The City of Albuquerque harnesses Internet power with Cognos business intelligence

Cognos has implemented a business intelligence solution for the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, which needed a fast, powerful solution to deal with the mountain of public data residing in its local government databases.

The city deployed Cognos to perform Web-based reporting and analysis on city data, based on a user`s individual requirements. "We needed a sophisticated, efficient method of dealing with all the data stored in our systems," comments Mayor Jim Baca. "The solutions provided by Cognos have allowed us to successfully manage and handle the vast amount of information that comes in."

"The Cognos solution provides the City of Albuquerque with the most comprehensive, flexible business intelligence solution that is capable of meeting the varied reporting and analysis needs of employees across all departments," says Ben Plummer, vice president of marketing, Cognos. "By extracting critical intelligence from the vast amounts of aggregated data, public sector employees are able to streamline internal business processes and make better, more informed decisions that affect both businesses and city residents."

The Albuquerque Police Department with Parks and Recreation Department (Open Space Division) was one of the first divisions to use the Cognos solution. When a suspect is apprehended in the field, open space dispatchers are now able to instantly query a database to determine whether that individual is wanted on any outstanding warrants. Additionally, users in the police and fire departments are now able to analyse thousands of crime, fire, and emergency medical service statistics, which can then be used for identifying trends in data and informing the general public.

"Cognos has provided us with an efficient, easy-to-use business intelligence solution that allows us to uncover critical insights in our data and distribute vast amounts of rich information to employees and the public via our Intranet and soon-to-be Cognos Internet solution," says Chris Framel, Systems Analyst II, City of Albuquerque. "By proactively disseminating this information we are greatly reducing the number of external queries we are required to handle, saving both money and person-hours."

Before Cognos, the City of Albuquerque had no truly effective way of working with human resources data. Previous processes were inflexible and labour-intensive, falling short of the efficient report writing and analysis capabilities users required.

Since deploying Cognos, users in HR are able to analyse compensation and benefits packages based on age, sex, ethnicity, and time of service. This has simplified the federal reporting process and has allowed the city to proactively analyse future personnel retirements and the monetary amounts associated with them. Additionally, users can now track vacation and sick leave for all local government employees by publishing information directly into a multidimensional cube, eliminating the need for arduous, paper-bound reporting.

With close to 100 regular users, Cognos is quickly becoming a strategic element of the city`s day-to-day business processes. Cognos has been deployed to all city departments, including fire, police, human resources, and financial, with plans to roll-out Cognos solutions to the public over the next few months. "Our organisation is focused on transitioning from a detail-oriented paradigm of thought to a more analytical one," concludes Framel.