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SISTEMA INFORMATIVO DI GOVERNO DELLA REGIONE VENETO
DIREZIONE SISTEMA STATISTICO REGIONALE DELLA REGIONE VENETO
Italy

The Problem

At the end of XX century the role of regional government institutions was becoming more important and challenging to support the society. The regional government asked a lot of information in order to achieve economic growth and address the demand of the society (citizens, companies, public institutions).
The main objectives of the local regulations (L.R. 8/2002), stating the basis of SISTAR (Regional statistics system) and of SìGOVe (Information System for the governance of Veneto Region), is to manage the activities performed by actors belonging to regional public sector, related to find data sources, organize data, analyze and archive information and, finally, deliver statistical information. The aim is to guarantee consistency and data integrity, to rationalize data flows, in order to the SISTAR within SISTAN (national statistic system).
On this basis, the statistical department started, in 2005, the SìGOVe project to reorganize its information system architecture in order to get more power from raw data.
The statistical department acquired data from ISTAT and other national statistical institutions that contribute to the definition of "Programma Statistico Nazionale" (national statistical program) and then it extended to European data sources such as Eurostat and other institutes focusing on regional benchmarking. Other data sources come from SISTAR entities or regional internal sources.
The new regulation and the changing framework required attention on some key elements:
- data must be loaded once, centrally stored and certified;
- data coming from different and not integrated sources must be put together to have a clear and complete picture of the analyzed subjects (i.e. demographic indicators)
- data belonging to different topics (i.e. tourism, foreign citizens, regional GDP) has to be organized in an high-level synthetically view
- adopt a new standard architecture to perform consolidation and rationalization of technologies (replace multiple database engines and information delivery tools)
- speed-up periodic update processes
- presentation layer must be easier and more flexible to use
- service levels, both internal and external, must be defined, measured and guaranteed

The SìGOVe project addresses the general need to have certified information to increase knowledge on the regional phenomena and to support the decision-making process.
Six target user groups have been identified:
- statistical analysts of the statistical department;
- statistical users belonging to other regional departments;
- managers of the public sector ;
- users belonging to other public sector institutions not belonging to Regione Veneto
- citizens;
- private sector users (companies).

Each user must have access only to the "portion of data" of his interest/responsibility.
To support the different users, the system provides different functionalities:
- statistical analysts can built their own ad hoc queries, share and publish their "results", built the metadata framework, ...
- Regional analysts can use SìGOVe reports
- Managers of regional departments can access dashboards or predefined reports to support their planning and monitoring activities
- Users belonging to other public sector institutions, citizens and private sector users request and receive data and reports.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The main benefits resulting from SìGOVe are related to all the target users of SìGOVe.
We anticipate that it is very hard to give measurable impacts, as SìGOVe supports decision making processes that are complex and not repeatable. We can give only qualitative benefits achieved with the solution.
Statistical analysts are now able to produce their analyses and publications more efficiently as they can reuse built-in reports, start their analysis from built-in reports or create new analyses from scratch in a simple way. These activities have been eased by the fact that there is only one reporting platform and new data is added to the system with automatic procedure. With SìGOVe it has been implemented an integrated information system on different information areas (economy, demography, environment, ...); statistical analysts can perform cross functional analysis (on different topics) and these types of analysis could not be carried out before. Other users (politicians, council members, analysts ...) can reach a clear picture of the Veneto Region situation in a shorter time and they can compare "local" results to other significant National or International Regions, as SìGOVe collects data related to Veneto, Italian regions and other European regions.
Other key benefits have been realized in SìGOVe related to data loading and consolidation. Automating these processes, SìGOVe has increased the quality level of information. The data integration process has been drastically simplified and speeded-up; the data update process is completed in few hours and the data is ready to be used for reporting on a detailed or aggregated level. Reports, indicators and dashboards are updated consistently with data refresh. Therefore statistical analysts have NOT to waste time on data preparation and consolidation, while all other users can access up-to-date information and reports.
SìGOVe has innovated reporting activities, using advanced visualization techniques. It has deployed high level dashboard to managers; the dashboards represent an overview on the main indicators (about 100) and with them it is possible to display a clear picture of the Veneto situation.
Another key innovation achieved with advanced visualization techniques is dynamic information. Dynamic information delivers predefined path of analyses on specific topics (like foreign trade or tourism) using interactive graphic visualization (see http://statistica.regione.veneto.it/commercio_estero_grafici.jsp).
SìGOVe has leaded to process standardization in analyses and publications; differently from the past, where data sources where in different formats and not structured, now information are retrieved only from SìGOVe.
Finally with SìGOVe the statistical department of Regione Veneto has achieved efficiency and effectiveness, shifting users from a traditional pull to self-service approach. Many requests coming from citizens, private, companies, entities within the public sector can be directly satisfied on the statistical website. Only complex requests are still addressed to the statistical department.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
First, the management of the regional economic council (Assessorato all’Economia) and the statistical department (Direzione Sistema Statistico Regionale) of Regione Veneto have identified the statistical information needs and requirements. This has been reflected in local regulations (L.R. 8/2002).
IT department of Regione Veneto supported the statistical department in order to define the system architecture and the project management from an IT perspective.
SìGOVe has been implemented by HP BIS (Business Intelligence Solutions) consultants, leveraging on their skill in business intelligence implementation projects and project management skills.
The steering committee is actually constituted by the manager of the statistical department (Veneto Region), the IT manager (Veneto Region) and the partner program manager (HP). With such a mix all the necessary actions to drive and keep on track the project are in place, allowing to manage all the changes to adapt the initial plan to the actual context and issues.
The steering committee is driven by a strategy focused on addressing issues and requirements coming from local public sector representatives and statistical users and analysts.
The operational team is constantly aligned (monthly meetings) with the steering committee strategic vision.
The operational team is made up of
- functional and technical users (Statistical department);
- technical users (IT department);
- project manager and technical resources (HP).
This team mix has been put in place leveraging on the different skill requests
- statistical analysts deep knowledge on statistical analysis, territory, information topics and data sources content;
- IT technical and project management skills of the IT department of the Veneto Region;
- HP business intelligence implementation and project management skills.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
SìGOVe has to manage heterogeneous data through the governance of different dimensions as diversity, methodology, users, technology, territory and time.
Its main objectives are
- Deliver information and knowledge to support better decisions
- Minimize non homogeneous statistical published data
- Focus on process and data quality
- Generate transparent information
- Construction of a virtual information network in Veneto (SìGOVe)
- Implementation of a high-tech information management system in support of statistical analysis activities
- Creation of a single database and integration of a range of advanced statistical analysis tools
- Information summarized according to significant indicators which are easy to interpret and distribute

