The Las Vegas Valley Water District has a workforce of over 1500 individuals, many of whom are approaching retirement age, leading to a significant knowledge gap within the organization. To preserve critical tribal knowledge, they aim to manage and govern this information effectively while also updating their collaboration platform to adapt to future growth. Similar to numerous organizations, LVVWD grapples with scattered terabytes of data housed in various drives, legacy systems, and soon-to-be-outdated custom systems. Opting for M365, they seek to modernize their collaboration platform while keeping information safe and secured.

Collaborating with General Networks’ Intelligent Information Management team, LVVWD implemented a migration strategy aimed at purging ROT (redundant, obsolete, trivial) content from multiple drives and intelligently transferring it to M365 based on each data’s functional purpose and permission requirements. This comprehensive migration approach involves assessing all data sources to ensure that no dark data is left unattended. It also includes steps to clean and reorganize the data to enhance organizational clarity while upholding data permissions and governance rules, including privacy considerations.

LVVWD successfully avoided the SharePoint/Teams sprawl that plagues early adopters of M365. The established structure enables scalable and regulated data growth, steering clear of chaotic expansion. This approach combats data hoarding and siloed knowledge while offering management precise insights into organizational information through designated resources from each department, promoting effective knowledge management. Moreover, the structure is adaptable to organizational shifts while maintaining appropriate permissions. Managed content will adhere to records retention policies, facilitating controlled data pruning over time to curb uncontrollable storage expansion.