The right means of doing business — using Defence 365 to get the job done
January 28, 2022 - Defence Stories
In 2020, COVID-19 left several Quebec long-term care homes in desperate need of help. As part of Operation LASER, Reservists were sent into the homes to assist in providing medical care to the residents. The troops spent their days working at the long-term care homes, then would return to their hotel room to isolate each night. One complication that arose among the troops was finding a way to communicate with each other while remaining in isolation. With Defence 365 (D365) having just been rolled out across the Department of National Defence, they decided to use Teams as the solution to their problem.
“We pushed it as one of the main means of communication,” says Lieutenant-Colonel (LCol) Frederic Lauzier, J6 of Joint Task Force (East). “Because the soldiers were being confined to their hotel rooms at night, they were not able to debrief and socialize after a day of work, and that’s important.”
Once LCol Lauzier helped the Reservists employed on OP LASER get on Teams, everything became easier. “They were able to connect from their own room and their own devices. They could meet with their whole group at the end of the day and debrief, all the while abiding by the health measures required by the mission,” he says.
LCol Lauzier saw the value of using D365 in the field and started implementing it as soon as possible. He says it solves one of the biggest issues Reservists face: not always having access to DWAN. “We are not able to provide a DWAN workstation to all Reservists, especially on the short turnaround required by domestic operations like OP LASER. D365 has changed everything. Almost all Reservists have some kind of personal device, be it smartphone or computer. With D365, they now can use these devices to connect with everybody else, securely and in an approved manner.”
Before D365 was rolled out, LCol Lauzier and his team were forced to use 3rd party apps to communicate. But as soon as D365 became available, his team switched to using Teams. While the 3rd party apps were necessary at first, LCol Lauzier says “It was just not the right means to do business.” With Teams, he had fewer security concerns. “Now we have the capacity and the assurance that everything is secure.”
Joint Task Force (East) Reservists have been at the forefront of using D365 in their work. While learning and employing a new system has its challenges, LCol Lauzier is hopeful it will continue to be used in high pressure situations, like the one last year in Quebec.