The Federal Public Service Economy

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The Federal Public Service Economy

The FOD Economie, K.M.O., Middenstand en Energie (Federal Public Service Economy, S.M.E.s, Self-employed and Energy) is a Belgian federal government department. The mission of the FOD Economie is to stimulate, regulate and protect the Belgian economic environment. This mission will be realised by deploying activities to concretise the governmental decisions, to protect the consumers, to control the application of the Belgian economic laws, to promote the technological knowledge and competitiveness and to guarantee the energy supply required by the Belgian economy and the Belgian citizens. The FOD Economie acts furthermore as the Belgian representative in the European and international economic context.

The Challenge

“The challenges of the IT Merge project were huge”, says Frank De Saer, ICT manager of the FPS. “We were faced with two entirely different ICT infrastructures - different hardware, software, services and even different locations. Merging them not only meant integrating all that, including a physical move, but above all it entailed a change in mentality and culture, both on the ICT and the business side. Fujitsu’s process driven approach has really been instrumental here in developing as smooth a migration path as possible”.

The Solution

The project had three basic targets: restructuring and streamlining the organisation, migrating and harmonizing the infrastructure, and installing a service oriented approach. Except for the KBO-episode, everything went as planned. As both platforms used different applications, eventually one of either was chosen for the new, uniform infrastructure. “The key message here was: try and get as many synergies as possible, both from a management and a cost control perspective”, De Saer adds.

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