SOA in Government - VGR begins transition to knowledge-based organization with IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition

SOA in Government - VGR begins transition to knowledge-based organization with IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition - IBM SOA Customer

“OmniFind Enterprise Edition makes it possible to search for information regardless of organizational changes and data sources. We can now better leverage our existing information and help citizens more quickly find what they need.” - Robert Lundin, Communications Strategy Consultant, VGR

IBM SOA Customer - SOA in Government

Customer: VGR - SOA Company
Deployment Country: Sweden
IBM Business Partner: Ementor Sverige AB
Industry: Government
Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Enterprise Content Management, Information Integration, Information On Demand, Knowledge Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Transforming IT

Overview : SOA Service Oriented Architecture
Like many public institutions, Region Västra Götaland (VGR) uses the Internet to effectively and efficiently share information with its various constituents. However, as the volume of data published by VGR staff grew, it became increasingly difficult for employees and citizens to find information when they needed it or even to know exactly what information was available.

Business need: Streamline information access to enable citizens and government employees to find answers to their questions quickly and easily

Solution: A single search architecture across enterprise portal and document archive initiatives

Benefits: Improves service levels; improves staff productivity for reduced administrative costs; decreases number of calls to service lines; optimizes the value of existing information

Case Study : SOA Service Oriented Architecture
“IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition helps VGR streamline information management. Ultimately, this will help the organization improve staff productivity, reduce costs and better use available resources.”

—Martin Palm, Business Consultant and Project Manager, Ementor Sverige AB

“Delivering information as a service will enable us to create a new type of organization, one in which employees and inhabitants can more easily share expertise and discuss ideas to promote regional health and development.”
—Robert Lundin

Why Become an On Demand Business?
Comprehensive enterprise search capabilities and text analytics provide a solid foundation to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time

Region Västra Götaland (VGR) is the second-largest region in Sweden with 1.5 million citizens and 49 municipalities. As a government organization, VGR is responsible for the delivery of healthcare, business development, infrastructure, culture, tourism and environmental services to its residents and visitors.

Like many public institutions, VGR uses the Internet to effectively and efficiently share information with its various constituents. However, as the volume of data published by VGR staff grew, it became increasingly difficult for employees and citizens to find information when they needed it or even to know exactly what information was available.

More than 50,000 VGR employees across 100 organizations publish documents on various departmental, agency and hospital Web sites. One hospital site alone maintains more than 70,000 PDF files. Yet, because each Web site relied on a proprietary search engine capable only of searching documents within its pages, users had to visit multiple sites to find answers to their questions. For example, a citizen seeking information about regional diabetes care had to individually search the Web sites of 17 different hospitals and 130 healthcare centers. As a result, citizens often couldn’t find the information they needed and simply called agency staff directly for help.

At the same time, without a comprehensive picture of what information was available, employees spent substantial time searching for files and would often re-create documents that already existed elsewhere within VGR. “Our Web sites are no longer useful if people can’t find the information they’re looking for,” says Robert Lundin, communications strategy consultant, VGR. “We needed to provide transpar­ency across our systems so that information was easy to find and easy to manage.”

Streamlined access to information
VGR executives sought a single search architecture that would enable employees and citizens to search millions of documents across hundreds of sites by simply entering a keyword or phrase. Integrating information in this way would help reduce the time spent hunting for information, enable VGR to get more value out of existing information, and, ultimately, drive greater collaboration between employees and citizens.

VGR also needed a solution that would support its strategy to deliver information as a service. Previously, VGR IT staff had developed a document archive that could serve as a central repository for content development and publication. Using IBM Information Management solutions, VGR built a service oriented architecture that allows data sources to remain separate from the applications. This enables the organization to rapidly leverage existing information in new service-based initiatives. IBM Lotus Domino Document Manager software drives the creation and management of documents. Upon completion, documents are converted into PDF format and then stored in an IBM DB2® subsystem to provide accessibility across the organization.

When the archive was first implemented, employees and citizens could only search for documents using meta data criteria, such as author’s name, publication date or subject. To meet its goals in delivering information on demand, VGR IT staff also needed to allow users to search information within the PDF files.

