Project excellence on display in awards finalists: The Ministry of Social Development, Foodstuffs and Pumpkin Patch finalists in the Most Successful Project Implementation of the Year category
ComputerWorld
By: Darren Greenwood Auckland
If any entry stresses how significant some of the projects entered in the Computerworld Excellence Awards are it is one at the Ministry of Social Development’s project.
The ministry’s entry is a $54 million client management system, for which the MSD’s business enablement manager, John Schofield, had to personally seek approval from the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
“I had to front up to Helen Clark and the ministers. I was warned it mustn’t be another cock-up,” he says.
The MSD is the sole public sector finalist in our Most Successful Project Implementation of the Year category. The other two finalists are retailers Foodstuffs (Auckland) and Pumpkin Patch.
The MSD was created in 2001 through a merger of departments. It inherited several legacy systems, which handled payments, but the new MSD wanted to take a more pro-active approach and guide people into work or towards another benefit.
CIO Tim Occleshaw says a Cúram CMS system was installed as part of the project. This helped reduce back-office systems and structure workflow patterns, helping staff better plan how they helped clients.
Cúram, a system developed in Ireland, was implemented with HP as the local partner. This gave the MSD control of the solution, and accountability for it, says Occleshaw, who took a risk-averse approach to the project, first developing a proof of concept and a prototype to show front-line staff.
There were three types of functionality in the new system; some taken just out of the box, some adapted for use and some functions, like the existing SWIFT payment system, kept separate.
Schofield says government departments usually tend to let vendors manage projects, but the MSD chose to manage all the risks and components, including a big element of the business change.
Technical challenges included integrating Curam with legacy systems. This involved using an integration layer based on Weblogic.
Occleshaw says the project, which was rolled out last October to 3,500 Work and Income NZ (WINZ) staff, came in under budget and on time.