The heritage of the Pennsylvania (PA) Office of Attorney General is one of the oldest and most diverse offices of public trust in the United States spanning over three centuries of life in the Commonwealth. It addresses crimes and crime prevention in the areas of drugs, environmental law, fraud, organized crime, crimes against seniors and children, domestic abuse, financial, civil, and more.
GroupID Automate is a powerful yet easy-to-use application that dynamically maintains distribution lists based on rules that are applied to directory data.
When users’ directory information changes, GroupID Automate automatically updates the appropriate distribution lists and security groups by using rule-defined LDAP queries. It took the PA Office of Attorney General’s group management to a whole new level by providing an easy-to-use interface, scheduled updates, and automatic group creation.
Harnessing the Power of Custom Distribution Lists
Paul gave the following example to demonstrate just how efficient they have become with Imanami products.
“Recently the Office of Attorney General’s Human Resources (HR) Section needed to send sexual harassment information to different groups within the organization. It was critical that customized packages be distributed to various groups as they required different levels of detail. With Imanami’s GroupID Automate, we were able to customize this in 15 minutes. What would have been a many-day project in the past was so simple. We just queried AD, created the appropriate groups, hid the names of the people to which the information did not apply, and HR was able to send the information out the same day with complete confidence.”
GroupID Self Service is a powerful web-based directory management solution that provides self-service to users to update their own directory information, search the global catalog, modify objects in different domains, and manage their own groups. It takes the burden of directory management away from IT, Human Resources, and other groups, saving a lot of time maintaining manual address books.
Integrating with Corporate Intranet for Increased Control and Security
GroupID Self-Service also allows the PA Office of Attorney General’s Information Technology Section to maintain as much control and security as required by the organization; and because it is web-based, it easily integrates into a corporate Intranet to replace less reliable phone directory applications.
“We use GroupID Self-Service and GroupID Automate very heavily today,” says Paul Lubold, Manager (Infrastructure & Operations). “I am not sure what we would do without it”.
Imanami’s GroupID Synchronize provides significant wins in Identity Management projects by delivering meta-directory benefits from existing investments in Microsoft Active Directory (AD). GroupID Synchronize turns AD into an authoritative repository for identity information by synchronizing most databases and identity stores with AD.
Synchronizing to a whole new level
Today, by utilizing scripting in the product, the organization can provision/de-provision accounts and can map business processes to automation.
“We are also looking into using GroupID Synchronize more due to its unique Instant Messaging functionality,” says Paul. “This is something that will be very valuable to our organization. We already have approval, notification and maintenance processes set up that can be managed via a Blackberry and we want to implement more automation of that kind moving forward.”
Before implementing Imanami’s suite of solutions, the PA Office of the Attorney General was behind the times. The IT staff was inundated with manual account maintenance and things were just getting worse as the organization grew. In the past, all changes to more than 1,000 managed accounts and hundreds of groups at the Office were done manually.
According to Paul Lubold, Manager for Infrastructure & Operations in the Office of Attorney General’s Information Technology Section, “Updates to our systems were frequent given the volume of accounts and it was painstakingly slow to implement even the simplest changes. Quite frankly, contact updates, office changes, and new employee set-up were dreaded tasks from a systems administration standpoint. You can only imagine the number of updates that occur in an organization of this size. It was a daily, if not hourly event.”
The PA Attorney Generals’ Office has a special technology challenge as well. It utilizes MS Exchange 2003 for approximately 90% of its systems but is also running MS Exchange 2007 for the remainder, as part of Microsoft’s Rapid Deployment Program (RDP).
With the power of the Imanami suite, the PA Office of the Attorney General has evolved into a world-class service organization. Not only does it save time, but it also frees up experienced IT staff to build new systems and optimize existing systems for even more efficient operation, which in turn, helps the Office provide better public service. The organization can now provision/de-provision accounts, manage groups, create directories, and manage contact information accurately and with ease and exceptional control. Today, the IT department runs much faster, can help other groups run more efficiently and they have the bandwidth to think creatively to stay ahead of the technology curve and maintain their status as a technology leader in Pennsylvania State Government.
