Optimizing IT Infrastructure and Preventing Workplace Harassment at Westchester County Government

Meet The Client: Westchester County

Located just north of NY City, Westchester County is the seventh most populous county in the state, home to over 1 million people in six cities, 19 towns and 23 villages.

The Client’s Goals and Challenges

Westchester County needed to improve the efficiency of IT shared services that were previously purchased and deployed by independent government offices, which resulted in:

Inflated IT costs
Overstaffing and redundant workflows
Lack of a centralized platform for managing the county-wide IT infrastructure

Additionally, the county needed to improve IT staff skill sets and satisfy the New York State requirement to deliver annual harassment prevention training to 25,000 employees spread across 30 departments and the Westchester Community College (WCC) system.

Our Solution

ETS improved the county’s internal shared services program by consolidating the services-specific training and the training enrollment process in a single custom registration portal with over 1,000 self-paced courses available on demand.

The consolidated training library is aimed specifically at the individual IT departments within the county and includes:

Online courses
IT & Project Management bootcamps
Educational videos
IT labs

Certification prep study guides and exams covering IT infrastructure management, software development and computer literacy

Consolidating the training materials within one centralized platform enables the country to optimize the training delivery throughout local governments and departments, ensuring that only the right employees get the right training at the right time.

This alleviates the bureaucratic burden and inflated costs that had previously plagues the county’s IT training services.

We also added specific training elements to the program to address the client’s challenges and meet their goals, such as:

Online Microsoft Office and end user software productivity training
Two customized New York State-compliant harassment prevention courses for employees and managers
A custom Workplace Violence Prevention course
The electronic Employee Handbook, repurposed as a training asset within the Learning Management System (LMS) and deployed in tandem with the courses as a required assignment for all employees

The employees’ learning activities were continuously reported to management for progress tracking.

The assignment was delivered online, and all 25,000 employees completed the training within 60 days, dramatically reducing the amount of time required to complete training compared to in-person instruction.