The strategy has been defined taking into considerations the complexities and the objectives to be managed. The strategy definition has been carried out by the managers of the statistical and IT department of Regione Veneto and HP BIS consultants.
First it has been defined the system architecture; it had to be flexible and scalable in order to add new functionalities along the way. The functionalities already covered are: integrated data warehouse, automated ETL process (extraction, transformation and loading), reporting, ad hoc queries and analyses, dashboard and information dynamic. Functionalities being investigated are geographic reporting and planning.
Then the statistical department, supported by HP BIS, defined the implementation roadmap. The implementation plan is defined on a two year basis. The plan is split into four swim-lanes: data mart and reporting, dashboards, communication and dissemination, new functionalities and evolutions.
Considering the reporting areas, it is possible to deploy around 8/10 data marts each year; usually the single end-to-end implementation cycle of a data mart (from collecting users requirements to the deployment of the solution in the production environment) takes a 2/4 months timeframe.
Merging the statistical analysts methodology and HP business intelligence implementation methodology, it has been defined the information management process used for each SìGOVe module.
The core activity in the process of data organization lays in the correct application of statistical methodologies in all the steps of the process. These methodologies are applied in
- the analysis and definition of the indicators and in understanding the relations between indicators;
- the phase of defining standard rules for indicator calculations; chosen indicators are meaningful to represent the different phenomena;
- data validation and data quality check processes, starting from initial data loading till the validation of synthetic indicators;
- metadata definition and management as metadata is fundamental in information organization and allow correct data utilization (i.e. source, data reference, ...).
Another key point over which the strategy is based is data quality; we all know that poor data quality leads to wrong decisions. To guarantee the data quality the following actions have been put in place:
- Data dictionary and data value must be objective and made explicit in business rules;
- Data quality is achieved through data integration and validation on historical data;
- Data quality is guaranteed with constant check and validation at every data update;
- Leverage on the analysts' competence knowing the data quality issues.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The main steps of SìGOVe are described below:
- 2002
Local regulation (L.R. 8/2002),
- 2003-2004
Solution blueprint, architecture definition, software selection (Business Objects Xi R2, Custom ETL tool), SìGOVe roadmap implementation definition
- 2005
Areas: census (population, buildings).
Dissemination: Distribution of SìGOVe to all statistical analysts of the statistical department of Regione Veneto.
- 2006
Areas: population, territory structure, regional accounts, foreign trade, agriculture.
Applications: Business metadata.
- 2007
Areas: foreign people, industry, European benchmark on economy, r&D, ...
Applications: Dashboards; on-line documentation; encyclopedia.
- 2008
Areas: education – university, environment (garbage management), R&D, tourism
Dashboards: Social and economic dashboard
Applications: Migration to Business Objects XI R3, operating procedure for data update management.
Dissemination: pilot for statistical users of Regione Veneto; statistical report 2008: SìGOVe area for demo.
- 2009
Areas: education – primary and secondary school, sport, mobility, internal trade.
Dashboard: Dynamic information on tourism and foreign trade.
Application: Xcelsius 2008, Business Objects data services.
Dissemination: distribution of SìGOVe to statistical users of Regione Veneto; publication on statistical web site of dynamic information on foreign trade; statistical report 2009: SìGOVe area for demo.

