Enabling Government agencies to become more "citizen-centered"

Government departments and agencies are faced with increasing demands for greater accountability to the public and mandates to evolve from faceless bureaucracies to more responsive "citizen-centered" institutions. Customer-centric technology and business practices in the public sector are raising expectations for convenience and speed of service and monitoring and communicating results.

Government departments and agencies are seeking answers to questions like:

• How can we effectively identify and react to the rapidly changing needs and priorities of our constituents?
• Are our services meeting objectives?
• How do we manage cross-department initiatives?
• How can people with the right skills be recruited and retained?

An improved external focus has become a must for government departments and agencies, but the quality of internal processes also continues to play an important role in their ongoing success. In particular, key internal areas that need improved focus are financial management, people management and fraud detection and prevention.

SAS, the market leader in business intelligence and data warehousing, creates and implements solutions tailored to meet the challenges facing government organisations. By analysing information held across many data sources and organisations, including external sources, SAS solutions enable organisations to monitor, review, improve and shape their performance.

SAS Solutions for Central Government

Strategic Performance Management

SAS Strategic Performance Management helps government organisations track key performance indicators that pinpoint strengths and opportunities to improve. SAS gives organisations the power to manage their activities, driving operations based on forecasted, current and past information. Many organisations use established management frameworks such as the Balanced Scorecard or the Business Excellence Model. SAS supports each of these and other defined models as well as being extremely flexible to enable organisations to build their own management models.

Customer Intelligence

SAS Solutions for Customer Intelligence help government to integrate data from many different sources, including the web, to obtain a comprehensive view of all constituents and stakeholders. This data can then be analysed to understand and predict needs, which can then be used to intelligently allocate resources and provide the best service possible. This means that organisations can work towards maximising effectiveness and save time and resources.

Fraud prevention and detection

In the UK alone, fraud, errors and abuse is thought to cost the public sector more than £ 10 bn every year. SAS has been working with public sector organisations around the world for over 25 years, and our capabilities in detecting and preventing fraud has been demonstrated to significantly reduce the cost of fraud without compromising the ethos of service that is at the heart of the public sector. We can take the data that already exists in your operational systems and databases and use it to detect previously hidden patterns that can indicate fraud. Armed with this data, it is possible to develop effective and accurate fraud-prevention.

Financial and Supplier Management

The demands for prudent and accountable financial management have never been greater as public expenditure comes under closer scrutiny. SAS Financial Management provides a single approach to financial management for public sector agencies and departments. This addresses the entire spectrum of financial management needs, including forecasting, cost management, consolidation, reporting and analysis.

Human Capital Management

Many organisations are facing daunting human resource problems, ranging from understanding retirement patterns on workforce levels to the need for technologically proficient people at a time when such skills are scarce. Using SAS Human Capital Management, organisations can analyse the workforce, evaluate staffing needs, performance succession planning, implement effective recruitment, training and retention programmes and measure HR performance.