City of Fremantle IT team scores 10/10 for WFH support

It’s been nearly three weeks since most of the City of Fremantle’s employees transitioned to a work-from-home (WFH) environment to limit the spread of COVID-19.

City of Fremantle Manager Information Technology Joel Hurst and his team have been instrumental in improving the City’s WFH capability to ensure employees can connect with each other, effectively collaborate with other business units across the organisation, access the tools they need to perform their duties and, ultimately, serve the Fremantle community during these difficult and uncertain times. 

“During the month of March, IT service requests skyrocketed, most from staff requiring assistance to get set up at home,” Joel said.

“The team received 1489 requests for service, well above what we would see under normal circumstances, and was able to close 1427 of these which is huge considering it is a small team.”

Today with the majority of employees working remotely, more than 230 users are connecting to the VPN. The system was originally designed and configured for 20 staff to be connected at one time, and the City’s IT team managed to expand the system to cater for over 300 staff.

Joel said employees working from home were no longer protected by the City’s firewalls, so his team immediately worked to deploy additional end-point protection to 339 devices to prevent attacks from malicious websites.

“To date this software has stopped 26 malicious threats from infecting users’ machines and data,” Joel said.

“We’ve also implemented software to protect users’ email accounts from phishing attempts, which have risen considerably since COVID-19 has spread across the world. 

“We have already successfully neutralised multiple malware attempts on end-users’ personal data.

“This has prevented attacks similar to the phishing attack that we experienced last year that could have resulted in user account details being jeopardised.”

While the City’s administration building is temporarily closed, Joel’s team needed to find a way to continue to receive mail. 

“Our IM team was able to resolve this by diverting our mail to an external vendor who scans and delivers the mail to us digitally,” Joel said

The implementation of Microsoft Teams has been another standout project from the IT team, with rounds and rounds of positive feedback from managers.

Many have said their teams are communicating and collaborating more efficiently via the platform’s chat, audio calls and video meetings.

City of Fremantle CEO Phil St John said it was fantastic to see and hear the positive feedback around how technology was keeping staff connected and productive. 

“Joel and the IT team have done a terrific job to set the organisation up to be truly agile and adaptive to the crisis situation we are in,” Phil said.

“Again, this shows our capability in dealing with tough times.”