The actual start year of SìGOVe is 2005 and it is now in its fifth year of life. SìGOVe is a complex projects in term of scope to be managed, functionalities to be delivered and user groups to address. In addition SìGOVe is adapted to the changing external environment, so it is not going to stop soon.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Then main obstacles that we had to face were at the beginning of the project in 2005 in the analysis and development phases.
The main obstacle was related to translating statistical requirements and needs into technical solution, in particular flexible and easy access to information and analyses creation.
To overcome this obstacle some actions have been put in place.
It has been dedicated more time to requirements sharing between technical and functional team. On one side statistical analysts have to dedicate more time to each module analysis, on the other they have reduced the time dedicate to test, validation and revisions.
The documentation was improved and standardized, adopting the regional standard for documentation in conjunction with the HP BIIM (Business intelligence implementation methodology) and the statistical methodology; we achieved the final release of documentation for requirements gathering and functional analysis.
Then RAD (Rapid application development methodology) has been introduced. Each module has been realized into two or three cycles (instead of only one); in this way it is possible to refine the solution at each successive cycle. This approach has reduced the number of complaints and bugs of each area.
Bypassing these obstacles, the implementation time has been reduced to 2-4 months and the time dedicated to rework has almost be zeroed.

Other issues to be faced we security in data access and data privacy management, according to regulations on statistics. This has been achieved in the software configuration and implementation.

Another obstacle was the limited flexibility of the dashboard application to advanced graphic customization. The default analytic did not satisfied the users’ requirements and it was expensive to create more suitable analytic.
This problem has been solved adopting a newer dashboard tool.

Other problems that we faced during these years were related to the increase of the areas to be managed and updated. To ease this step, standard operating procedure with step by step guide have been developed; these procedures enable the technician of Regione Veneto to speed up the data update process and to manage the most common issues.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The project cost in terms of external services (consultant) is as of today about 2 millions of euro.
The yearly cost of the project is about 500 thousands euro (in terms of external consultant services).
The number of fte (full time equivalent) of the statistical department is more or less one including project management, gathering of functional requirements, design, test and validation, data update.
The number of fte (full time equivalent) of the IT department is about 0,2 including project management, technical management, software release update.
While statistical and it resources were already available in the respective regional department with the required skills; a selection process has been put in place for the choice of the business intelligence consultant partner.
First of all the partner has been evaluated; it was necessary to find out a partner with functional and technical skills and ability to manage complex projects. The partners had to support the design and implementation of the innovative statistical information system for the Veneto Region, SìGOVe.
After the selection the partner has been involved in the project planning; the team that has been staffed on the project after a set-up period is now stable.


