SupportingtheTuvaluGovernment’sdigitalisation
Dynamo6 helped the Tuvalu Government, facing rising sea levels and limited internet, migrate to Google Workspace remotely. Despite challenges, strategic timing and video training ensured a successful cloud transition, improving communication and collaboration for a more digital future.
About Tuvalu
In the South Pacific Ocean, you find Tuvalu. It is a mix of atolls and reefs, with low-lying islands. Due to this, the nation facing an uncertain future, the loss of their country due to rising sea levels and the impacts of global warming. To secure its future, the island nation is pioneering a bold solution – becoming a digital nation. And one step in this journey was adopting Google Workspace.
What we did
Taking place in the 2021/22 period of travel restrictions, we completed a fully remote Google Workspace migration for the Tuvalu Government Working with the Ministry of Justice, Communications and Foreign Affairs, responsible for the IT operations of the government, we began an understand phase to scope out the current environment and then design a migration solution.
After this step, we moved into the guts of the project, we completed a mail migration and environment config to best practices. To support the adoption of Google Workspace, we included comprehensive training of employees and system admins for the management of the tool in the future.
The challenge
Migrating an entire government to the cloud presented a significant hurdle – connectivity. Tuvalu's internet, reliant solely on satellite, offered a meagre 5Mbps download speed and a 1.5Mbps upload. Additionally, due to pandemic restrictions and remoteness, the project had to be conducted entirely remotely. With limited bandwidth, email and chat became the sole channels for communication and project updates.
Adapting our approach
While a straightforward migration plan was envisioned, internet limitations demanded a different approach.
- Strategic timing - The migration was strategically scheduled for off-peak hours to minimise impact on government operations.
- Data-light training - Training materials were transformed into video tutorials, minimizing bandwidth usage while ensuring knowledge transfer.
This has been one of our first moves into cloud services, and the experience has been great. Dynamo6 worked around Tuvalu’s connectivity challenges. The end result is that emailing and general communication is easier for departments and ministries. More Google Workspace adoption has happened since, and overall it is fostering a culture of collaboration.
The results
The implementation of Google Workspace significantly benefits the Tuvalu Govt. As some workers now operate from Fiji, readily accessible files and increased communication through Google Meet’s chat offers much faster and better ways to work together and serve Tuvalians. Cost-wise, it’s reduced the need for on-prem servers as well as meeting one Future Now goal of digitising operations.