New Zealand Department of Corrections

Customer:
New Zealand Department of Corrections
Wellington, New Zealand

Type of Service:
Consulting and Systems Integration
Computer Systems Integration - Application Development, PC / Consulting / Training

Project Duration:
6 months

System Modules Utilized:
TMA Enterprise, TMA i ServiceDesk, TMA Key Management, mobileTMA (Palm Interface) and Custom Interfaces

Project Description:
The Department of Corrections (Department) is a large and complex organization with a wide geographical spread across New Zealand.

The Department had approximately 2,200 PCs across all national sites. All sites were split into either tier 2 or tier 3 sites depending on the number of PCs at each site, which varied from 1 to 400.

The Department has a staff of over 4,500 personnel employed in over 19 public prisons, 16 community probation service area offices and 180 service sites, 8 psychological service offices, 3 special treatment offices and a Head Office. The Department maintains a portfolio in the vicinity of 11,000 asset line items that produce approximately 90,000 maintenance transactions each year, with transaction growth of approximately 10% per year.

The Department's buildings, plants and other assets have a value of well over $500 million. In order to maintain the productive capacity of these assets, it is vital to track the history of individual assets in order to identify maintenance carried out and schedule future maintenance.

In 1999, the Property Management & Maintenance System Project (Project) was established to purchase and implement a solution that would provide the following to the Department:

• One national resource for the asset management and maintenance records.
• An efficient method of entering, storing and updating of property records.
• "Common to all" procedures and processes that were consistent, reliable, systematic and that allowed for the storage and recovery of property business knowledge.
• The means to accurately monitor, analyze and report on business delivery requirements for all property and property related assets.

After a long and extensive search for a system solution, the Department selected TMA Systems.

The Project was successfully executed for every facet of the project. Prior to implementation, the Department had no integration of property and maintenance management, thus operating as islands of information to support specific localized requirements. These local systems were supplemented by extensive manual operations. The majority of sites/offices located throughout the country had developed stand-alone systems to record data that then had to be sent to the Head Office. This led to duplicate data entry and inadequate information about the management of the Department's assets. Consequently, centralized system-wide analysis and reporting of data was very limited.

In attempting to run a nation-wide system, the network structure was a vital component of the Project. The Department had an open system that centered around the core principles of compatibility, similarity, portability and interoperability with other applications running on the network.

TMA served as the single point of Project responsibility. TMA, in collaboration with personnel from the Department, brought cross-disciplinary expertise from system design and management to the Project. TMA helped refine goals and system objectives, developed effective assessment methodologies, prepared the database to hold the required data, collected the data and worked with Department personnel to facilitate the most efficient and effective use of the TMA solution.

TMA actively worked with Department personnel during all facets of the Project to ensure the results were clearly understood and useful to the Department. The effectiveness of the Project was closely linked to the knowledge base and practices of TMA staff.

With TMA's expertise and collaborative approach, there have been tremendous results gained through the use of the new system. In addition, meeting the aforementioned goals established by the Department related to the Property Management & Maintenance System, TMA has been able to address other business areas including:

• Detailed information on the age and condition of all Department assets.
• Ability to report on assets individually or collectively.
• Ability to forecast events such as maintenance and inspections.
• Ability to monitor asset history such as record of breakdowns, refurbishments, scheduled and non-scheduled maintenance and inspections.
• Interface with other Department systems recording asset and property information such as physical drawings and financial records.

TMA has greatly assisted the Department in their strategy of Property Management & Maintenance. The system has improved the availability and quality of information at all levels to assist with the day-to-day management of the Department. TMA further benefits the Department with tools to evaluate the success of the Department actions, objectives and goals.

Training of the Department personnel was crucial in allowing maximum utilization of the TMA solution. During this Project phase, TMA staff trained the Department in a manner that improved workflow processes and provided timely and relevant information to management at Head Office.

The Department had a wide scope of knowledgeable personnel, ranging from novice computer users to dedicated database administrators. TMA tailored the training tracks to address the appropriate needs of each group. TMA developed a series of training services that allowed the Department to implement the TMA solution in an efficient and effective manner allowing for the fastest return on investment.

TMA exceeded the New Zealand Department of Correction's needs and requirements. TMA provided a world-class solution to a world-class state-of-the-art organization.