From a technical point of view, in terms of hardware and software, is very hard to estimate the cost of servers and application as they are shared between different applications and regional department, so it is not clear which costs can be attributed to a single application/department.
The hardware choice has been driven by requirements of scalability, reliability and performance.
The hardware the production environment of SìGOVe consists of:
- Database tier: HP superdome server 8 + 6 cpu Itanium, 90 GB disk (shared)
- Application tier: HP proliant BL2OP G2 2 cpu Xeon, 20 GB disk space (shared)
- Web server tier: HP proliant BL2OP G2 2 cpu Xeon, 200 GB disk space (shared)
The software is the commercial business intelligence software from SAP – Business Objects.
It has been chosen as it is mature software on the market, covering a wide range of functionalities (report, ad hoc queries, publications, dashboard, data integration and data quality) and it is modular.
The BI suite is Business Objects XI 3 with service pack 2. The modules used are:
- Universe Designer
- WebIntelligence
- Infoview
- Dashboard and performance manager (since 2007)
- Xcelsius 2008 (since 2009)
- Data service (since 2009)
The database is Oracle 9i.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The SìGOVe project has been selected as one of the 52 finalists of the European eGovernment Awards 2009 (finals took place in Malmoe, November 2009). SìGOVe was competing in the category “eGovernment enabling administrative efficiency and effectiveness”; 23 of the 52 projects were competing in this category. One of the most relevant evaluation criteria in this award was the Potential for sharing good practice, concerning what others could learn from this project.
The architecture and the strategic ideas that are at the basis of SìGOVe can be replicated in other context (national, regional and sub regional).
SìGOVe collects and manages information related to Veneto and for benchmarking with other Italian and European regions. We think that the SìGOVe content structure could be quite the same for all the local public government institutions as the aspects of the social life (economy, territory, demography, ...) are the same. This project can be used as a starting framework that can be easily transferred to other public institutions.
The whole architecture, in terms of types of applications, data model, data flows, data integration, information delivery (reports and dashboard) can be redeployed to another region by simply changing the data that feeds the system.
The benefits for who adopts such system are
- 400 built-in reports
- social and economic dashboard (around 100 indicators)
- 9 dashboards on foreign trade and tourism
The system can be replicated as a whole or choosing between the different modules. Thus a similar environment for another region can be deployed very quickly, the amount of time of the deployment depends on the information areas selected as some modules can be selected, others discarded. It is also possible to add new modules to the system. If new modules are developed in a standard way they can be shared by different institutions.
The system can be replicated using the same technology components (software, applications) or cab be migrated to other technologies (e.g. open source).
The experience of the users of the statistical department of Regione Veneto and HP consultants can also be leveraged.
Statistical analysts have a deep knowledge on statistical analyses and methodologies; have already analyzed more than 30 information areas actually deployed in SìGOVe. They have also prepared about 400 built-in reports plus personal analyses.
Hp Business Intelligence consultants have supported statistical analysts in the analysis and functional requirements gathering of all the areas. They have developed the data models and data flows and implemented reports and dashboards.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The main results of SìGOVe are
- Statistical analysts can produce their publication more efficiently; they can reuse built-in reports or create new analyses in a simple way.
- Statistical analysts can perform cross functional analysis as SìGOVe delivers integrated information on different information areas (economy, demography, environment, ...); these types of analysis could not be carried out on NON-INTEGRATED statistical system.
- The data integration process has been drastically simplified and speeded-up; the data update process is completed in few hours and the data is ready to be used for reporting with detail or aggregated level.
- The automatic data consolidation and loading has increased the quality level of information
- Reports, indicators and dashboards are updated consistently with data refresh.
- Statistical analysts have NOT to waste time on data preparation and consolidation
- Statistical users of other regional department can access the reports after they are refreshed.
- High level dashboard furnish managers an overview on the main indicators to have a clear picture of the Veneto situation.
- SìGOVe enables a self-service approach; many requests (citizens, private, companies, entities within the public sector) can be directly satisfied on the statistical website.
- Users (politicians, council members, analysts ...) can reach a clear picture of the Veneto Region situation in a shorter time and they can compare "local" results to other significant National or International Regions.
About lessons learned, we split them into three categories that we identified to be successful/unsuccessful factors in the SìGOVe project. They project approach, team structure and sponsorship and data quality.

Project approach
- This kind of project can't be faced with a big-bang approach, changing organizations, systems and processes at the same time. A modular approach with progressive release of contents, functionalities, target user groups has to been identified and defined in a "master plan".
- The system has to be designed as a whole, but results have to be given in a timely manner: stakeholders and users wants to see results after few months since the start of the activities. That’s why each module lasts 2/5 months.
- The approach to each module is predefined: data sources selection, requirements analysis, data quality analysis, project planning, system design and development, data integration, data validation and test, reporting and analysis, metadata and documentation. At the end of each module we review the new lessons learned and use them in the following module.

Team structure and sponsorship
- The SìGOVe team mix must balance technical, application or functional competencies. The knowledge on the contents is important to create an exhaustive and precise requirement analysis, the technical knowledge is important to evaluate feasibility of the solution, plan and design accordingly the information area. After each cycle, errors and misunderstandings are reduced and project development is smoother.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   DIREZIONE SISTEMA STATISTICO REGIONALE DELLA REGIONE VENETO
Institution Type:   Public Organization  
Contact Person:   Maria Teresa Coronella
Title:   Department Manager  
Telephone/ Fax:   +39.041.2792109
Institution's / Project's Website:   +39.041.2792099
E-mail:   mariateresa.coronella@regione.veneto.it  
Address:   Rio dei Tre Ponti Dorsoduro, 3494
Postal Code:   30123
City:   VENEZIA
State/Province:   VENEZIA
Country:   Italy

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