The Department has embarked on a BI project that is going to enable the Department to bring the right information to the right people at the right time.

Some of the data challenges that the Department currently experiences that have an impact on decision-making are:

•  Departmental systems operate in silos. The lack of integration opens the door to fraudulent activities
•  No standard operating procedures exist in respect of information that is captured
• Systems do not provide accurate information
• Employees do not understand the importance of their functions and know how their roles impact on managerial decision-making
• Systems are not always able to respond correctly to critical business issues
• An universal view of a person does not exist

The objectives of the BI project are to provide a consolidated view of all information sourced from existing systems by establishing a data warehouse and to provide business intelligence tools to access, analyze and report on data in the data warehouse.

Once the BI system is complete it is envisaged that BI will go a long way in addressing the challenges that are currently faced. The solution will:

• Enable the Department to fulfill its strategic objectives of service delivery
• Enable the correct use of information at the right time by the right people
• Enable the integration of data in existing systems
• Help managers to extract correct information that will enable sound decision-making
• Help the end-user to respond to critical business questions

The progress made on the project during the previous months covers the following:

• Assessment Phase has been completed. Seven iterations were identified for the first build. Refugee Affairs was identified as the first iteration.
• Completion of the Requirements Phase for Refugee Affairs
• Completion of the Data Quality Assessment Phase for Refugee Affairs
• Compilation of a Communication Strategy for Refugee Affairs
• Installation of BI servers