Collaboration for housing

Date: 12 May 2003	Issue: 12 May (Computing S.A.)
Category: SA News	Computing SA exclusive

The Department of Housing of the Gauteng Provincial Government has purchased a 500-user licence for Oracle Collaboration Suite.
The suite leverages a relational database to offer a secure, reliable and scalable way of simplifying communications and consolidating information. Currently being implemented by IFactory, an Oracle partner, Oracle Collaboration Suite will be a key component in the Department’s blueprint for an integrated solution to drive operational support, business intelligence and customer systems.
“The ability to monitor departmental services and outputs has become an important requirement for the department, given the demand placed on it to supply housing to millions of people in the province,” says Nilesh Singh, Department of Housing CIO.
“In the blueprint we identified a building block called common services, including e-mail, fax, security, workflow and document management. For example a customer can log a query either by e-mail, telephone or walking into the customer care centre. The query is then routed to an official in the appropriate line function via the task management system. If there is a task due date and standard turnaround time, the system will automatically launch e-mail warnings two days prior to the deadline, or when the deadline has not been met,” he says.
“Many departmental processes - the housing waiting list, procurement, stores, subsidies, and rental tribunal - need communication to flow from the customer to the line function in order to trigger follow-up action,” says Tony Forbes, MD of IFactory.
Built on the Oracle9i Database and Oracle9i Application Server, Oracle Collaboration Suite provides integrated e-mail, voicemail, file sharing, and search capabilities accessible from Outlook, Web browsers and a wide range of wireless devices, including PDAs and cell phones.
“Given its Oracle 9i roots, the Oracle Collaboration Suite became the solution for us because it enables us to leverage off our existing investment in application systems on the Oracle 9i platform,” says Singh.