How has COVID-19 impacted your Government job?

[Bridget]

Hello, Government workers! 

I hope this message finds you healthy and safe. COVID-19 has shaken up every industry, but I can imagine that almost every aspect of Government jobs are touched by the pandemic. 

I'm wondering - how has COVID-19 changed your role/projects? How are you using Atlassian tools to help manage these changes?

Perhaps we can learn from each other's use cases! 

Cheers,

Bridget

[Aileen Grant]

Hey Bridget! We started a social space in confluence to encourage staff to have some more social interaction while we all work from home! We put a daily quiz up on a chat page and have areas for shout outs, entertainment suggestions and a page to share playlists. Its helped teams add a quiz into their daily team calls and provides a space for people to interact socially to try and help those who have felt isolated!

[Bridget]

@Aileen Grant , that's so cool! I think we might have to start that :). Love that use case for Confluence - do you also have a chat tool that your team uses? 

[Aileen Grant]

Thanks! We use Skype for business which is our standard tool across the Scottish Government. 

[Chaitanya Srinadhu]

Hey @Bridget !

I am not a government employee but have been a federal contractor for a along time and most of my time has been managing and supporting various Atlassian tools for different agencies under HHS. Since COVID hit the world, we have seen an overall uptick of interest in using collaboration tools at various levels of government. Here's my two cents on how and why this new interest has been manifesting 

1.  Re-Org's- It looks some agencies are going through a staffing reorganizations which is leading to changes to processes, leadership and which in turn has surged the demand for task tracking, analytics and project management. Jira and confluence have been a big help in that area.

2. New policies - COVID has made everyone realized that this crisis cannot be handled by just few agencies or governments. With new policies that require cross-agency collaboration, being implemented, there has been a new sense of collaboration that is building across agencies and internal teams. Atlassian tools has been instrumental in facilitating this cross-functional collaboration.

3. Knowledge sharing- We have been noticing that governments at all levels (local/state and federal) have been trying to provide secure collaborative spaces to researchers to share their research findings related to COVID and learn from others. These knowledge bases will play a crucial role in success of COVID research and how we adapt to it. Confluence has been used in some cases to host such knowledge bases.     

3. Connecting with Public: New outreach programs that target general public  and care providers (especially related to COVID) + Need for seamless support processes/help desks for public to report problems,  has surged the demand for modern help desk software's like Jira service desk, ServiceNow and others. 

4. Remote work! Transitioning into 100% remote work force has been a challenge that every single organization has been facing since the crisis began. Government agencies are no exception. With everyone being 100% virtual, Jira and Trello have been helping teams rethink existing processes and implement new ones. Jira is also helping teams that have started their Agile transformation journey.

Hope this helps! 

[Bridget]

@Chaitanya Srinadhu - wow - your list truly sums it up! This would make an amazing blog post - might you consider reposting for the general Community? 

Amazing to see how a pandemic shifts the ways in which companies work - especially Government. While most COVID related things are negative, I see this as a positive change in the way teams work together. 

Thanks so much for your response!! 

Hope you're having a good week so far,

Bridget

[Chaitanya Srinadhu]

@Bridget Sure! I would be happy to. Where would like this to be re-posted?

[Bridget]

I'd recommend posting it in the Confluence collection :). Send me the link when it's live and I will feature it for you!

[Stéphanie DeGuire]

That is a great list indeed. Well done :) 

We have noticed two stages:

The first is the « putting out the fire » actions that were taken to accommodate full time telework. This includes quick decisions on tooling (in our case MSTeams was deployed) and infrastructure upgrades. 

Now we are in the « fallout «  mode where we are looking at longer term strategy to enable virtual work. 

Our team manages an on-prem instance of Jira and Confluence and we are noticing some teams moving away from Confluence and towards Teams/SharePoint, while others are enthusiastically jumping on-board. There isn’t a clear path forward. 

[Bridget]

@Stéphanie DeGuire , so interesting! Neither stage sounds that friendly - I hope the fallout stage is at least less frenzied! 

Interesting that folks are switching up tooling right now. Do you know the reason they're moving towards Teams/Sharepoint? Just curious!

Let me know if you need any resources to get some clarity around the best path forward. Hope you're having a good Friday,

Bridget