrastructures. The
new collaboration platform can therefore be accessed simply using the web browser. This includes
the team sites, instant messaging and desktop sharing.
Additional functionality is provided using the common desktop.
This includes web conferencing and audio/video conferencing.

Activities

Sogeti has provided the Dutch Ministry of the Interior with a fully functional collaborative
environment. The related activities are:

 Infrastructure and information architecture;

 Network architecture;
 Requirements and functional design;
 Technical design and implementation;
 Creation of web services and made-to-measure components;
 Custom lay-out of the SharePoint Portal
 Functional implementation (promotion, etc);
 Training of end-users, departmental IT staff and management.
Technical specification
The collaborative platform includes the Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2. Both platforms use a Microsoft SQL
Server cluster for storage of data. In order to support the intended and growing number of end-
users, the platform has been set-up as a large scale farm.

In adherence with best practises, the collaboration platform consists of a development, test,
acceptance and production environment. In addition, Sogeti has provided a training environment and
a demonstration environment.

Server component Number Installationtype

Development environment (virtual)
SharePoint frontend/application server 1 MOSS EE
OCS frontend server 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Access Edge 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS A/V Edge 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Archiving 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Web Components 1 OCS R2 EE
SQL Server 1 SQL Server 2005 EE

Server component Number Installationtype

Test environment (virtual)
SharePoint frontend server 1 MOSS EE
SharePoint application server 1 MOSS EE
OCS frontend server 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Access Edge 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS A/V Edge 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Archiving 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Web Components 1 OCS R2 EE
SQL Server 1 SQL Server 2005 EE
Server component Number Installationtype
Acceptance environment
SharePoint frontend server 3 MOSS EE
SharePoint application server 1 MOSS EE
OCS frontend server 2 OCS R2 EE
OCS Instant Messaging Conferencing Consol. OCS R2 EE
OCS A/V conferencing Consol. OCS R2 EE
OCS Communicator Web Access 2 OCS R2 EE
OCS Access Edge 3 OCS R2 EE
OCS A/V Edge 3 OCS R2 EE
OCS Archiving 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Web Components Consol. OCS R2 EE
SQL Server 2 SQL Server 2005 EE
Netwerk load-balancer 1 Nvt.

Server component Number Installationtype

Production environment
SharePoint frontend server 3 MOSS EE
SharePoint application server 1 MOSS EE
OCS frontend server 2 OCS R2 EE
OCS Instant Messaging Conferencing Consol. OCS R2 EE

OCS A/V conferencing Consol. OCS R2 EE

OCS Communicator Web Access 2 OCS R2 EE
OCS Access Edge 3 OCS R2 EE
OCS A/V Edge 3 OCS R2 EE
OCS Archiving 1 OCS R2 EE
OCS Web Components Consol. OCS R2 EE
SQL Server 2 SQL Server 2005 EE
Netwerk load-balancer 1 Nvt.
Made to measure
Although most of the functionality as described is based on “commercial of the shelf” platforms,
some additional –made to measure- features were implemented. Most notably: the new Dutch
government styling of websites.

Additionally, the collaboration platform was to be connected to the SAP Netweaver web portal,
support federation with existing OCS/LCS environments and Autonomy Search environment.

Using SharePoint web services, an Internet Server Application Programming Interface for single-sign-
on and the Office Communications Server API, government workers are now able to view SharePoint
information and start instant messages directly from the web portal. Information from SharePoint is
retrievable using the Autonomy Search platform.