OCPE delivers .NET to whole of SA
Business Profile
The Office for The Commissioner of Public Employment (OCPE), within the South Australian (SA) State Government, is responsible for the development and implementation of policies and vacancy management across the State Government of South Australia. The Department employs approximately 70 staff, but services the whole public sector for those people seeking employment within the South Australian Government.
Business Scenario
OCPE had relied on various internal systems and manual processes to manage the vacancy requirements. Predominantly this took the form of a process whereby OCPE would collate and then distribute all vacancies via a printed fortnightly newsletter called “Notice of Vacancies”. It was recognised that this form of vacancy management was both time consuming as well as costly. These newsletters were distributed to thousands of users, both internally and were also made available to the public.
OCPE was looking for ways to change these traditional methods of vacancy management and to improve their service to the user community. Whilst the internet was a medium that held obvious attraction, there were strict protocols that needed to be followed to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of the process. As Michelle Arbon, Project Manager at Strategic Data Management (SDM) explains, “We needed to ensure that the electronic process of producing new vacancies had the same level and integrity of workflow as the traditional process, as well as being able to make the new process far more efficient”.
Business Solution
The department wanted to develop a web-based strategy aimed at improving the vacancy management process in order to replace the paper-based vacancy notification system. A development partnership was formed between the IT department, key business unit managers, and SDM, to set about researching user requirements.
“We took a structured approach to working out what they were trying to build. Their IT and business staff provided an overview of the current systems, database design schema, business rule information, workflow requirements and data dictionaries. We asked the users what they wanted to see and how they wanted to interact with it, as well as what they wanted to achieve from a business perspective and then we documented the results”, Arbon explains.
The new Online Notice of Vacancy system (NOVNet) is incorporated on the public web site at www.vacancies.sa.gov.au . Not only can it now process all vacancy management processes including set up, validation and approvals, it also publishes those vacancies both internally (to existing SA government employees) but externally (for those vacancies that can be applied for by the public). The end result not only meets the format and consistency requirements of the internal user community, but also provides easy access by the public with search and save facilities that notify applicants when suitable jobs get advertised.
The advanced functionality of the site means that users can set certain criteria that allow a direct matching of search criteria as well as a save and notification capability personalised for each user of the system.
Ensuring Success with a Microsoft Partner
The relationship between OCPE and SDM, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has been a very successful one. A significant aspect of the partnership was the requirement that SDM facilitate a transfer of skills and knowledge during the development and launch process. To achieve this, the project was structured using a joint approach, with OCPE included in the development team. David Austin, Project Manager for OCPE says of the arrangement, “The close working relationship helped our staff to learn the technology and learn what it could be used for”. Working together gave all the parties a sense of ownership of the project and facilitated personal development for the OCPE staff.
Benefits
As David explains, “NOV Net is a major improvement to the notice of vacancies service OCPE provide to all SA (Public and State Government). The system was developed using Technology of the future and has allowed the system to be accessible from anywhere, any time, with improved functionality and speed. The system has been greatly accepted by agency's to the degree where agencies are looking at integrating their own Vacancies systems with the whole of SA Government service, or they are looking at developing a NOV Net Light version that will provide the functionality for the department’s internal use. OCPE are looking forward to the many benefits this application will bring.”
“With the new system delivering a robust process that matches the internal requirements for vacancy management, our users can get the full benefit of proactively being able to manage vacancies; this saves us an enormous amount of time”, said Austin.
Technology
NOVNet was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which dramatically improves programmer productivity, ease of deployment, and reliable application execution. The system architecture uses an n-tier design which enables a richer integration strategy by exposing middle-tier business logic to both the ASP web pages, and background system processes that the application uses. The architecture leverages Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Active Directory, Microsoft Office XP, XML and XSLT, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.
“Microsoft’s .NET platform takes care of the ‘plumbing’ of a web application, and allows developers to concentrate development on what the customer cares about the most – the functionality. By using .NET, we can easily make the application componentised, which simplifies our development tasks, promotes code re-use and increases the quality of our development processes.”, Commented Lee.
Maximising Success
Arbon has some very clear strategies for successful project outcomes: “Your ability to deliver a solution that covers all the user requirements comes down to your commitment to achieving a quality outcome. Whilst the technology platform exists and .NET has tremendous benefits, the real challenge is translating the requirements into real business value based outcomes; that is why the project has been so successful”
The Future
Overall, the solution allows for a complete vacancy management process. In future the solution will be expanded to provide ”light” versions for those departments wishing to use the solution to manage their own internal vacancy management processes. Austin sums it up, “The system was developed using Technology of the future and has allowed the system to be accessible from anywhere, any time, with improved functionality and speed. Now we can work on refining the process to increase even further the efficiencies NOV Net has delivered”