VGR selected IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition software to support both its enterprise portal and document archive initiatives. OmniFind Enterprise Edition was chosen for its ability to:
Search a broad range of enterprise content, including intranets, extranets, public Web sites, relational database systems, file systems and content repositories.
Analyze information using both Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) standards and advanced text analytics to increase the accuracy of search results and enable users to search both structured and unstructured data sources.
Provide relevant and refined search results in subsecond response times.
Deliver comprehensive security features that restrict access based on each user’s access clearance.
Ease the administrative burden of having to manage a wide range of disparate data sources.

“OmniFind Enterprise Edition makes it possible for VGR employees and citizens to search for information regardless of organizational changes and data sources,” explains Lundin. “We can now better leverage our existing information and help citizens more quickly find what they need. This has reduced the pain of growing our intranet and Internet sites and makes them valuable again.”

A phased approach
IBM Business Partner Ementor Sverige AB, an IT infrastructure service provider in Sweden, provided planning, design and implementation services in the deployment of OmniFind Enterprise Edition. Ementor has been a long-time service provider to VGR and helped the organization build its document archive.

The first phase of the content discovery project provided citizens and VGR employees with a common search capability across all the organization’s intranets and extranets as well as its document archive. During the second phase, VGR will use OmniFind Enterprise Edition to implement an enterprise search capability on each VGR departmental, agency and healthcare provider Web site. This will provide citizens with consistent access to information regardless of which sites they visit.

Reduced IT administration
Lundin expects that the software’s extensive reporting and administrative capabilities will help improve the quality of information delivery while reducing costs. For example, OmniFind Enterprise Edition will help VGR IT administrators easily locate broken Web links to prevent searches from reaching a dead end. It will also help each organization quickly review when a particular document was last revised and notify document authors when files need to be updat­ed. Doing so will help support the delivery of current and accurate data so citizens don’t have to wade through out-of-date information.

“OmniFind Enterprise Edition helps VGR streamline information management,” says Martin Palm, business consultant and project management, Ementor. “Ultimately, this will help the organization improve staff productivity, reduce costs and better use available resources.”

The right information at the right time
Providing citizens with fast access to the information they need will improve service levels and decrease calls to agency service lines. For example, within the region’s healthcare system, the organization expects that citizens will be able to more quickly find specialist care or easily locate medical articles that provide valuable wellness tips and self-care recommendations. Additionally, Lundin anticipates that OmniFind Enterprise Edition will help VGR more closely match its Web-based services with constituent needs by providing staff with insight to the types of information that visitors to the Web sites request.

Also, reducing the time employees spend hunting for information and helping eliminate time wasted on recreating documents will increase staff productivity. It is also expected to help VGR better leverage existing information in planning processes.

Ultimately, Lundin expects that this enterprise search initiative will help VGR increase collaboration and communication with citizens across the region. “Delivering information as a service enables us to create a new type of organization, one in which employees and inhabitants can more easily share expertise and discuss ideas to promote regional health and development.”
On Demand Business Benefits
A single search architecture can reduce the time spent hunting for information and enables delivery of information based on context rather than organizational boundaries
Highly relevant and accurate search results can help strengthen service quality and reduce the number of telephone inquires
A flexible, integrated information architecture can reduce IT manage­ment costs and improve ability to adapt to evolving regional needs
Delivering information as a service can drive greater innovation

Key Components : SOA Service Oriented Architecture
Software
IBM DB2
IBM Lotus® Domino® Document Manager
IBM OmniFind™ Enterprise Edition
IBM Business Partner
Ementor Sverige AB

For more information
Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.
Visit our Web site at: ibm.com/software/data/enterprise-search

You can get even more out of Information Management software by participating in independently run Information Management User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at www.ibm.com/software/data/usergroup

For more information about VGR, visit:
www.vgregion.se
For more information about Ementor Sverige AB, visit:
www.ementor.se

Products and Services Used : SOA Service Oriented Architecture
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software: DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition, Lotus Domino Document Manager, Content management and discovery, DB2 Content Manager
WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition is now known as OmniFind Enterprise Edition