Département du Loir-et-Cher: Enabling teams to collaborate and deliver 90 services flexibly
About Département du Loir-et-Cher
Located 180 km from Paris, the role of the Loir-et-Cher administrative department is to deliver a broad range of services for its inhabitants, from supporting families to managing the departmental archives.
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About Ageona
Based in Orleans, France, Google Cloud partner Ageona specializes in helping businesses and organizations migrate to the cloud.
To provide its diverse teams with collaborative tools tailored to their needs, the Départment du Loir-et-Cher switched to Google Workspace, building a new LumApps intranet hosted on Google Cloud.
Google Cloud results
- Enables employees to collaborate easily and efficiently using shared Google Drives integrated with a LumApps intranet
- Supports the delivery of diverse services with tools tailored to meet the needs of specific teams
- Saves money on application licenses with new solutions built using the Google ecosystem
- Offers flexible mobile working for all employees, with an easy transition to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic
Full migration completed in three months
Named after two of its rivers, the Loir in the north and the Cher in the south, the administrative Départment du Loir-et-Cher in central France is a two-hour train ride from Paris. It's one of 101 Départments in France, which are the middle level of administrative subdivisions between a Région and a Commune. Its historic chateaus, located in Blois and Chambord, make it attractive to international and French visitors, while its vineyards and forests appeal to those looking for a slower pace of life.
"The administration of the Départment is organized horizontally, so our priority is collaboration. We wanted to make it easier for employees to share documents and information with their colleagues and with other teams."
—Eric Cerutti, CIO and Director of Digital Transformation, Département du Loir-et-CherTo serve the needs of its 340,000 inhabitants, the Départment is overseen by a council of 30 elected councilors. It employs 1,700 people, organized into teams handling up to 90 services, including road maintenance, education, and heritage, as well as areas such as strategy, innovation, and tourism. "Our organization includes multiple teams with different missions dispersed over 40 workplaces, and with varying ways of using IT services," explains Eric Cerutti, CIO and Director of Digital Transformation for the Département du Loir-et-Cher. "Officers working in social services, for example, often use tablets when working out in the field, while administrative staff are primarily office based."
In 2017, to deliver flexible tools tailored to the needs of every team, the Départment decided to replace its existing SaaS email and productivity solution, as well as develop a new intranet. "The administration of the Départment is organized horizontally, so our priority is collaboration," explains Cerutti. "We wanted to make it easier for employees to share documents and information with their colleagues and with other teams."
Working with Google Cloud Partner Ageona, the Départment du Loir-et-Cher chose Google Workspace as the solution to enable its teams to work flexibly, implementing a central communication hub using LumApps hosted on Google Cloud to offer full native integration with Google Workspace.
Choosing Google Workspace to support secure collaboration
To select the best solution, in November 2017 the IT team tested out Google Workspace and another leading provider. "We looked carefully at their collaborative aspects, including their document sharing and video-conferencing capabilities," says Cerutti. "I was quickly convinced by the simplicity of Google Workspace."
Cerutti was keen to take a “Big Bang” approach to the migration, implementing the new solution swiftly and efficiently. He was confident that the Google Workspace tools would support this rapid changeover. As Google Workspace is designed to meet stringent privacy and security standards, he was also satisfied that it would support the Département in meeting regulatory requirements, such as the GDPR.
Preparing users for a rapid Big Bang transition
With the contract signed in February 2018 and Ageona on board, the team launched a campaign to prepare the workforce for the switch. The team used a customized Loir-et-Cher Google logo and Google colors to brand its migration support materials and dedicated an issue of its internal publication to the topic. During the month leading up to the May launch, branded posters were displayed across workplaces, with a separate poster for each Google Workspace tool explaining its uses and benefits.
The next step was to train 80 ambassadors from various teams to spread the word. They provided basic support to their colleagues and reassured them that the change would be positive. "People could see for themselves that Google Workspace functioned well, so they began looking forward to the migration," says Cerutti. Finally, the team hosted in-person training sessions and more than 20 Google Meet training webinars, using a Google Site to host e-learning videos demonstrating simple everyday processes, alongside a quiz about the new tools.
