The Department of Social and Family Affairs

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Department of Social and Family Affairs

The Challenge

The Department of Social and Family affairs (DSFA) is responsible for the delivery of a range of social insurance, including Child Benefit and the provisions for unemployment.

In 2000, the DSFA decided to embark on a Service Delivery Modernisation programme, in order to transform the way in which it delivered services to its customers. This major programme of change was required to help the DSFA to meet the challenges of the information age, start to deliver on the Department's commitments under the Government's Action Plan for the Information Society and enable the DSFA to offer e-Government services in a manner that best meets the needs of its customers.

This major programme of change was required to help the DSFA to meet the challenges of the information age, start to deliver on the Department's commitments under the Government's Action Plan for the Information Society and enable the DSFA to offer e-Government services in a manner that best meets the needs of its customers.

The Solution

Fujitsu was contracted in January 2001 to design, develop and implement the new solution and to deliver the first application i.e. Child Benefit.

Fujitsu was also contracted to instigate a skills transfer plan for the IT staff and user groups within the department. Fujitsu designed a solution that achieves the department’s vision, namely to create business components as the basis for building flexible and responsive business applications in Naked Objects Architecture.

The Benefits

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

• Business Agility - The Naked Object Architecture provides a high level of flexibility and scalability to cater for a changing business environment.
• User Friendly - The new system also provides the Department's officers with a toolset for individual problem solving, based on a set of business objects that they can manipulate directly through a powerful user interface.
• Scalability - The main user base for the Child Benefit application is approximately Ninety officers located in Letterkenny but the underlying architecture can scale to scale to 4,500 users within the Department plus usage by other departments and agencies, together with occasional access by Four Million citizens of the State.
• FutureProof - The highest possible degree of futureproofing was provided by building the architecture on open industry standards, so that technologies can be replaced as and when they become superseded in later years.

Our Approach

The Fujitsu Implementation approach included:

• Architecture: Fujitsu was selected to deliver the new architecture based on Windows 2000 and COM+ technologies.
• Training: Fujitsu performed Training Needs Analysis, developed Training Plans, created custom-built Training materials, and subsequently managed and delivered the Training programme.
• Programme, Project and Delivery Management: Fujitsu were responsible for the successful planning, tracking, reporting, resource management, vendor management and completion of the programme.

Our 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. Fujitsu work in partnership with our customers, and with the providers of the world’s leading solutions to ensure a rapid, smooth implementation. 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.