The Department of the Environment

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The Department of the Environment - Government case study

The Challenge

The responsibility for the quality of the environment, housing, roads, water and other related services in Ireland lies with the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

As part of their responsibilities, the Department administers a variety of grants schemes including a number relating to housing grants.

To enable more efficient management of seventeen complex housing grants schemes, the Department recognised that they needed one common system. This would enable common payment processing and would minimise the training of new users to support the different schemes.

The Solution

In order to realise their objectives, the Department chose Fujitsu to help them develop the new Housing Grants system. Fujitsu designed a solution to achieve the department’s vision to create business components as the basis for building flexible and responsive business applications - utilising the core principles of Naked Object Architecture. The solution consisted of:

• A web-enabled front-end application developed using Java
• Middleware COM objects developed using Visual Basic; An interface to an SQL Server database back end
• Reports developed using Crystal Reports Objects and Designer and deployed on Crystal Enterprise Edition

The Benefits

The key benefits the Government Department gained from the Fujitsu approach:

• Efficiency: Fujitsu’s use of a common approach to payment processing and the use of an automated interface streamlined the processing of payments. With the use of common principles in the design, the varied schemes have a common look and feel to enable training of users across multiple schemes.
• Future-proof: Fujitsu ensured functionality within the system allows for future changes in grant rates, payments that allow the Department to react quicker to changes in the schemes. The common approach within the schemes allows the Department to move resources between schemes as Government policy emphasises one scheme over another.
• Ease of use: Fujitsu’s use of a web based interface has allowed the Department to roll-out the system in a short period to housing inspectors and allow their work to become more automated.

The Implementation

The Fujitsu implementation approach included:

• Architecture: Legacy systems were replaced using a solution based around the core principles of Naked Object Architecture, allowing the re-use of common objects such as applicants and payments.
• Integration: The new solution fully integrated with Microsoft Word, Crystal reports and PROSE Financials.
• Remote access: The solution was rolled out to the housing inspectors to allow them to enter details of housing inspections remotely from their homes.
• Training: Fujitsu’spreparation and delivery of customised training using both direct end user training and a “train the trainer” approach.
• Maintenance: Fujitsu designed the system to cope with retirement / amendments of schemes due to changes in Government policy.

The Expertise

As a leading e-business services company, Fujitsu has a long history of integrating technologies, implementing complex projects and a proven track record in complex IT solutions. We have also built a reputation for understanding the business requirements of a wide range of different organisations. We support these solutions with a deep and thorough understanding of mission critical systems that is based on over thirty years of working with some of the world’s most demanding organisations.