A Northern Ireland Civil Service email issued at the weekend. It was all to do with laptops and working from home. However, reading between the lines gives some insight into how long they think this lockdown will last.
By way of background, many Civil Service offices are closed. A number of staff already had laptops enabled for the civil service network, so could work from home. However when the lockdown occurred, hundreds of requests went in for laptops.
Such laptops as they had, have now been issued to priority cases. More have been ordered and will not be delivered for 8 weeks.
Reading between the lines - the order has not been cancelled, so the expectation is that they will still be needed in 8 weeks time!
In the meantime, they are going to re-configure desktop computers to allow staff to take them home and connect to the civil service network. They hope to do this with a maximum of 5,000 desk top computers. If my memory and maths is correct, this would give facilities to just under a third of the NI civil service. However they will not be able to start the re-configuration until the end of April. So again, reading between the lines, they expect the lockdown to continue sufficiently far beyond the end of April to make work on 5,000 machines necessary. The email added that it would take someone collecting a desktop 2 hours to log on and update the machine before they could take it away. It does not say how long technicians will have spent on it before the collection point. Either way, it is a sizeable operation to undertake and it would not be done if it was only needed for a matter of days or a week or so.
One final sentence was interesting. It was partially in respect of why re-configurations of desk tops could.not start until the end of April - "you may be aware that a surge of covid 19 cases is anticipated over the period from 6th to 20th April and we expect that this may well involve further lockdown measures, likely enforcing the complete closure of the departments estate".
By way of background, many Civil Service offices are closed. A number of staff already had laptops enabled for the civil service network, so could work from home. However when the lockdown occurred, hundreds of requests went in for laptops.
Such laptops as they had, have now been issued to priority cases. More have been ordered and will not be delivered for 8 weeks.
Reading between the lines - the order has not been cancelled, so the expectation is that they will still be needed in 8 weeks time!
In the meantime, they are going to re-configure desktop computers to allow staff to take them home and connect to the civil service network. They hope to do this with a maximum of 5,000 desk top computers. If my memory and maths is correct, this would give facilities to just under a third of the NI civil service. However they will not be able to start the re-configuration until the end of April. So again, reading between the lines, they expect the lockdown to continue sufficiently far beyond the end of April to make work on 5,000 machines necessary. The email added that it would take someone collecting a desktop 2 hours to log on and update the machine before they could take it away. It does not say how long technicians will have spent on it before the collection point. Either way, it is a sizeable operation to undertake and it would not be done if it was only needed for a matter of days or a week or so.
One final sentence was interesting. It was partially in respect of why re-configurations of desk tops could.not start until the end of April - "you may be aware that a surge of covid 19 cases is anticipated over the period from 6th to 20th April and we expect that this may well involve further lockdown measures, likely enforcing the complete closure of the departments estate".
