In an era where digitalization and efficiency are key, Wigo4it—a public sector organization that ensures over 100,000 people receive their benefits on time each month—has taken a significant step by transitioning to working in the cloud. This groundbreaking development makes Wigo4it the first government institution to operate entirely in the cloud! In doing so, Wigo4it has transformed its operational processes and significantly improved customer and employee satisfaction.
In this article, Dian van Heijnigen (Product Owner Cloud Engineering & Enablement at Wigo4it) and Phillip van Ee (Cloud Engineer at LINKIT) discuss this cloud journey, the challenges faced by both parties, the benefits achieved, and how LINKIT supported Wigo4it throughout the process.
The Origins of Wigo4it
Wigo4it was established fifteen years ago by the municipality of The Hague with a clear mission: to develop an efficient tool for calculating and disbursing benefits, particularly for special assistance. This tool, Socrates, quickly became a crucial instrument for other large municipalities in the Netherlands in terms of managing benefits. With over 7,500 users, this application now ranks in the country’s top three most-used government applications.
Time for Change
“About five years ago, it became clear that Wigo4it needed change,” Dian explains. “The organization had been operating as a traditional government agency for some time, characterized by complex bureaucratic structures and slow decision-making processes. Much custom work was done ad hoc, leading to inefficiency and high costs.”
An alarming report from Deloitte emphasized that the market could provide the same services at a lower cost, putting Wigo4it’s existence at risk. Meaning they needed to change their strategy drastically. An independent study followed, confirming that Wigo4it’s code and applications were future-proof, but the organization needed to become more efficient and flexible to reduce costs. The logical solution was a transition to the public cloud. However, this required the right expertise, and when one of the team members working on the project became unavailable, LINKIT provided the solution.
Delivering Value with the Right Expertise
Given the scope of the project and the various challenges it brought, Wigo4it sought a partner with extensive knowledge. At LINKIT, knowledge sharing is a core value: while all experts work on multiple projects for different clients, they regularly share their acquired knowledge during recurring team days. Continuous certification is also highly valued. This, combined with the ability to scale up or down quickly, led LINKIT to provide the right person to guide the project swiftly: Cloud Engineer Phillip van Ee, who had over thirty years of experience in IT, had retrained five years ago to specialize in cloud work, and was very security-minded. Phillip seamlessly joined the project and immediately added value to the Development & Engineering team.
“When I joined, the team was transitioning, moving from ARM templates to Terraform and migrating to Microsoft Azure. It’s crucial to gain new knowledge quickly, but it’s also essential for the team to still understand the old systems. That’s where I could support Wigo4it: I knew both sides and could transfer that knowledge to the team. That’s the strength of LINKIT,” Phillip explains.
Working in the Public Cloud: Concerns About Security?
Another major challenge Wigo4it faced during the cloud transition was security. It’s not surprising, as one of the most critical aspects of moving to the public cloud is ensuring the security of sensitive data. Government institutions often have concerns about this, especially given the strict regulations and the need to protect citizens.
However, working in the cloud is not inherently less secure. “It’s no more dangerous than working on-premise,” says Dian. “A mistake can be made as easily in an on-premise data centre. One wrong setting can expose a system to the internet. That’s why everyone who writes code must consider security from the start. The earlier an error is caught, the easier—and cheaper—it is to fix. Integrating security early is not only safer but also much more cost-efficient.”
“Security is not just about preventing data breaches; it’s also about keeping systems running stably,” Phillip adds. “By integrating ‘Infrastructure as Code,’ you build infrastructure components into scripts and code, allowing you to reapply them quickly. This is an advantage because you don’t have to rewrite the entire code with every system change or addition, which reduces the risk of errors.”
Positive Results
Wigo4it is now fully operational in the cloud, and the results of this transition are impressive. The numbers show significant differences, such as a budget reduction from €36 million to €19 million. With increased efficiency, Wigo4it underwent a significant reorganization, leading to a substantial reduction in personnel costs: the number of employees dropped from 270 to 126. Additionally, the time to set up new environments decreased from three months to just two hours, allowing the organization to respond more quickly and conduct better testing.
Higher Customer and Employee Satisfaction
Wigo4it has also noticed that the municipalities they work with are more involved in the processes. Where they previously didn’t accept “no” because they were accustomed to full customization, clients are now much more cooperative in finding efficient solutions. “I believe this is all about trust,” Dian explains. “Because we involved multiple parties in this transition, and the numbers are so positive, our clients have gained much more confidence in us as an organization.”
Wigo4it’s employees have well received the new way of working. “Team members are now responsible for a project from start to finish,” Dian says. “This allows teams, within government frameworks, to make decisions quickly and independently. We’ve gone from being a slow, bureaucratic, and somewhat risk-averse organization to one that is agile, willing to take risks, and able to act quickly. As a result, we work much more efficiently these days.
Another notable change is the higher response rate to the employee satisfaction survey. With overwhelmingly positive feedback, participation increased from 50% to 80%!”
What’s Next? A Green Future
Sustainability plays a crucial role in Wigo4it’s strategy. Initiatives like GreenOps ensure that the organization continuously strives for environmentally friendly solutions. Thanks to the cloud transition, significant steps can now be taken regarding sustainability. For example, reducing the number of printed letters and making application development more efficient saves much money. It reduces the ecological footprint: two data centres that used enormous amounts of energy were decommissioned.
A Pleasant Collaboration
Dian is very enthusiastic about working with LINKIT. “LINKIT was a great partner during this transition. This collaboration feels very reliable, as we’ve worked together multiple times. Communication is quick, and the people at LINKIT are well aware of what’s happening. The great thing is that we know each other across all levels now, which makes our collaboration very efficient.”
Expertise at LINKIT
LINKIT specializes in cloud computing. Are you curious about how we can support your organization? Contact one of our cloud professionals for more information.