Case Study: Xansa

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Date:	8 December 2006
Title:	Department for Work and Pensions - Jobs and Skills
Originator:	Christine Gould Xansa
Address:	15/16 Park Row Leeds LS1 5HD
Email:
URL:	www.xansa.com

Abstract - short definition of the project (approximately 10-15 words)

DWP Jobs and Skills provides joined up multi-channel access to national jobs and training data.

Background - give a brief outline of the partners involved and the context of the case

Xansa has developed the "Jobs and Skills" service for the Department for Work and Pensions. Jobs and Skills provides the Job search facility for Directgov on behalf of the DWP.

The system (http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk) provides joined up, multi-channel access for citizens to information about Jobs, Training, Childcare, Careers and Voluntary opportunities, and as such there are a great many partners involved including DWP, Learndirect, Childcarelink, DfES and many others.

The system has undergone significant changes not least to ensure its e-GIF compliance as a direct result of its integration into Directgov - in addition, the site is designed to be highly accessible in both classical W3C WAI terms, but also using innovative techniques such as dynamic navigation and natural language to enable the delivery of high quality results as quickly as possible.

The system is fully aligned with e-GIF practices including the use of XML for real time access to geographically dispersed data sources, the strict adherence to the technologies in the TSC, accessibility and usability, and the alignment with other related initiatives such as the channels framework and Directgov access.

The work done by Xansa for the DWP client has not been limited to technology however, Xansa has also invested in training and accrediting the staff working on the project and delivered several whole-day e-GIF awareness courses to the DWP staff themselves in order that they can also judge the output and are fully equipped to assume their role in the e-GIF process.

Existing practices - describe how the information is/was shared before this initiative

Before the Jobs and Skills system was available, citizen users had to find information about Jobs, Training and Childcare from a variety of different sources, each using a different search technique and presenting data and options in a different way. Jobs and Skills fully integrates this information into a single coherent service.

The Jobs and Skills service has also enabled Directgov to add a major new transactional service to its portfolio integrated and branded much more closely into Directgov than any of the other services.

Intended outcomes - describe the expected outcomes of the case

The intended outcomes were

To provide the citizen with a highly accessible and highly usable service
To maximize the value of existing public sector investment and infrastructure by exploiting synergies between existing information sources
To provide a service which coherently and comprehensively integrates existing heterogeneous data sources
To provide a high value service to Directgov which would be a major attraction for users
To ensure e-GIF compliance

Challenges faced - describe the challenges and barriers that had to be addressed

"Soft Systems" challenges included:

Lack of awareness about e-GIF on the part of the client
Insufficient e-GIF accredited practitioners on the account
Complexities of the stakeholder environment

Technical challenges included:

Interconnecting heterogeneous data provider technologies
Integrating heterogeneous data classification systems
Providing a simple query mechanism to allow citizen users to find information without knowing where it was or how it was classified
Providing AA accessibility levels
Supporting multiple brands and multiple channels

Approach taken - describe the approach taken in tackling the challenges / implementing the solution

A holistic approach was taken to solving all these issues which involved an almost unprecedentedly close working relationship between Xansa and the DWP client. Xansa and the DWP jointly worked to address the challenges using a variety of techniques:

