Missouri DSS Standardizes on WebFOCUS
Snapshot| OrganizationBased in Jefferson City, Missouri, the Missouri Department of Social Services provides public assistance programs that benefit more than 1 million citizens. |
| The ChallengeEstablish a flexible and extensible intranet-based reporting environment that meets the needs of Department users at all levels of the organization. |
| The StrategyDevelop secure, real-time links to mainframe data sources, in conjunction with Web-based applications for creating, formatting, and distributing reports. |
| The ResultsIncreased service levels to citizens, substantial cost and labor savings, less maintenance for IT support personnel. |
| Information Builders SolutionWebFOCUS, iWay Software, Education, Information Builders' Consulting. |
One measure of a civilized society is the extent to which it cares for its needy citizens. In the state of Missouri, the Department of Social Services (DSS) coordinates a variety of programs to keep families together, prevent abuse and neglect, and encourage self-sufficiency. The department provides public assistance to children and their parents, access to health care, and specialized assistance to troubled youth, among other services. It has an annual budget of $6.2 billion and employs approximately 8,800 people.
Approving and coordinating these public services to millions of recipients is a massive information-management challenge. To simplify the job, Missouri DSS has been using software from Information Builders for nearly a decade. In 1995, IT pros installed FOCUS on the department's mainframe computer and began teaching power users to create ad hoc reports. In 1997, they deployed data integration software from iWay Software to help PC users access mainframe data stores. But the real breakthrough came in 1999 when the Department of Social Services adopted WebFOCUS as the end-user reporting tool for its Family Assistance Management Information System (FAMIS). Today, thousands of DSS users rely on WebFOCUS applications to create hundreds of different kinds of reports.
"The WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Environment fits our requirements perfectly," contends Christy Bullock, an IT administrator in the Information Services and Technology Division at DSS. "It enables basic parameterized reporting for end users and advanced ad hoc reporting for power users, with support for different levels of access. WebFOCUS can interface with our RACF security infrastructure, which means we can address many of our reporting requirements without having to build new information systems from scratch. Best of all, because the reporting environment is browser-based, we don't have to install and maintain desktop software on thousands of PCs."
Bullock was part of a small team of developers that spearheaded the design, planning, and development of a data warehouse and reporting infrastructure for the FAMIS system. Today, several DSS programs within the Family Support division – including child care, food stamps, temporary assistance and Medicaid enjoy the fruit of their labor. As an integrated eligibility system, FAMIS has become a centralized application through which families can apply for a variety of services. It is also used to track participation in these programs, providing a record of payouts, benefits, and related information. That's where WebFOCUS comes in.
"This type of integrated system saves everybody time and effort – both workers and recipients," says Steve Adams, director of the Information Services and Technology Division at DSS. "WebFOCUS makes it easy to gather the information that our supervisors and caseworkers need to monitor their cases. It makes them more efficient and streamlines many information-intensive processes."
Spreading the Benefits
FAMIS contains a variety of case management and informational reports, with seven domains geared to worker needs: state office, region office, county office, FSD office, manager, supervisor, and caseworker. It calculates benefits, produces notices to clients, and provides reports for case managers and supervisors at all levels.
"We authorize WebFOCUS users according to their roles within the organization," Bullock explains. "For example, individual caseworkers can only view details on their cases, while supervisors and managers can see information about all the workers they supervise. We currently have about 5,000 users."
Casual users can access predefined reports that can be customized with parameter selections. More advanced users can create their own reports from the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Environment.
"We have created help pages to provide instruction, so training really isn't necessary for users who simply want to access the standard reports and specify input parameters," Bullock adds. "Unless individuals want to create ad hoc reports, they can pretty much figure out the system on their own."
Meeting Multiple Needs
Since completing her work on the FAMIS system, Bullock has gone on to help other teams create WebFOCUS applications for several other divisions as well. "WebFOCUS is our reporting standard," she notes. "As various programs come to us with reporting needs, we are able to solve them with this comprehensive technology. All told, we have created several hundred reports for many different information systems."
Part of the reason for this explosion of activity is the inherent ease-of-use of the WebFOCUS software, which includes multiple entry points for developers. "Some of our IT staff members use WebFOCUS Developer Studio and others are more comfortable with 4GL," Bullock continues. "It's nice to have both options to accommodate varying needs and levels of expertise. We have created some fairly complicated reports, and we have not encountered anything that we could not do with WebFOCUS."
For most DSS applications, source data is derived from DB2, IDMS, and flat file systems on the mainframe. Data extracts are periodically staged to a data warehouse, also in DB2. WebFOCUS is installed on a Microsoft Windows 2000 server. iWay supplies real-time access to the mainframe data sources.
"Intranet users are authenticated by the iWay server when they log in," Bullock explains. "WebFOCUS supports RACF security, so their user IDs and passwords are the same as for any type of mainframe access. Also, because WebFOCUS uses nonpersistent connections to the reporting server, it makes very efficient use of resources. We have not had any problems with scalability."
In the future, the department might move its data sources off of the mainframe and on to less expensive servers. "Either way, WebFOCUS can access the information," Bullock maintains. "It works with just about any type of data source on every conceivable platform."
Getting Noticed
Currently six DSS divisions rely on WebFOCUS applications, and four divisions are either adding more reports or are developing new projects for everything from medical services to energy assistance. One report that has garnered lots of attention is the DCN History report, which integrates four separate Children's Division programs and more than 20 years of data into one comprehensive report with drill-down capabilities. Integrating these disparate databases gives caseworkers access to complete client histories within these systems on demand, allowing them to tailor service to the unique and documented needs of each child.
According to Adams, the DCN History report has markedly reduced the time it takes caseworkers to investigate hotline calls for example, if a citizen reports suspected child abuse. Previously, workers had to search through as many as 40 to 60 CICS screens for the information now contained in the DCN History report. Now they can run one WebFOCUS report and discover what they need to know in a matter of a few seconds.
Adams says these quantifiable benefits are repeated in many areas as WebFOCUS saves time and money for the department. For example, DSS is saving time and money by no longer having to print, mail, and distribute FAMIS notices to recipients – a process that used to take several days. Now workers throughout the organization can help themselves to the information they need, when they need it, in the format of their choosing.
Delving Deeper
In some cases, the Department uses WebFOCUS ReportCaster to automatically send reports by email, such as the energy assistance reports that are sent to community action areas and energy suppliers. "We use ReportCaster dynamic distribution lists to automatically update our list of recipients each month," says Bullock. "When the job runs, it reads the appropriate file, creates the distribution list, and then e-mails the reports. It's completely automated."
According to Bullock, her team has always received excellent local support from Information Builders' St. Louis office. "The tech reps have been wonderful, especially during software upgrade cycles," she notes. "We have also used Information Builders' Consulting services on several occasions. When we first installed WebFOCUS, they got us started on the right foot. After that, they assisted with the DCN History report. We only had eight weeks to get it done and they helped us complete the project on time."
The DSS frequently takes advantage of Information Builders Education services as well. "The on-site training from Information Builders' training professionals, along with the annual Summit user conference, helps our developers learn the latest techniques of the software," Bullock adds.
In the future, the Department of Social Services plans to use the WebFOCUS GIS Adapter for ArcIMS to add visual mapping functionality to its WebFOCUS reports. Adams anticipates a high demand for the technology. "The combination of these two products opens up many new possibilities for report development," he concludes. "Enhancing our reporting processes and providing immediate access to data is essential for maintaining our service-delivery levels."
