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IS IT RATIONALISATION A WAY TO CHANGE SERVICE CULTURE?

Paper prepared by Pál Jancsók and Mariana Kotzeva

Presentation:Pál Jancsók, Eurostat “IT for statistical production” MSIS 2014

DUBLIN, 14 APRIL 2014

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Eurostat is:• Directorate General of European Commission• Central institution of the European Statistical

System (ESS) - a network of National Statistical Institutes (NSI) from all EU and EFTA Countries

Eurostat's mission: To be the leading provider of high quality statistics

on Europe

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Overview:• Commission-wide IT rationalisation

• Methodology • Estimated impact on service culture

• Eurostat internal IT Rationalisation • Methodology • Experience so far• Future plans

• Conclusion

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Commission-wide IT rationalisation • Commission Communication on the

Rationalisation of IT resources • Aim: Optimise the cost of IT by

• Avoiding duplications in IT system functionalities• Promoting common, reusable and flexible solutions• Streamlining the business / working methods

• Work shared among General Directorates and organised in waves

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IT rationalisation - Domains

DOMAIN DG DOMAIN DG

Human resources HR Audit IAS

Strategic planning SG Procurement INFSO + DIGIT

Document management SG IT DIGIT

Communication COMM Programme Management REGIO

Legislative lifecycle SG Analyses and databases ESTAT

Grant Management INFSO (with RTD)

Case management COMP

Financial Management BUDGTrans-European Networks (réseaux "maillés")

DIGIT (ISA) + TAXUD

Asset management BUDG + DIGIT Alert systems SG

Labelling, notification, authorisations etc. (Réseaux "en étoile")

SANCO

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• Leader for the IT rationalisation in the domain "Analysis and databases"

• In Eurostat Mariana KOTZEVA (Adviser Hors Classe & acting Director of IT) coordinates the work

• Aligns well with the role Eurostat was given in 2012:• Coordinate the statistical activities in the European

Commission

Eurostat's role:

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Methodology • Preliminary assessment and information

gathering phaseAvailable documentsIT Master plans

• In-depth reviewVisits, InterviewsFlagship projects

• Reporting and validationRegular progress reportsRationalisation report

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Information Gathering phase• Administrative information and documents,

analysis of the portfolio

• The portfolio should be broken down into four smaller clusters, covering: 1. databases 2. data processing, analysis and forecasting 3. data dissemination and 4. geographic information systems (GIS)

applications

• Expert groups continued the analysis

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Analysis results • Examples of the results:• Data processing, analysis and forecasting (2):

• IT rationalisation is only feasible in sub-processes like data editing, data visualisation, seasonal adjustments, and statistical disclosure control. Guidelines are provided by GSBPM , GSIM, etc.

• Data dissemination (3)• Eurostat has developed powerful dissemination tools• The dissemination chain of Eurostat can be shared with other

DGs DG COMP is disseminating the State Aid Scoreboard data

using the Eurostat dissemination chain • "European statistics" vs. "Other statistics"

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Estimated impact on service culture • Example: Data dissemination cluster• Twofold impact:

1.Commission Services using the tool:• Harmonisation of business workflows is needed• Change may be required in ways of working to take

time constraints into account• Data to be coded according to harmonised and

derived code lists• Data production system has to be adapted to produce

ready-to-disseminate output files

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Estimated impact on service culture 2. Impact on Eurostat as the

solution provider:

• Deal with both internal and external clients• User requirements (both internal and external) should

be collected and matched • Additional tasks e.g. trainings are needed• Affect IT Governance: Additional Steering Committee

members, additional consultation with IT governance bodies in other DGs

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Overview:• Introduction• Commission-wide IT rationalisation

• Methodology • Estimated impact on service culture

• Eurostat internal IT Rationalisation • Methodology • Experience so far• Future plans

• Conclusion

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Internal IT rationalisation:• The past:

• Several programmes for modernisation and rationalisation

• Always built on the achievements of previous programmes

• From 2013: • Consolidation of the statistical production IT portfolio

started• 5 years objective: reduce the heterogeneity of the

statistical software applications:Over the next five years, the number of internal Eurostat

IT applications used for statistical business processes is expected to be reduced by 50 %.

• Long–term objective: move to a service-oriented architecture

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Methodology:

• Inventory of IT tools used for statistical production

• Analysis and categorisation of these tools• Planning and carrying out the rationalisation

exercise

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• Eurostat Corporate software applications:• Centrally managed: implementation, maintenance and

development is centrally organised• Owned by the IT side

• Eurostat Non-corporate implementations of software applications:• Centrally supported: the applied technology is

supported inside the IT directorate• Owned by the Business side

• Other software

Categories of the IT applications:

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Inventory of the IT applications• Based on EPMS (Euro Process Metadata Structure)• Documenting Eurostat's 102 statistical production

processes• 102 statistical business processes • Extractions of the data to Excel• Automated 'counting' tools allow follow up

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Planning rationalisation (I)• Applications to be phased out are selected

according to some criteria• Degree of alignment of software applications with

Eurostat’s overall IT strategy and Enterprise Architecture• Risks tied to the use/phase out of the software

applications• Operational factors and costs

• A reduction plan is set up iteratively for every year

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Inventory results:There are overall 97 software applications in use in Eurostat serving 102 production processes.

Dissemination 29Metadata 4Single Entry Point 12Corporate Eurostat software 8Corporate Eurostat software to be phased out 4Non-corporate Eurostat software 39Most commonly used non-corporate tool ( MS Excel) 71Single process tools 22

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Experience so far• The main challenges:

• Timing of the exercise: change of application when a major revision is necessary anyway

• Raising awareness about the existence and advantage of the corporate tools

• Thorough analysis is necessary when a corporate software application is phased out

• This inventory only considered the applications used in statistical production. It does not provide an accurate picture of end-user computing tools

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• Tourism Statistics:• Two existing workflows for macro data• Both in a legacy (to be phased out corporate) system• One workflow has been extended with microdata

therefore moved to GSAST

• Causes of Death (CoD) statistics:• One workflow used a non-corporate SAS application• It has been extended with microdata therefore moved to

GSAST

Internal IT rationalisation examples:

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Experience so far

• The corporate tool had a significant impact on the new micro data workflow: it provided best practice and standard working methods and harmonised workflows

• Common maintenance reduced burdens on the business team

• Efficiency gains with the common maintenance

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Experience with Tourism:• Little impact by the corporate tool (already used

one) • This rationalisation had some impact on the way

the business team works: GSAST user interface is SAS Enterprise Guide ->reusable knowledge and experience

• Testing handled as a learning period and not as a burden

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Experience with Causes of Death

• Instead of SAS programming -> document the changes and ask central support for implementation

• The ‘programmer’ part of the user’s profile is transformed to ‘power user’, leaving more time for the user’s role as ‘statistician’

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Future plans• Several iterations are planned for the IT

Rationalisation in Eurostat• Moving to a Service Oriented Architecture

• SOA based user interface for existing corporate systems (IS4STAT)

• Product Family Management program will help to control IT tools

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Conclusions• IT Rationalisation has impact on the Service

Culture• There is strong interdependence of business

processes in statistical production• There is a direct impact on the business users

work• Involvement of the hierarchy is the key element

of success