For the last three years, DEP has launched a variety of BI Data Marts. Not all have been successes. But the failures have stimulated learning and evolved practical responses. Some applications are enterprise-wide--others program bureau-specific. Some have as few as 60,000 records—others as many as 2.3 million. Some are have technical and mathematical data—others are administrative. The BI user functions enabled are: high-level summarizations; searching & filtering; customizations such as book-marking, new measures, conditional highlighting, cross-tab views; drilling through hierarchies; intersecting hierarchies; graphic visualization; rapid download to Excel, pre-defined but customizable reports, and supplementary data such as maps, links to pertinent sites, metadata, etc.
Technically, windows servers deliver the BI applications using two different interfaces, MDDB (Multi-Dimensional Data Base) and OLAP (On-Line Analytic Processing). Clients only need the standard browser (MS IE) to operate the web applications. Each application also interfaces with the client’s desktop software, such as Excel, email, printing, saving, utilities, etc.
The key topics are: the bottom-up strategy; a checklist to determine if the requested application is feasible and may be successful; the BI-specific project stages; essential vs. “eye-candy” BI elements; the main implementation technique of target-marketing; overcoming the peculiar governmental obstacles to use, and the surprising by-products including data quality improvement.
This is a practitioner’s talk. We will use anecdotes from personal experience, MS Power Point Slides of six of the applications and if possible, a live link to the Data Marts.
Presenters:
Ken Currie
Team Leader
SAS Business Intelligence
Department of Environemental Protection
Ken Currie is Team Leader for SAS Business Intelligence in the Department of Environmental Protection and has spent over 30 years in data processing (as Manager of End User Computing and as a principal developer for DEP’s foundational enterprise-wide permitting/compliance/enforcement system). He holds a Master of Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
Harit Trivedi
Senior Analyst
Department of Environmental Protection
Harit Trivedi has over 30 years in data processing experience providing quantitative analysis and decision-support applications to state government. He holds an MS in Operations Research and another MS in Applied Statistics.
