The Provincial Administration of the Western Cape (PAWC) has installed the BI tool, WebFOCUS, from Fujitsu, in a bid to assist the department in increasing its service delivery to the approximately four million citizens of the province.

The WebFOCUS installation is currently concentrated on the provincial education department - which cares for over a million learners at school level, approximately 29,000 educators and 8,000 support personnel. It was purchased by the Centre for e-Innovation (CEI) to support the Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) division and other sub-directorates within the department.

Peter Present, director: research, of the Western Cape provincial education department, says the department often needs to balance its role as an agent for social change with limited financial resources. "It is therefore critical that the resources available are allocated and used in the most cost-effective manner," he adds.

Within the Western Cape Education Department, the directorate: education research, is responsible for all management information, and has the task of filtering information about current financial, economic and social issues to sub-directorates. This is in order for sub-directorates to make informed strategic decisions regarding day-to-day operations.

Key reasons for the implementation were to receive immediate answers to questions, enabling various managers to receive the same consistent and accurate data to make their own decisions, to reduce the dependency on central EMIS/CEI support for information, and to better integrate data from various sources.

"This solution was chosen because of its strength as an information platform, its scalability and ease of deployment," says Augi De Freitas, ICT solutions delivery manager at the Centre for e-Innovation. "It allowed strong parameterized reporting, flexible report outputs and unlimited numbers of users. We were impressed by its performance, the ability to directly access our source systems, and, especially, the ?light" hardware requirements. In addition, the solution has proved to be extremely cost-effective."

Present says: "The return on investment should not be seen in pure financial terms. What has happened is that senior managers gained a much better insight into the challenges that face the education sector within the province. Areas of need could be identified and appropriate policies could be put in place to address critical issues. In addition, we have found that making management information available to managers highlighted problems in the data, and allowed us to increase the data quality. "

Says Chris van Wyk, deputy director: applications development: "Staff in my section were immediately able to produce a number of reports for use by the Education Department, and had no trouble publishing them on the Web."

Improved performance

In one of the projects - the creation of a data mart - the outcome, using Webfocus, was improved performance and a simplified reporting process, according to the department. Additional functionality has been added, as needed, in the form of WebFOCUS Maintain for closed-loop processing and collaboration, and most recently, the ESRI adapter for spatial information analysis, the department adds.

"The WebFOCUS ESRI adapter, though recently implemented, has had, and will no doubt continue to have, a huge impact on the decision-making process. Now, managers can verify possible solutions and identify trends spatially," says De Freitas.

The ArcIMS GIS software, from ESRI, identifies factors such as infrastructure, roads, rivers and mountains, which affect the provision of education in the diverse geographical areas within the province. This WebFOCUS/ESRI adapter provide dynamic, bidirectional integration between the GIS software and WebFOCUS. One can, for example, use a selection on the map to produce a report, or can map schools based on certain criteria.

Present adds: "Our vision was to provide reporting information ?at the fingertips" and GIS functionality to managers. WebFOCUS could always provide the information, but, since our project to integrate WebFOCUS" reporting with the strength of a GIS system, we have achieved a unique and fresh view of the status of our schools."

According to the department, an immediate benefit after the implementation was increased communication and cooperation between sections within the department, due to management and staff having a common understanding of the issues and problems being faced.

The department believes that, as people get used to finding their own answers, the pressure on the EMIS and Centre for e-Innovation will decrease, allowing them to apply themselves to the more urgent and strategic tasks.

In conclusion, Laurianne Stamer, professional services consultant at Fujitsu, says that the Centre for e-Innovation is currently in discussions with other government departments within the Western Cape, encouraging them to follow suit and derive the necessary benefits to ultimately increase service delivery across the entire province.