Business Intelligence Improves Delivery of Social Services

One of the largest municipalities in the Netherlands, the Municipality of Tilburg was able to improve its delivery of social services using Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform.One of the largest municipalities in the Netherlands, the Municipality of Tilburg was able to improve its delivery of social services using Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform.

WebFOCUS Helps Municipality of Tilburg Connect Data From Disparate Systems

The Municipality of Tilburg, with a population of more than 200,000, is one of the ten largest municipalities in the Netherlands. The municipality's social services sector administers welfare payments to approximately 5,500 people, and helps approximately 600 people find work.

Furthermore, the social services department carries out the Services for the Disabled Act, which affects more than 10,000 citizens, and provides debt counseling to an additional 1,500 residents. In addition to these major initiatives, there is also a specific policy for combatting the poverty that affects the roughly 8,500 households living at or below the poverty line.

In Tilburg's social services department, exactly who does what has been formally recorded, and all responsibilities have been clearly formulated and outlined. But while management determines exactly what should be done, the administrative organization's primary task is to decide precisely how it should be done.

To a great extent, municipal services are run on the basis of self-government. Plans are formulated, work is assigned mutually among the staff members, and all services and products are developed internally. The Tilburg model also includes strict financial management policies that are regulated by the municipality's far-reaching budgetary system.

As is the case in most municipalities, the administrative organization uses a tremendous number of disparate computer systems. Implementing an advanced corporate performance management (CPM) strategy presents a great challenge in such a complex environment and requires a powerful, comprehensive business intelligence platform to ensure success.

That's why the Municipality of Tilburg turned to Information Builders WebFOCUS enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform. WebFOCUS is a comprehensive, fully integrated, enterprise-scale solution that delivers powerful and feature-rich, yet intuitive BI across an entire organization, enabling timely, accurate reporting at the executive, analytical, and operational levels. With WebFOCUS, any data, in any enterprise source (including documents and other unstructured formats), is readily available, accessible, and meaningful to any user, in any location.

WebFOCUS offers a unifying integration infrastructure that accesses, reconciles, cleanses, and prepares any and all data for business intelligence use. As a result, it can seamlessly and directly retrieve information from more than 300 sources, including relational, legacy, ERP, and CRM systems; data staged in warehouses, marts, or operational data stores; and real-time data from operational systems – on any platform.

"WebFOCUS is the only business intelligence solution that can retrieve and present information from such a diverse set of systems," says Peter de Punder, manager of Tilburg's Management and User Support Department at Social Services. "Additionally, at Tilburg, customer-oriented service delivery is of paramount importance.

"We strive to make the client the focal point of all activities that are conducted. WebFOCUS makes this possible by consolidating all the information a client needs concerning the regulations that apply to him or her into one file."

Easy integration is also crucial to municipalities. Not only do they need access to existing systems, but they require the ability to quickly include new applications whenever needed. This is important because, as government authorities delegate more tasks to the municipalities, the number of systems used to carry out these activities also increases. In the meantime, the municipality has been gradually transferring its existing legacy applications to the Oracle platform.

WebFOCUS is also used to provide detailed management reports. Currently, 150 standard reports have been created. In addition, the social services sector uses WebFOCUS as an aid to optimize key business operations.

"The application is used by everyone in the social services sector. Right now, there are 200 users," says Leon van Berlo, who is responsible for management information, as well as many other tasks within the department. WebFOCUS also handles workflow management for the department's employees.

"Tilburg sets specific performance objectives for its employees, which they can incorporate into their workflows," van Berlo adds. "This involves decisions about the number of applications to be handled, as well as their effect on work, reaction, and lead times. WebFOCUS shows the employees' progress, and makes any deviations more visible. If someone cannot meet his or her targets, their managers can ask why. We have an open culture, everyone can see everything that is going on."

WebFOCUS has made information provision more solid and, at the same time, more flexible. The municipality can now develop and implement all sorts of initiatives to fine-tune its policies. Thanks to WebFOCUS, it is also much easier to establish direct connections among its own existing information sources, as well as those maintained by third parties. This has had a positive effect on fraud prevention and has improved the deployment of people and resources.

"It became clear that certain families had been living on welfare for generations. It is now possible to deal with these situations more efficiently," says van Berlo. "Furthermore, we have been able to compile risk profiles of welfare factors, so that we can act adequately at an early stage."

Thanks to the information system, the municipality has been saving money. The number of people on welfare has dropped by tens of percentage points due to improved support and better fraud policies.

The municipality has been using WebFOCUS for three years now and is extremely satisfied with the results they've achieved with the application. "Our operating procedures have become very transparent," de Punder concludes. "We serve as an example for other municipalities."

WebFOCUS has made Tilburg a pioneer, by making it possible to realize shared service centers across local authorities and agencies. In fact, neighbouring municipalities such as Alphen-Chaam, Baarle-Nassau, and Hilvarenbeek have now outsourced Social Services to Tilburg.

Across the globe, government agencies and other organizations in the public sector have implemented WebFOCUS to improve public service by enhancing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their operations. In cities like Cincinnati, Montreal, Richmond, and New York; states like Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Colorado; and federal agencies such as FEMA, NASA, the U.S. Army, and the Department of Justice, the WebFOCUS BI platform is facilitating immediate, unhindered information access, analysis, and sharing among everyone who needs it, including users within an agency, in other departments within a jurisdiction, across other agencies, at private sector corporations, and even among constituents. As a result, vital information can be tapped to help maximize productivity, reduce overhead expenses, eliminate waste, and increase transparency, accountability, and performance.