Case Studies

VETS Executive Management System

The Client

Veterans' Employment and Training Services (VETS) is a small agency within the Department of Labor. VETS provides our Veterans with the resources and services to succeed in the 21st century work force. VETS assist our Veterans in re-entering the work force, and protecting their rights to employment. The agency has limited funds and six major programs to manage.

The Challenge

VETS supports a National Office as well as 10 regional offices who provide support to Veterans. In their efforts to supports Veterans, they have six major programs they manage. However, reporting to Congress on these programs had become a challenge. The regional offices and the national office all used different tools and methodology for managing these programs. Thus, when a request came from the Secretary of Labor or Congress for information, gathering that information required many man hours and data was hard to manipulate and prepare. Often times data would be submitted to national office and prepared for a Congressional report and some how the data would get changed. This became a constant battle for the National Office. VETS required an IT solution that would provide proper workflow, but also prevent data from being altered once the data was submitted. HeiTech Services was brought in to provide a solution for managing the programs and provide the National Office with a quick view of what was occurring in the regional office on these programs. VETS did not have a large budget so HeiTech Services would need to provide a solution that would be cost effective.

The Strategy

HeiTech Services conducted a series of meetings with program managers and higher management staff to determine the true need. Some of the questions we posed where how is the data used, what format does the data comes in, what are the reporting cycles and what would VETS like the end result to be.

Additionally, we ascertained information on the type software that available and the type of equipment being used within the office. This would assist us in developing a cost effective solution for VETS.

The Result

With questions answered and tools defined HeiTech Services designed an efficient, cost effective Executive Management System so allows VETS to manage all six programs and generate their annual Congressional report as well as ad hoc reports. We designed a web based system using ColdFusion MX and Access 2000. As the application is web based the regional offices can update data online in real-time. This affords management in the National Office to better manage performance goals and budget. Additionally, the application admin can close out a quarter which prevents data from being changed when reports are being generated. It also has drastically reduced the amount time required to respond to a Congressional request for data. The result, VETS has an Executive Management System, which provides real time reporting, data entry and program oversight and this was accomplished using exiting VETS technologies.