Upper Austrian Provincial Government
FACTS AND FUNCTIONALITIES
- 50,000 applications for housing subsidy per year
- 75,000 letters sent per year
- shorter throughput times for case processing
- smooth transfer of tasks between colleagues due to holidays or sick leave
- availability of files for external consultations and teleworking
- telephone information available at any time, including peak times
TASK
The Department for housing subsidies within the office of the Upper Austrian Provincial Government processes about 50,000 applications for housing subsidy per year. The entire documentation is distributed, processed and saved in hard copy. Responses to individual, case-based information requests are often only possible by return call after retrieval of the file or after extensive waiting time for the applicant.
SOLUTION
The sought after solution should improve the efficiency in processing applications, reduce throughput time and enable access to ad-hoc information, regardless of location. Hard copy files are replaced by electronic files and administered in the already existing electronic administrative information system (ELVIS). Thereby the Fabasoft eGov-Suite serves as the ECM system and as the basis for the integration of the specialist application developed with Java by the Province of Upper Austria’s Department of Information Technology.
IMPLEMENTATION
Following the kick-off of the project in September 2006, the project team laid out the specifications required from the professional application. Fabasoft eGov-Suite was already in use as ELAK, and its basic functionality covered the majority of the required use cases, e.g. protocol or the document management system. The project team from the Office of the Upper Austrian Provincial Government therefore focused on development of the specialist functionality with Java. After a mere three-month development phase, the first application prototype was introduced in the Department for housing subsidies in a test phase. By means of an SOAP interface the specialist application was connected to the electronic file through Fabasoft. Further interfaces, e.g. to SAP systems, were developed directly by the IT Department of the Provincial Province of Upper Austria. The test phase for all users of the specialist application started in September 2007. The applications, including the mostly comprehensive attachments in various formats, are pre-sorted, scanned with large scanners using batch processing and imported into the Fabasoft eGov-Suite. After registration by the office, the data are forwarded to the specialist application. All documentation relevant to processing the applications is available in the electronic file. Direct case-based information requests can be answered immediately without delay. In the case of telephone enquiries, resource-intensive return calls are made obsolete. During peak times, the Province of Upper Austria receives up to 160 telephone enquiries regarding housing subsidies per hour. The specialist application has been in use since January 1, 2008.
OBJECTIVES MET
The introduction of the specialist application has had significant impact on the working methodology. The service office is also able to provide immediate information in cases of comprehensive files, and thanks to the specialist application the electronic files are also available on external consultation days. The in-house development of the user interface, based on the self-developed Java-Framework, facilitated the best possible conversion from dealing with hard copy files to electronic document processing.