Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Case in Point

Creating citizen advantage

Better government through information
management
Governments today face increasing pressure for
transparency and accountability. Citizens want to know
exactly how their taxes are being spent, and what the
government is doing to create value for the community.
Information management (IM) can help governments
improve their decision-making and operating efficiency. It
can also help them deliver the accurate, in-depth insights
that today’s citizens demand.
One-size-fits-all approach to tax collection. Some
delinquent accounts involve significant dollars and require
an intensive collection effort. Others involve smaller
amounts of money, or are likely to be paid with little or no
effort. Unfortunately, when deciding how to allocate the
state’s limited collection budget, it was not always easy to
tell which was which.

Challenges
One of the largest states in the nation wanted to
use information more effectively. But like most large
organizations, the state’s operations revolved around a
wide variety of transaction systems. These applications
were primarily designed for processing, not to deliver
management insight. Data was locked up in isolated silos,
and was often redundant or incompatible. Major
problems included:

Multiple versions of the “truth.” Different systems

produced different answers to the same question. It was
hard to tell which was right.

Lack of transparency. A transaction-oriented IT

infrastructure prevented the state from providing citizens
and policy-makers with information that was accurate,
timely, and insightful. In addition, silos and bureaucratic
red tape made it difficult to aggregate information across
agencies to provide a statewide view.

Inadequate performance measures. Like many

governments, the state lacked clear performance measures
and accountability, making it hard to assess service quality
and efficiency – and undermining the organization’s efforts
to improve.
Solution
Effective information management requires an enterprise-
wide approach. Yet it is often difficult or impractical to
tackle everything at once. An effective way is to start with
an enterprise-wide vision, but to implement the vision
by focusing on a handful of high-impact areas that can
deliver immediate benefits and help build momentum. In
this case, the state implemented a business intelligence
solution involving six key areas:
1. Expenditures website. Provides up-to-the-minute
information on state agency expenditures. Taxpayers
can see how much each agency is spending, exactly
when they are spending it, and who is receiving
the money.
2. Executive dashboard. Provides a fully automated
and up-to-date summary of key performance indicators
across all state agencies. This enables leaders and
managers to make better decisions, and to quickly
identify and act on problems before they become
crises. It also sharply reduces the amount of time spent
on manually collecting, analyzing, and reconciling data
from multiple systems.
3. Economic development website. Provides instant
access to a wide range of economic development
information, including data about the state’s
population, demographics, economy, employment,
and taxes. This helps policymakers develop short- and
long-term plans for growth, infrastructure development,
education, disaster recovery, and taxation. It also
attracts new business to the state and helps companies
identify the right location for their operations.
4. Statewide financial reporting system. Allows
authorized employees to view enterprise financial data,
including payroll and general ledger information. This
web-based query and reporting system was created
using a new, state-of-the-art business intelligence tool
that is both highly convenient and highly secure.
5. Revenue collection scorecard. Helps the state
track collection activity through 65 key metrics and
performance indicators. Managers can create custom
queries and graphical reports that provide near
real-time performance data so they can quickly see
where standards are not being met – and adjust their
actions accordingly. They can also access from high
level summaries to pinpoint individual cases that need
immediate attention.
6. Enforcement scoring and ranking. Assigns a
“risk score” to each delinquent account so the state
can focus more effort on high-risk, high-value accounts
– improving the return on its revenue collection
investments.
The state also developed an enterprise-wide roadmap
that outlines and prioritizes IM-related activities across all
agencies. The roadmap includes plans to expand the six
initial IM solutions into a fully integrated data warehouse
for all core processes.
Results
Improved information management can provide the
insights necessary to support improved decision-
making and long-term planning. It can also
boost service quality and efficiency, enabling the
government to serve the public more effectively.
Citizens, employees, and policy-makers now have
a wealth of information at their fingertips. Through
custom queries and reports, they can quickly zero in
on the data they need, without resorting to manual
processing and analysis – or getting bounced around
from one agency to the next. This ground-breaking
effort has taken government transparency to a new
level, and has been widely recognized as a standard
for other states to follow.

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