Apeldoorn realizes new information infrastructure
As a strategic component of its information policy, the Dutch municipality of Apeldoorn is reorganising its information management. In this sense, a new Apeldoorn Information Infrastructure has been realised. This infrastructure will be the platform for providing citizens, companies and public servants with relevant interactive, digital services in the near future.
Need
The municipality of Apeldoorn has identified with the national strive for a ’better performing government’. The crucial element in this is that the attention focuses on demands from citizens, companies, administrators and municipal employees. This as opposed to the more supply-driven provision of information. This turn is translated into a fundamental change in the information management and the corresponding information architecture.
Solution
The solution was found in a new information infrastructure for Apeldoorn with a 3-layer architecture: backoffice, midoffice and frontoffice. The challenge is mainly related to breaking through the existing ‘column’-automation, in which every policy topic has automated its own IT environment as a closed solution / island. The foundation for the new information infrastructure is a full and shared data warehouse as the basic building block for the midoffice. In the first project phase, all base registrations known at this moment have been taken to the data warehouse together with the relevant sources for the fire brigade for dealing with a request for a use permit. This DPO (Digital Prevention Support) application for the fire brigade is the first frontoffice application that is provided with municipality-wide data sources through the organised midoffice.
Change process
The introduction of the desired Apeldoorn Information Infrastructure is in fact a major change process. This calls for:
- IT and geo-ICT facilities
- knowledge among employees
- divisions and the organisation in the municipality
- cooperation between the organisational divisions
- the municipality as the organisation
Geodan has been required to guide and direct this change process in close cooperation with all internal and external parties. On all levels – board of directors, management team, division heads and employees – consultative bodies have been created to ensure support for the organisation and implementation of the new Apeldoorn Information Infrastructure.
The all-round role of Geodan in this project is reflected in the following aspects:
- advisor to the board
- coach and project leader
- Java teacher and trainer
- GIS, Java and Oracle developers and designers
Advantages
Some of the advantages of the selected solution are:
- One common source of shared information is created which all parties can use for satisfying their needs for information
- From a supply to a demand driven information supply
- From product to process supporting systems in which the municipal products obviously continue to play an important role
- Internal and external transparency in municipality-wide sources of information
Technical aspects
The Apeldoorn Information Infrastructure is based on products of Oracle, Centric (in the backoffice), UDS of Urbidata as the midoffice/data warehouse, NGDW of NedGraphics as the geometrical backoffice system and Java as the language for process-supporting frontoffice applications besides a geoviewer (based on NedBrowser) of NedGraphics for consulting geoproducts.