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- An Integrated Package System that Allowed Speedy Replacement Installation and Improved the Services Provided to Local Residents[1]
An Integrated Package System that Allowed Speedy Replacement
Installation and Improved the Services Provided to Local Residents[1]Kitamoto City, Saitama Prefecture
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Kitamoto City decided to use an integrated package system to replace its Citizens Information System, and this enabled us to complete the entire process from initial investigation through to final cut-over extremely swiftly in just over one year. We also improved the efficiency of our application duties and expanded our tax collection channel with the use of a liaison-linked system. The systems we have established to provide local residents with services, such as enabling municipal tax to be paid with the use of Pay-easy, etc., have been highly acclaimed and are attracting attention from near and far.
Kitamoto City
| - Location : | Located in the center of Saitama Prefecture and occupying a flat area of land on the Omiya flatlands, the city is very attractive and still maintains the Musashino woodlands and other natural areas. The center of the city is linked to National Route #17 and the JR Takasaki Line, and the area of the city lies alongside these. Verdant and natural agricultural land lies just outside the city, and the Arakawa River flows to the west. |
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| - Area : | 19.84 sq. km. |
| - Population: | 71,016 people in 26,659 households (as of March 1st, 2007) |
| - History : | The city area was split into fourteen villages at the beginning of the Meiji Period, and these were joined together under the name of Kitamotojuku Village in 1943 and then Kitamoto Town in 1959. It was designated as a city on November 3rd, 1971, and became Saitama Prefecture's 33rd city. |
Moving Towards the Second Stage of Legacy Reforms
Kitamoto
City is situated almost exactly in the center of Saitama Prefecture
with the JR Takasaki Line and National Route #17 running through it
from south to north, and the city is built alongside these two
infrastructure lifelines. Originally used as a halfway house along
Nakasendo Street, it developed into a bed-town owing to being
conveniently located just 40 to 45km from central Tokyo. The
construction of large-scale condominiums and housing estates flourished
and the town was designated as a city with a population of
approximately 34,000 people in 1971, and it now has a population that
exceeds 70,000 people.
Kitamoto City has been involved in computer processing with the use of a host computer (general-purpose computer) since 1973, and we moved our accounting and payroll system across to a client / server (C / S) package system in 1997, and our Citizen Information System in 1999. General affairs and social welfare duties continued to be processed on the City Hall's general-purpose computer, but we enacted legacy reforms through downsizing at a comparatively early period.
Following this we experienced a number of problems, such as work almost grinding to a halt owing to the person who operated the general-purpose computer falling ill and an external organization employed to inspect the system pointing out that the management of the Citizen Information System should be sub-contracted externally, so in 2004 the mayor, Kenji Ishizu, set up a new section specializing in handling information policies. This resulted in the second stage of legacy reforms that involved doing away with the host computer completely and reviewing the Citizen Information System.
We used an integrated package system for the new Citizen Information System and set up a method of allowing citizens to pay municipal tax electronically at convenience stores with the Multi-Payment Network (Pay-easy) at the same time. We were the fourth city in Japan and the first city in the prefecture to install the Pay-easy system for municipal tax, and this established us as a prototype for the prefecture and resulted in us receiving visits from people all over the country (as of February 2007.)
Replacing the Existing System with an Integrated Package System
Mr.
Nobuhiro Arai, the manager in charge of information policies in the
Information Administration Section of the General Affairs Division,
explains, "The fundamental policies involved in replacing the Citizen
Information System including the improvement of the services provided
to local residents, reinforcing security and reducing administrative
and running costs. Developing our own system was not a practical
measure considering the huge expense and amount of time it would
require, and it was very difficult for everybody to agree to the
concept of "sharing" with shared outsourcing. The most practical choice
we had was using a package system that could be obtained at low cost
and that would be instantly effective in solving all of our problems."
Having refined our policies with regard to the installation of a packaged system, it was necessary to decide whether we should ask our existing vendor to upgrade the system to the latest version or whether we should get several companies to compete against each other and make our decision after examining their proposals. The former of these two choices would mean that we could keep a cap on the amount of time and the cost of data migration, and it was also the simplest method from the point of view that it would reduce confusion after cut-over as there wouldn't be much difference in operation methods. This was the direction in which we were heading at the beginning, but we finally decided to give precedence to the advantages of competitiveness and selecting the most effective system, so in the end we went with the latter choice.
We immediately recruited the help of each division and got them to list up the functions they would require, and this led to the compilation of a list that included more than 1,600 demands. At the same time, the Information Administration Section created the Tender Application Specifications to send out to various companies and established a vendor selection committee. In addition to studying the proposals and quotations received from various suppliers, the committee also attended presentations given by potential applicants, and in the end we decided to go for the integrated package systems that have received the best overall evaluation.
Although getting different companies to compete against each other was a time-consuming procedure, it enabled us to thoroughly isolate the functions we needed beforehand, and the result of this made it possible for us to go ahead with subsequent data migration within a short period of time. As Mr. Toshiyuki Fukaya, the person in charge of information policies, explains, "Once we had decided on the system we were going to install, we wanted to avoid customization as much as possible and make sure that the system perfectly matched up with the tasks required of it. I am sure we selected the most effective system to enable us to do this, and it still contains functions that we have not yet got around to using. So far there have been very few complaints or requests for improvements from the staff."
