The State of Connecticut Extends Ad-Hoc Reporting and Data Analysis with Entrinsik Informer

• Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization

• Business Operation
• Quality Assurance

• Software Design & Engineering Services
• Training

In the State of Connecticut’s Department of Social Services, the Bureau of Child Support Enforcement is the lead agency supporting the enforcement program along with players from multiple agencies and two branches of government. The Connecticut Child Support Enforcement System (CCSES) began as a Prime Information system and was migrated to Sun hardware and UniVerse in the mid-1990s. Extracting data from this system for reporting and data analysis was difficult and complicated; a pre-processor was executed to build a temporary file which was then listed for each report. Because the department’s application support and development is outsourced, modifying and customizing reports had to compete with other, more urgent needs for limited ‘enhancement’ dollars. Even with a few power users who were allowed to do selections against production data, ad hoc reporting was still an improvised, hit-or-miss process. Static reports were problematic for many departments, and varying reporting needs were almost impossible to satisfy with the current solution. For example, Judicial Branch employees handling court-based enforcement needed reports sorted differently than other stakeholders. It was a tedious process of wrapping text report files with HTML or distilling PDFs, and these were still static reports unable to be easily manipulated or revised.

The State of Connecticut’s Department of Social Services (DSS) is a government agency responsible for providing a wide range of social services to residents of Connecticut. Within DSS, the Bureau of Child Support Enforcement plays a crucial role in supporting the enforcement program, working alongside multiple agencies and two branches of government. The department's responsibilities include ensuring that child support is collected and distributed efficiently, which involves handling vast amounts of data and generating numerous reports. The department's application support and development are outsourced, which adds complexity to their operations. The DSS needed a robust reporting solution to address their diverse data reporting and analysis needs across various departments, ensuring that the right data is available to the right users at the right time.

The State of Connecticut needed a reporting solution that would address their disparate data reporting and analysis needs throughout various departments. After comparing several BI solutions, they chose to implement Entrinsik Informer because of its lower total cost of ownership and stellar reputation in the Rocket U2 database community. Implementing Informer was a simple and straightforward process, and end-users were quick to adopt the new software. Rolling out the product to the user community was perceived positively, as it was seen as a beneficial tool for users rather than an imposition. Informer allowed users to create reports more easily, reducing the burden on the small in-house IT team and outside vendors. Informer can pull data from multiple data sources, including SQL, and supports other parts of the department whose mainframe applications couldn't provide data in the desired format. The solution also introduced a layer of security in reporting processes, ensuring that users only see the reports and columns they are authorized to access. The department has also been able to use Informer to make old processes more efficient, such as running legacy reports more frequently and visualizing data through dashboards.

• More users than ever can create reports, reducing the burden on IT and outside vendors.
• Greater security level so users only see the reports they are allowed to run, and even within reports users only see the columns that they are allowed to see.
• Provides the right data at the right time and has been used to make old processes more efficient.

• The pre-processor now runs in less than an hour, compared to the previous slow report run-time.
• The department can run the pre-processor every night, allowing users to run their reports on their schedule.