State Government Optimizes Business Process Efficiency with Secure File Transfer Orchestration

For a state government responsible for the wellbeing of over one million residents, providing convenient public services is part of the mission. More than 15,000 employees spread across hundreds of agencies support this goal, each working to benefit the health, lifestyle and safety of a diverse community. For many departments, this involves funneling information into, around and from their people and systems.

This can create problems when a single IT team is responsible for providing reliable, secure and easy-to-use technology services for every agency. Not only are these departments moving files containing payroll, audit, personal health information (PHI)  and other sensitive information, but this data has to be transferred to and from behind the firewall. The state works with external contractors and vendors ranging from enterprise organizations to local SMBs. For the state IT team managing the movement of files, this means working with customers—from novice to expert—in tech proficiency and a vast array of storage solutions where file data is kept.

According to the organization’s current file transfer system admin, “The State interacts with a lot of external users. And some of those external users are what I consider the mom and pops. I can be dealing with the tech guy at Apple, and I can be dealing with your grandmother trying to upload something. File transfer must be robust to be able to really accommodate all those different challenges that you would be facing just interacting with the different people.”  

In this context, the IT team knew they needed a centralized MFT solution with automation capabilities, an end-user-friendly UI and advanced security and compliance-enabling features.

To balance the organization’s need for capability and security with consumer-friendly ease of use and government-approved predictable pricing, the team began using Progress MOVEit.

“If you need to give files to the state, or if someone in the state needs to get files to someone outside the state, or if someone within the state needs to get files to another state, it usually all runs through MOVEit, and I’m the only administrator,” the system support specialist said.

For a single IT team supporting so many stakeholders and customers, MOVEit Automation removes the admin time and headache of moving thousands of files every day. It also helps support the success of business workflows. For example, if a human error resulted in missing, incorrect or delayed data as part of payroll or health insurance processes, state employees or civilians could be negatively impacted. When thousands of services are on the line every day, these processes must be efficient, reliable and easy to implement.

“Our team just finished deploying a new automation task transferring files from one source to one destination. We expect this procedure to save hundreds if not thousands of hours of staff time each year,” the system support specialist explained.

MOVEit Transfer is the system of choice for the state’s departments working with external vendors that do not have the resources for an FTP interface of their own. The state is able to provide MOVEit Transfer as a free service to these vendors. When working with mom-and-pop style shops or front-line workers, MOVEit Transfer acts as a folder-based web experience non-technical stakeholders can comfortably use without relying on traditional methods of file sharing. This keeps files more secure and traceable. The state also uses MOVEit Transfer for person-to-person file sharing with businesses throughout the auditing process.