Scottish Executive leads the way in data integration with SAS

9 December 2004 - Scottish Executive, the devolved government for Scotland, is working with SAS, the leader in business intelligence to pioneer compliance with the Office for National Statistics data integration standards. The deal, worth close to one million pounds over three years, will see Scottish Executive upgrade to SAS' revolutionary business intelligence platform, SAS^®9, to help Scottish Executive better organise, access and understand its data.

Scottish Executive manages a wide variety of governmental data produced in Scotland ranging from the education authorities, the prison system to the health services, and has made use of SAS software for the past 11 years to provide it with insight into figures and statistics required by its stakeholders. With this amount of data being produced and stored, Scottish Executive needs to be systematic in addressing the risks of multiple data copies, repetition of work due to insufficient metadata, and the time spent cleaning and validating data.

Additionally, with the Office for National Statistics planning to enforce data integration standards in the future as part of their drive to standardise statistical data management, SAS gave Scottish Executive the opportunity to address all their data challenges with one solution.

"SAS has demonstrated its cutting-edge ability to analyse data through the SAS analytical technology already in place, and now with SAS^®9 and its ETL Server, we have the agility and flexibility to better manage our statistical data resources" said Dr Peter Winstanley, head of the Analytical Services IT team, Scottish Executive.

This SAS implementation will better facilitate Scottish Executive statistical operations by improving access to the available datasets through the integrated ETL Server metadata repository. This will not only have a positive impact on the management of routine analyses, but will also facilitate the reporting required to respond promptly to enquiries such as Parliamentary Questions.

"SAS already has a productive relationship with the Scottish Executive and our ETL Server solution delivers the metadata management capability that will ensure they are a leader in not only Office for National Statistics compliance, but also in better business performance. Scottish Executive's choice of SAS demonstrates our understanding of the public sector and SAS' value in governmental intelligence," said Paul Devlin, Head of Scottish Operations, SAS UK.

The SAS^®9 Intelligence Platform, which is the foundation of the SAS^®9 family of products and solutions, supports a broad set of integrated software for unmatched data integration, easy-to-use business reporting and unparalleled analytics. The Intelligence Platform is an end-to-end offering that makes it even easier for businesses to obtain intelligence, achieve strategic business value and sustain a competitive advantage.

About SAS
SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites - including 96 of the top 100 companies on the 2003 FORTUNE Global 500^® - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organisations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For nearly three decades, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know^®.

For further information, please contact the team at the SAS Press Office on:
Tel: +44 (0) 1628 490490
e-mail saspressoffice@suk.sas.com
For more information on SAS, please visit www.sas.com/uk

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