"With Google Drive, each department can work in its own way. The Heritage team has moved all its files onto Google Drive and uses Google Drive for desktop to access files from its PCs, for example."
—Eric Cerutti, CIO and Director of Digital Transformation, Département du Loir-et-CherEnabling teams to work together, in their own way
After three months of laying the groundwork, 1,800 email accounts and their corresponding contacts and calendars were migrated to Gmail and Google Calendar. The migration included 1,300 PCs, 500 tablets, and 400 smartphones, and involved migrating 7 million emails and 1.3 million calendar events. It was completed over a weekend, without a single email lost. By Monday, 95% of people's accounts were ready to use, with a small number of larger accounts taking a little longer.
Each of the Départment's teams and services now has its own Shared Google Drive, with approximately 14 TB of Google Docs, Google Sheets, and other files. Because each service has different needs, each team organizes its Shared Drive according to its own priorities by filling in a Google Sheet, defining its own naming conventions. "With Google Drive, each department can work in its own way," says Cerutti. "The Heritage team has moved all its files onto Google Drive, and uses Google Drive for desktop to access files from its PCs, for example."
Also integrated natively with Google Workspace is the Départment's LumApps intranet, called Salamandre, which launched in 2019 and is hosted on Google Cloud. This enables employees to access Workspace tools directly from the intranet by clicking on the correct icon. The intranet not only functions as a place to read updates and news, comment or like posts, or access useful documents, it also contains a comprehensive searchable directory of all employees.
The Google Docs that are available as part of open and closed groups on the intranet are automatically updated when they're changed on Google Drive, saving time and avoiding the need to replicate documents.
Other everyday tasks have also been simplified and automated. Using Apps Script, with the support of Ageona, the IT team has created a platform to automate the creation and management of orders. This stores files associated with each order in a dedicated Google Drive.
Working from anywhere, at home or on the move
Prior to the onset of working restrictions linked to COVID-19, in March 2020, employees at the Department were already using Google Meet and Google Chat, and remote access to Gmail and other Google Workspace tools was in place. For example, on-call technicians, such as road salt spreaders, or social workers dealing with issues over the weekend, could access the documents they needed on the move using Google Drive on a smartphone.
"We were ready for remote working as soon as the lockdown was announced," says Cerutti. "Even if an employee hadn't previously worked remotely, they could easily check their emails using any internet connection and digital device." The executive management communicated with employees using the intranet to post updates and instructions, and employees kept in touch with each other using the intranet forums and groups. As many of the Département's workers are still working remotely, the organization still has 1,000 active users on Google Meet every day.
"We're slowly replacing our legacy applications with solutions that use Google Workspace. As a result, we're saving money as the cost is already included in our Workspace licenses."
—Eric Cerutti, CIO and Director of Digital Transformation, Département du Loir-et-CherSaving money by building new applications in-house
Since switching to Google Workspace, the Département finds it easier to share information and build new solutions that speed up routine processes. The latest project Ageona is undertaking for the Départment is to digitize the documents and reports used by the Departmental Council, making them available via a Google Drive and an Apps Script application, which councilors will access via Chromebooks. The correct documents will be copied into the individual Drives of the elected councilors, and an automatically generated email will notify them that they're ready.
"We're slowly replacing our legacy applications with solutions that use Google Workspace. As a result, we're saving money as the cost is already included in our Workspace licenses," explains Cerutti.
For other local administrations looking to switch to Google Workspace, Cerutti's key advice is to focus on supporting employees during the migration. "In my experience, good communication is key to a successful Big Bang," he says. "Beyond that, my approach is to support each department according to their needs. With Google Workspace, we have the flexibility we need to do exactly that."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Département du Loir-et-Cher
Located 180 km from Paris, the role of the Loir-et-Cher administrative department is to deliver a broad range of services for its inhabitants, from supporting families to managing the departmental archives.
About Ageona
Based in Orleans, France, Google Cloud partner Ageona specializes in helping businesses and organizations migrate to the cloud.