Citizenship and Immigration Canada Improves Service Support with Office EPM Solution
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC)
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Company Overview
Technology is integral to CIC’s success. With more than 4,000 employees and over 100 mission-critical systems covering everything from case management to research, CIC relies heavily on its IT department to support the business. It’s particularly important that all new IT projects undergo a rigorous implementation process, one that governs their progress from inception to deployment and management, to help ensure new technologies provide optimum value.
Business Challenge
CIC’s IT department has already created a Project Delivery Office (PDO), which oversees technology endeavours and guides the software investments to best support the organization’s customer-facing processes. But the organization wanted to introduce even greater discipline to its IT investment stewardship.
“We knew we were on the right track with the PDO, but we also felt we could go further, and ensure our initiatives were more balanced in terms of providing the biggest benefits to the organization,” said Andre Delaurier, Project Manager, CIC. “What’s more, we wanted a better way for IT investment stakeholders to communicate so everyone would have a good idea of what the organization is doing, and how their individual technology work fits into that. One of our executives suggested applying an IT-based portfolio structure to technology-investment management to help us reach those goals.”
A portfolio is a set of initiatives connected by a common budget and business strategy. This would allow CIC to review the issues and risks of individual undertakings in conjunction with others to help ensure every investment supported the organization’s main business objectives. CIC sought a portfolio platform that would seamlessly integrate with the existing project lifecycle management system, based on Microsoft® Office Project Server 2007, which CIC implemented in 2007.
Service enhancement was the primary goal. “We aim for efficiency in our services, but we also must be mindful of protocols and policies from governments outside of Canada, and of individual immigration circumstances,” Delaurier said. “Our technology infrastructure has to facilitate all of these things.”
CIC also needed a technology platform that would help it understand the progress of individual IT initiatives, how they interrelated to each other and how each of them aligned with the department’s goal of providing excellent immigration services. As well, the solution would have to provide CIC with a better way to communicate investment progress – a system to keep all stakeholders informed of individual undertakings while allowing administrators to compare technology ventures across the enterprise.
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Solution
After researching potential solutions, CIC selected Microsoft® Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 to complete the enterprise project management infrastructure. Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 helps organizations standardize, communicate and enforce governance over portfolio management. The solution brings business-case parameters and best practice methodologies to bear on investments. This allows CIC to scrutinize the scope of proposed undertakings, understand and manage constraints, consider the potential benefits, and align each investment with the organization’s overall goals. Together Office Project Server 2007 and Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 provide a complete Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.
“The Office EPM solution was less complicated to implement than some of the other enterprise project management systems we considered,” Delaurier said. “The others required specialized resources we didn’t have, and we certainly didn’t have the time for intensive training to make this happen. We didn’t want all of our IT resources tied up in developing the solution – we wanted them benefiting from it.”
CIC turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner UMT Consulting Group to help implement the EPM platform. Together, UMT and CIC combed through the project lifecycle development processes already in place and identified new efficiencies. They then programmed the new workflows into Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 and connected it to Office Project Server 2007, adding the project lifecycle management component to the portfolio platform.
“CIC’s existing processes were sophisticated, and they became even more so once we reviewed them and applied them to the Office EPM solution,” said Daniel Theander, Partner, UMT Consulting Group. “The flexible configuration interface simplified the implementation. Now CIC has a stronger control mechanism to help guide its IT work.”
Business Benefits
The Office EPM solution has helped CIC improve its technology-investment lifecycle processes by keeping all stakeholders better informed on projects. The solution also helps CIC better allocate resources, improving the IT department’s effectiveness. But most importantly, the Office EPM solution has helped the department deliver improved IT based client services.
Improved investment governance
By empowering project and portfolio administrators with workflow tracking and approval checks, CIC’s technology managers have a better understanding of where initiatives stand, and how the other projects impact their respective portfolios. As well, investment stakeholders now have a better understanding of the policies and procedures required to submit projects for consideration, as the Office EPM solution provides templates that describe the information needed to create an initiative.
“Our manual processes were well established, but there were not many checks and balances to help guide managers on how to submit ideas and instigate initiatives,” said Don Martin, a consultant with CIC. “With the Office EPM solution, we’ve added rigour to our processes, and as a result project and portfolio managers can more easily stay on track.”
The Office EPM solution supports CIC’s workflows by guiding stakeholders on steps and responsibilities throughout the lifecycle. Now, for example, everyone can see that a project cost and risk analysis has to happen before the project is assigned to a manager.
“Our processes have never been stronger,” Delaurier said. “Managers have all the insight they need before they get started, and it’s clear what steps they need to take.”
Better communication
The solution also helped further streamline communication by ensuring stakeholders use the same terms and references for projects and portfolios – an important part of helping managers collaborate effectively. For example, in the past different departments would use unique names for the same project. IT managers supporting HR might have called a new Web application “Web App 36” but the research support staff might have changed the name to “WAPF” in their own project lists. That made it difficult for everyone to stay abreast of the initiatives.
“Now everybody uses the same reference points, which goes a long way towards making us more efficient,” Delaurier said.
Superior resource management
The Office EPM solution gives CIC’s project and portfolio managers better visibility into individual employees’ work commitments and budget resources. This ensures that the right level of people and funds are allocated, and that workloads and finances balance out across portfolios.
“Even the most brilliant initiatives would not amount to anything if we couldn’t map resources and funding to our projects,” Martin said. “The Office EPM solution gives us that insight and helps us put the right people and the right amount of money behind each project and portfolio.”
Enhanced project realization
The single view into project profiles and progress facilitated the ability for CIC to gain insight into the relationships between various portfolios and projects and plan accordingly.
CIC implemented the Microsoft EPM solution in a limited portfolio of 10 projects. Based on the positive results experienced in managing those projects, managers with projects outside the initial portfolio requested access to and training in the EPM toolset. The result was that the EPM tools helped managed over 30 more projects in the newly created portfolios.
“The Office EPM solution provides a discipline to manage projects that is straightforward to use,” said Barry Brock, Executive Director, Project Delivery Office. “We expect this system coupled with other project management support systems will significantly improve the effectiveness of IT project management.”
Improved client services
Services to CIC’s temporary residents have also improved. The organization is developing a secure online client-account page that will enable applicants to exchange information with CIC through a single sign-on interface. One of the first projects to be completed using a portfolio management approach was a calculator which allowed CIC’s clients to calculate service fees before beginning the application process. This and other similar projects have helped manage the volume of calls into CIC’s call centre, and reduce client frustration with the application process.
Another project that was managed via the Office EPM solution allowed CIC to simplify the application process for foreign students applying for permits to work off campus. This involved enhancements to the CIC Web site allowing Canadian colleges and universities to provide CIC with the required evidence that the student remains in good standing, a necessary condition for a student to be granted a work permit.
“In this sense the software really does support our goal of quickly processing qualified students so their stay in Canada is productive,” Delaurier said.
New electronic services are also planned for other lines of business related to persons temporarily in Canada. Doing so requires adhering to national security guidelines and standards from other countries. CIC expects the Office EPM solution will help manage the steps involved and ensure the finished products support the organization’s overarching goals.
“We want to make the client experience as straightforward as possible, but we have many stakeholders, procedures and guidelines to consider,” Delaurier said. “The Office EPM solution helps us balance those parameters, so we know our technology initiatives work together to support and improve our businesses.”
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