2003 C.I.P.A. Winners
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Service New Brunswick
The Real Benefits of e-Government
Overview Service New Brunswick has implemented a customer centric philosophy through the use of innovative business and technological solutions that has allowed SNB to achieve a 90% satisfaction rate from the citizens and businesses in New Brunswick that use its services. Objectives SNB was originally created to try and address the problem of easy access to government services for the citizens and businesses of the province. Prior to the SNB solution, government services were being offered through multiple departments via multiple locations. It was estimated that there were 1600 NB government locations throughout the province providing services. Today, SNB offers its services via 35 physical locations, a call centre and via online Internet services. Today SNB is recognized by the citizens of the province as the place you go, call or access to receive a service from the government. SNB has done this by partnering with government departments and 3rd party providers on the delivery aspects of a service. The various departments maintain policy responsibility for the services, but have "outsourced" the delivery aspects to SNB. SNB has also successfully integrated muniC.I.P.A.l services. Today SNB provides service on behalf of 39 muniC.I.P.A.lities across the province. Summary Description The solution SNB has implemented has its foundation in customer services. SNB, with its partner CGI, has developed a software tool, called gBIZ, which enables rapid deployment of services. The solution provides a common template or framework that is used to develop the delivery of the service. SNB has adopted a single point of entry philosophy where the same solution is deployed to support the over the counter services, the tele-services and the on-line services. This reduces the time to deploy the solution, the operating and support costs and above all the training costs. Currently over 40% of the government services are delivered via SNB and done electronically (on-line or tele-services). SNB has also been innovative in how it manages the physical responsibilities of delivering services. By making use of virtual fulfillment, SNB has distributed the work load of customer requests across the province to the physical locations that have capacity. This enables SNB to manage the workload and maintain the physical presence in rural areas of the province. The deliver philosophy has incorporated a principle to automate where and how it makes sense, not all services demand real time integration to legacy systems. Legacy integration is expensive. By being smart in making decisions in when real time integration is or is not required, SNB is able to rapidly deploy services. Innovative Use of Technology The CGI Single Window Government Lab, working with Service New Brunswick, has developed a product, called gBIZ, which is the core of the electronic service delivery infrastructure at SNB. gBIZ is a software solution that represents a unique combination of Web portal, eCommerce catalogue, customer relationship management, content management and workflow management capabilities. Originally, gBIZ was developed out of work with SNB that started by using a commercial e-Commerce package and quickly realizing that the package was not designed to meet the on-line requirements in a government environment. Through adaptation and evolution within the government operation, gBIZ has intentionally retained a generic and extensible design nature; this has been made possible due to its design as a framework of capabilities rather than as a fixed set of discrete applications. This solution can be deployed in any government environment where web-enabling of public services is the objective. CGI/SNB have developed an e-Government architecture (reviewed by Gartner Group and identified as the "Architecture of the Future" Gartner Reference CS 14-2191). This architecture identifies how the service delivery platform (over the counter, tele-services and Web) integrates into the back office and legacy systems to enable the rapid and secure deployment of services. |
