Durban company automates Department of Social Welfare registry

Date: 26 April 2004	Issue: 26 Apr (Computing S.A.)
Category: SA News	Durban correspondent

2Cana Solutions, a Durban-based business solutions firm has delivered a powerful electronic registry system to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Welfare and Population Development. The solution was highlighted at this year’s first SA Oracle User Group in Durban, hosted by 2Cana Solutions, an Oracle certified partner.
Dianne Dunkerley, chief director for social security at the Department of Social Welfare, and Charles Cowan, principal consultant at 2Cana Solutions, jointly presented the case study entitled: “The implementation of an online electronic registry for social grants”.
Between 1998 and 2000 an investment of about R50m was made to reconfirm the details of more than 650 000 beneficiaries. In a bid to prevent fraud attempts, altered information, and destroyed and lost records, the department recognised that it needed to automate the process from a paper-based registry to an electronic system.
“We needed a solution that could grow with our needs, accommodate change and include workflow management processes. Our primary objectives were to combat fraud, ensure easy access and availability and add value,” says Dunkerley.
The department drew up tender specifications that included converting more than 650 000 paper files comprising more than 7m pages into exact replications in an electronic format. Also included was the decentralised scanning of files for new applications at four regional centres – Durban, Ulundi, Ladysmith and Pietermaritzburg. The files were to be made available online from these and a further 71 district offices throughout the province.
The information stored at Sita’s data centre in Pietermaritzburg had to be accessible from all regional and district offices across the province, via OpenNet, the government network. A further criterion was that the system had to be user-friendly for use by staff with minimal computer skills. Cowan told the SAOUG delegates that a primary concern was the limited bandwidth available on the network.
“Of equal concern was the high number of old PCs that could not be upgraded to run high-level applications. Throughput would be too slow, and we would not have been able to provide the department with the functionality that it required. After evaluating a number of options, we decided on implementing a browser-based thin client solution using open standards, running on an Oracle Enterprise Edition database. To further curtail costs, yet not compromise efficiency or scalability, we decided to implement the Jakarta Tomcat Open Source application server software,” says Cowan.
He adds that 2Cana Solutions recommends the Oracle database as being the most suitable for high-volume environments where scalability, reliability and security are required.
One of the innovations in the solution to accommodate the limited bandwidth is that it only downloads the specific pages in the file as required by the user. Thumbnails of the other pages are downloaded. This is said to improve the system’s response time dramatically.
The software has been integrated with the department’s SocPen (Social Pensions) database, which aims to avoid duplication of data capture and enable automatic validation, whilst streamlining the processing.
“Essentially the electronic registry software comprises storage, management, search and retrieve functionality as well as various reporting structures. The benefits include improved efficiency, secure documentation, considerable cost savings, risk mitigation, high availability and system performance,” says Dunkerley.
“A paper trail that used to take days or even weeks to access a file is now as quick as a mouse click away. This is especially useful in legal matters, where we need urgent documentation for evidence or when auditors need to access specific files,” he continues.
Cowan adds that 2Cana Solutions specialises in providing customised business systems that include document management and workflow solutions with specific requirements for high volumes, integration capabilities, scalability, security and high availability.