The UK Department of Education is empowering its thousands of employees by offering them a Microsoft Surface device, either a Surface Book or a Surface Pro 4. The government department supervises around 20,000 schools in England, and the step has been taken to transform how its staff work.
This will allow the workers to be more mobile, collaborative and efficient and as such forms the part of the department’s broader digital transformation programme.
Adrian Tucker, Chief Technology Officer at the DfE said:
We have seen significant technology modernisation over the past 18 months, and the Surface devices have been a big part of that.
The Surface Book has been a core part of our mobility and productivity; it’s allowed us to use a device that’s secure in a mobile way. We have also upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and we are able to collaborate, share documents and use the cloud. We haven’t had these benefits before, and now we want to exploit the technology.
The department has been testing and trialling the Surface Pro 3 for sometime which eventually led to the decision that it is the right device for them, partly because of the annotation and collaboration capabilities and partly because of the way it works.
“The key characteristic that led me to choose the Surface Book was that it could become a tablet. Everything that’s on the Pro is on the Book and vice-versa, so it gave us flexibility, annotation and a tablet. It was a decision based on the future, not today; it’s about efficiency, and that’s good for the taxpayer.”
Ryan Asdourian, Windows and Surface Lead at Microsoft UK, added:
It really is significant to see government departments such as the DfE make bold IT decisions for the future. By deploying Surface devices, organisations like DfE can drive substantial efficiencies and boost employee productivity. In a traditional ‘pen and paper’ industry, it’s refreshing to see such a large-scale transformational push towards paperless working, with colleagues collaborating in an intuitive and secure manner, whether in the office or in the field.