Lack of awareness about e-GIF on the part of the client
The DWP client was fully aware that they needed to ensure e-GIF compliance, but was not sure exactly what this meant or how to manage it. Xansa was able to provide expert assistance by developing a seminar programme to give an end to end overview of the e-GIF from the client perspective. These seminars were given to more than a dozen key staff members on three separate occasions and resulted in excellent feedback and a much enhanced level of confidence in the client that they understood the e-GIF landscape.
Insufficient e-GIF accredited practitioners on the account
Xansa recognised that adequately trained staff would be key to successful compliance and as a result invested in training and accrediting e-GIF practitioners at all levels on the account from the Account Director and Client Delivery Manager, to Senior Solutions Architects, Project Managers and Software Engineers. The training materials produced were then re-used to train and accredit Xansa staff on many other Government accounts both in the UK and delivering from offshore.
Complexities of the stakeholder environment
By its very nature, Jobs and Skills has an unusually complicated stakeholder relationship model including multiple data providers, multiple data consumers and channel partners, Xansa and the DWP client, Directgov and technical partners including other private sector companies and also academic partners.
This extremely complex environment was managed, in close cooperation with the DWP client, by appointing a senior resource with responsibility for stakeholder relationships who could ensure honestly, openness, timeliness, cooperative values and a willingness to act proactively and helpfully to find mutually beneficial solutions to issues as they arose.
Interconnecting heterogeneous data provider technologies
Xansa worked with all of the data providers to design and implement a series of XML based "APIs" which enabled their data to be queried in real time using simple protocols and transmitted over the public infrastructure using HTTP. This provided a relatively low cost, but highly scalable solution which maximized the return on existing public sector investment and ensured an e-GIF compliant back end data interconnection solution.
Integrating heterogeneous data classification systems
Each data set from the various data providers was classified according to their own systems for their own internal purposes - for example a Plumbing vacancy was classified by Job Centre Plus using the Standard Occupation Classification System, but a Plumbing training course was classified according to a quite different Learndirect Classification System, and yet clearly a plumber is a plumber in both cases. To enable the data to be integrated into a coherent information source, Xansa worked with the University of Warwick Institute of Employment Research and ADSET to develop a concept based thesaurus which captured the relationship between concepts such as "plumber" and "pipe fitter" and enabled them to be scalably mapped onto multiple different coding systems
Providing a simple query mechanism to allow citizen users to find information without knowing where it was or how it was classified
Not only do the various data providers use different classification systems, but they use words and phrases that citizen users find confusing and hierarchies which are difficult for users to navigate, are complex and often too deep to provide simple access.
To solve this problem, Xansa worked with the University of Sheffield to develop a Natural Language system which engages the user in a dialogue to find out what they want using their own words and then modifies the behaviour of the site to match their goal rather than requiring them to undertake a series of fixed tasks. This "goal centric" natural language approach enables value to be delivered much more simply and quickly than a traditional task centric approach.
For, example a user is able to enter "i want part time bar work in Nottingham" and get results in a single interaction, or enter "what does a brikie do" and get career information for bricklayer or stonemason.
Providing AA accessibility levels
To meet the recommendation in the TSC for AA accessibility, Xansa had to extend some of the intrinsic Microsoft .NET components to deliver functionality which was not available out of the box. Xansa also undertook a comprehensive review of the system using our accessibility expertise to identify and recommend solutions for any issues which contravened AA accessibility or which would present difficulties to users with a variety of disabilities.
Supporting multiple brands and multiple channels
Jobs and Skills is available on the internet, on street level kiosk via Cityspace, on PDA browsers and will soon be available on DigitalTV and i-mode phones. Xansa is also partnering with Microsoft to deliver a speech enabled interface using Microsoft Speech Server 2007.
In addition to all these channels, Jobs and Skills is also available in two different brands, one branded as Directgov, and the other branded as Job Centre Plus, but with both brands built from a single code base. Xansa was able to deliver this e-GIF compliant strategy by ensuring that the system was architected using industry best practice and SOA techniques and used appropriate technologies from the TSC.

Actual outcomes - describe what was actually achieved. Note this may vary from the intended outcomes

The project has been a complete success and has fully met all of the objectives especially in terms of e-GIF compliance, accessibility, usability and return on public sector investment.

The success of the non-functional requirements has been measured by employing the DWP's Occupational Psychology Division to undertake face to face reviews with users as well as the more traditional user feedback forms. Other metrics also indicate a high degree of success - Jobs and Skills is placed at number 3 in the SiteMorse table of all central government websites from April 2006 and attracts around 1 million hits per day.

Jobs and skills has enabled Directgov to increase its profile and traffic and deliver the only fully Directgov branded transactional service.

The Natural Language / objective based search techniques allow results to be delivered on average in 1.6 interactions as opposed to a more usual industry norm of around 4.

DWP client satisfaction levels are also very high and the comprehensive testing programme from both the DWP and Xansa ensures an exceptional level of service with better than 99.99% availability.

Jobs and Skills is a success for the DWP, Directgov and Xansa.

Business benefits - describe any business benefits attributed to this initiative e.g. improved productivity

Cost savings are impossible to calculate, but the benefits of re-using existing public sector data and services have been fully realised, whilst many thousands of jobseekers have found real employment using the Jobs and Skills service.

In addition, the raised awareness of the DWP client about e-GIF issues is a skill which can be taken forward into other projects within the department, which is clearly an overall business benefit.

Lessons learned - describe what conclusions and recommendations based on the experience gained in this case

Raise e-GIF awareness at the most senior level possible.

e-GIF must be championed centrally and policed locally.

Have a scalable and workable stakeholder management plan.

General application - suggest elements of this initiative that may be applicable to other sectors or applications

The e-GIF skills acquired by both the customer and Xansa can and will be reused in other projects.

Xansa will continue to re-use the e-GIF training materials to gain additional e-GIF accredited practitioners and enhance our e-GIF skills across the sector.

Technically, the Jobs and Skills system is designed to be re-usable in other languages and other information domains.

Additional information - describe what interoperable standards/specifications were adopted and/or include any references to additional details that may be relevant such as schemas or sample xml

N/A.

If you have any enquiries on this case study, please contact eGIF@ncc.co.uk.

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