BUSINESS

Customer Perspective: Performance Management in the Public Sector

May 31, 2006

"Prior to using Cognos, it was like flying a plane with no instruments. When we presented the executive dashboard using Cognos PowerPlay to the Mayor and the Cabinet, we got a round of applause."– John Nitz, Director of Information Systems and Operations, Office of Budgeting and Planning, District of Columbia.

Increasing the timeliness and transparency of information while reducing costs to IT is a key mandate of any government agency. Without readily available information, a user-friendly system, and clear, concise reports, OBP had few capabilities to meet this goal.

With the application of a new IT strategy, innovative financial planning, and Cognos software, the District of Columbia's Office of Budgeting and Planning (OBP) has transformed a government controlled by a Federal Control Board to one that boasts an "A" rating from all three bond rating agencies.

Information overload

Like many local government organizations, the District's Office of the Chief Financial Officer (which oversees the OBP) suffered from information overload. With a $7.3 billion annual operating funds budget and the responsibility to oversee more than 100 District agencies, teams were challenged to unite, analyze, and disseminate a vast amount of data from different platforms and in varying formats. Even simple reporting required intense manual intervention from IT.

the OCFO had been relying on a platform called R*STARS or SOAR, an accounting and reporting system driven by an IBM DB2/Mainframe system and general ledger platform. Included in its initial purchase were licenses for Cognos Impromptu and PowerPlay. While SOAR was effective for bringing control to business and financial processes and met GASB 34 requirements, it had limitations in terms of reporting. With little perspective on how to utilize PowerPlay, OCFO staff used Impromptu to create ad hoc reports from the financial system. However, putting the data into a presentation format was difficult at best.

As a consequence, executives at the OCFO lacked trust in the numbers. Data simply was not readily available, current, or in a user-friendly format for decision-making. Meetings were spent questioning the numbers, calculations, sources of data, and the timeliness of the information being brought to the table, rather than planning effectively for the future. To address the timeliness factor, the OCFO made the decision to refresh the data in the District's financial data warehouse on a nightly basis.

Now, users were able to get current information with Cognos Impromptu and extract it to spreadsheets for further research and analysis. However, users did not yet have access to pre-built reports and cubes. OCFO users did not have the expertise to create cubes or to drill down to the transaction level detail. As a result, users were faced with massive spreadsheets containing information that could not be managed or analyzed properly. This left the door open for misinterpretation of fiscal performance.

Intelligent data cubes, dynamic analysis

Recognizing that users were being overwhelmed with data, Bert Molina, Deputy Chief Financial Officer for the Office and Budgeting and Planning, delivered the mandate that the office would deliver standardized reporting through a Web application called CFO$ource. CFO$ource is an Executive Information System (EIS) built on a Cognos platform.

"We looked at some other reporting solutions, but soon realized they were not as user-friendly or intuitive as Cognos," says John Nitz, the OBP's Director of Information Systems and Operations. "We realized that we had a great set of tools with Cognos but needed to optimize them and train ourselves on their best use. We also realized that with PowerPlay, we could create an "intelligent" cube to look like formatted Impromptu reports yet have the ability for dynamic analysis. For instance, with the new system we could start out with a budget to actual report, which is familiar to everyone, and then allow the users to drill down and view the details behind the aggregates."

By September of 2002, OBP had created an inventory of standardized templates using Cognos Impromptu. These templates were subsequently migrated to Impromptu Web Reports. In June of 2003 OCFO developed an "operating funds" cube that allowed users to drill down to conduct analysis and reporting while staying within a consistent dataset. With the integration of Impromptu Web Report, PowerPlay, and the financial data warehouse users were assured that the totals were accurate because calculations were consistent across the board. "Expenditures," for instance, were calculated in the same way using Impromptu Web Reports as with PowerPlay.

OBP then took this capability one step further and created an Executive Dashboard within CFO$ource, powered by Cognos PowerPlay. The Executive Dashboard was developed by OBP because, although Impromptu Web Reports was meeting the needs of the finance staff, it was not being used effectively by senior level executives in the government. The dashboard pulls data from cubes and other data sources (including PDFs, cubes, Access, spreadsheets, external databases, and more), unifying information across the organization. It provides executives, the management team, and stakeholders with views to multiple sets of information, such as operational financial status, vendor history, payroll, trending, and more. The dashboard alerts managers to detrimental situations and affords them the ability to take action immediately, instead of waiting days or weeks to get the necessary information needed to react effectively.

Achieving an "A" bond rating status

Cognos PowerPlay has allowed executives to see and analyze information dynamically and effectively – not just financial data, but all relevant data across the organization. With CFO$ource, reporting takes only seconds as opposed to days. CFO$ource provides a Web-based tool for easy access. The nightly updates to the financial warehouse and cubes provide reliable and accurate reports. Reports now include standardized formats and calculations thereby supporting bottom up/top down analysis using a variety of financial attributes. In addition, the incorporation of charts and graphs, and a knowledge-sharing environment have enhanced decision-making across the enterprise.

The response from the user community has been phenomenal. The OBP's business intelligence platform now processes more than 5,000 unique ad-hoc requests per month and the user community has expanded to over 600 registered users. The external community has also responded positively to the changes. Achieving an "A" bond rating status from the three bond rating agencies is a testament to the application's success.

With these impressive results, the OBP Information Systems team has embarked on a new initiative to integrate HR, procurement, and payroll data into the Executive Dashboard. The OCFO has also undertaken an initiative to manage performance measures using Cognos ReportNet. "With Cognos we have only touched the tip of the iceberg on what we can report," says Nitz. "With Cognos ReportNet, the OCFO will be able to automate more of what we do and realize even more savings for our constituents.