Situated in the west-central part of Germany, the State of Hesse has a population of 6.1 million. Its capital is Wiesbaden and the largest city is Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s financial capital.

The State of Hesse, one of 16 states in Germany, employs 90,000 workers and supports an infrastructure of 1,800 servers and 60,000 computers. Employees used more than 400 applications with different user interfaces and no standard mechanism for exchanging common data between standard applications and customized software, and data had to be entered multiple times. This lack of interoperability stalled work processes. The Ministry of the Interior—one of nine state ministries—manages the Sunday labor application process. In Germany, work is banned on Sundays and holidays. However, state authorities may grant exemptions to employers, who can submit requests to engage Sunday laborers. To process such requests, the ministry has required that 11 separate steps be performed by seven different employees. The state chose the Office Business Gateway strategy that integrates Microsoft technology with the line-of-business products that it already owns, creating one overall system with a single communication infrastructure.

Software and Services

• Combionic Office Business Gateway
• Microsoft® Office Professional 2007
• Microsoft® Office 2010
• Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 R2

Benefits
To assess the practical potential of our solutions, the German Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO was involved in a pilot study in the german state of Hessen and conducted a scientific study that tracked activities involved in a given administrative process. Result: The net processing time has been reduced by two-thirds and the quality (through the validity of data) has improved at the same time. Furthermore the following benefits have been achieved:

• Drastic decrease of failure rate
• Easier access to specialized applications
• Improved Citizen Services

"Office Business Gateway is a powerful and sustainable solution that enables the State of Hesse to save time, trim the budget, improve information quality, and serve citizens better." Dr. Uwe Gruener, Product Manager, Ministry of the Interior, State of Hesse

Realisation through Combionic Partners
Accenture
Microsoft

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