- Name: Valencia City Council
- Sector: Public Administration
- Number of employees: 6,000 people, including public employees and collaborators
- Number of offices: 2 main locations. There are more than 250 municipal agencies at the service of citizens throughout the municipality
- Location: Valencia (Spain)
Digital transformation in Valencia City Council to facilitate teleworking
Valencia City Council chose to digitize its workplace environment to facilitate teleworking, a measure that arose due to the circumstances derived from the COVID pandemic. What was initially considered a tool to guarantee accessibility to workstations from any location and device, has become an essential solution thanks to the versatility offered by UDS Government, Virtual Cable‘s VDI solution for Public Administration.
The UDS Government solution has allowed them to not only implement remote working for all user groups in an efficient and fast way, but also enable secure remote access to information systems for employees who are usually away from the office.
“It is also used to publish applications that are complicated or expensive to install on each workstation due to their uniqueness or for security reasons,” explains Vicente Rodrigo Ingresa, Head of the Information and Communication Technologies Service. In addition, the group of specialized technicians can “access remotely without having to travel to the offices and thus offer a more agile service, resolving issues even outside office hours,” he comments.
When choosing the solution to carry out its digital workplace project, the IT department of Valencia City Council was clear, “we chose UDS Government because of the good references from public entities, because of the type of licensing and because we value its support service,” says the IT manager.
This decision has allowed the City Council to promote family conciliation among employees and have a unified platform that simplifies application version changes. The transformation of workplaces has led to significant cost savings, including lower electricity consumption, fewer hours of technical support and an extension of the useful life of IT equipment.
The flexibility and versatility of UDS Government have been crucial for the City Council to provide the appropriate tools to public employees, so that they can carry out their tasks remotely and with the best user experience. “Mainly we are using Windows virtual applications and remote access to physical computers located in the offices, although we also deploy Windows virtual desktops for certain users, with the advantage of managing the entire environment centrally, from a single console,” says Vicente Rodrigo.
The importance of implementing a secure and flexible solution
In terms of security, UDS Government’s Native Multiple Factor Authentication (MFA) system guarantees compliance with its internal regulations while offering great peace of mind. “This system protects us against possible cyber attacks involving misappropriation of security keys. It is one of the essential points of our Security Policy”, points out the Head of IT and Communications.
Vicente Rodrigo Ingresa also highlights other technical aspects of the solution, such as the inclusion of HTTPS in the configuration of the UDS Government components, which has allowed Valencia City Council to use its standard load balancing and high availability systems. Furthermore, with the improvement of the processing of statistics in the software administration, they obtain real-time information used for teleworking management.
The IT department highlights that “the most important change that has occurred when implementing this solution has been the simplicity of administration. Its integration with Active Directory allows you to create groups of users and quickly associate them with the virtual applications that users need to work.” Updates and maintenance tasks are also carried out in an agile, simple and centralized way.
In addition, the flexibility of UDS Government, compatible with any third-party technology, has allowed them to take advantage of their VMware vSphere virtualization platform and opt for a hyperconverged infrastructure with the solution VMware vSAN.
Results and benefits of digitalization in the Valencia City Council
In summary, Valencia City Council has become a benchmark for innovation in the public sector by implementing this project, which combines application virtualization with remote access to physical workstations and desktop virtualization. The choice of a flexible, adaptable and scalable solution has made it possible to adapt to the needs of each user profile. This approach has generated positive feedback among users, who find the platform developed by Virtual Cable very simple and intuitive.
The City Council’s IT manager emphasizes that, on several occasions, they have resorted to the UDS Enterprise support service and it has always been very professional and close. This technical support, together with the help of the New Media Professional Services team, Virtual Cable’s partner that has led the project, has been crucial to guarantee the proper functioning of the solution and has contributed to general satisfaction. With this implementation, the City Council has managed not only to face current challenges, but also to move towards a more efficient and modern work environment.
VDI vApp and Remote Access INFRASTRUCTURE
- VDI connection broker: UDS Enterprise
- Remote Desktop Services: Windows vApp, remote access to physical devices, and Windows VDI
- Hypervisor: VMware vSphere
- Hyperconvergence Platform: VMware vSAN
- Connection protocols: RDP and HTML5
- Authenticator: OpenLDAP
- Access devices: Any
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