Foreign Affairs Canada
Microsoft .NET-based COSMOS Application Aids Canadian Travelers Around the World
|
|
Company Overview
Imagine your worst nightmare. You’re traveling abroad when you get robbed, losing your money and passport. What do you do? If you’re like thousands of Canadians each year, you turn to the local Canadian embassy for help.
Representing Canada around the world through a network of embassies, and trade and diplomatic offices, Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC) works to promote prosperity, ensure security of Canadians outside the country, and promote Canadian values and culture on the international stage. Each year, thousands of Canadians who need assistance abroad or find themselves in distress while traveling, use the consular services offered by FAC through the Consular Affairs Bureau. The bureau helps travelers with anything from medical assistance or finding a missing person, to dealing with lost money and passports.
Business Challenge
Approximately 10 years ago, the Consular Affairs Bureau within FAC, realized it needed to apply technology to deliver a higher level of service to Canadian citizens who were traveling around the world. Additionally, the bureau wanted to improve the speed of services and address the increasing volume of requests, so it partnered with AMITA Corporation to develop a technology-based solution that would offer employees the ability to access data from anywhere in the world.
“With more Canadians than ever traveling outside the country, a manual system could no longer be trusted to ensure speedy service to everyone,” says Randy Wong, director of Government Business Development at AMITA Corporation. “In fact in 2003 alone, FAC opened more than 180,000 cases and handled more than one million inquiries. FAC needed a more high-tech way to efficiently serve Canadian citizens.”
It was also crucial for Consular Affairs’ data to be accurate and available in real-time.
“Sharing accurate and instantaneous information was important,” says Elizabeth Keighley, director of Informatics for the Consular Affairs Bureau, Foreign Affairs Canada. “We can’t afford to let people in a crisis situation wait 48 hours. We have to be able to respond as the situation unfolds.”
AMITA developed a low-bandwidth Microsoft-based solution called COSMOS that enabled employees worldwide to access critical data, such as information about local disasters, who to turn to for on-the-ground support and other data to help Canadians in distress. Because of the difficulty and costs of getting a high-speed Wide Area Network (WAN) Internet connection to many remote places, the low-bandwidth factor was crucial. With the global solution in place, FAC became the first Consular Services division in the world to deliver this level of service.
Once COSMOS was set up, Consular affairs was able to implement an Operations Centre which acts as command headquarters, reacting to emergencies as they happen around the world, as well as a central information repository that is available when local embassies are closed. Adding the Operations Centre meant that a Canadian traveler, whether they’re in Colombia or Thailand, could call a 1-800 number and reach a Canadian employee who is up to date on the local situation. Consular Affairs employees can also alert local people when needed to provide assistance.
The COSMOS system was so successful that, in 2003, as part of its ongoing effort to improve service to citizens, Consular Affairs decided to increase access and make it more available to people in remote areas and smaller consular sites.
|
Solution
AMITA worked with Consular Affairs to develop a strategy for making more of the COSMOS application available to remote areas, and investigated a number of technologies including Java and Open Source. In the end, it chose to use Microsoft .NET connection software.
“We needed a completely integrated, seamless solution that could be supported around the world. That is what we got with Microsoft .NET,” says Wong. “It also gave us the assurance of long-term life of the technology,platform, and continued vendor support from Microsoft.”
Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework using Visual Studio .NET 2003 and ASP.NET, the new COSMOS application operates from a browser on the user’s computer, enabling simple deployment, and is connected to a SQL Server™ 2000 database. It also integrates with IIS 6.0 using Web services. The .NET-based COSMOS application is designed for worldwide network environments with limited bandwidth. The model ensures that network traffic is kept to a minimum, ensuring performance across a network with TCP/IP connectivity.
With Microsoft .NET software, AMITA was also able to include a Web services capability – meaning a full version of COSMOS that runs over the Internet could be accessed by employees no matter where they were in the world. Instead of only being able to access the solution with scaled down functionality, Consular Affairs is able to provide employees with better access to the full application through Web services over the Internet.
“In some places, there may only be a few hundred Canadians that travel to that location in a given year, and it doesn’t make financial sense to put in a dedicated network connection in those sites,” says Wong. “By implementing Microsoft .NET software and Web services, FAC can now access cheaper bandwidth providers and go over the Internet instead of investing in a dedicated local-area network for every site.”
Business Benefits
COSMOS demonstrates Canadian innovation by offering the best technology solution in consular services worldwide. In fact, due to the success of the Microsoft-based COSMOS solution, in 2000, Consular Affairs was awarded the Government Technology Exhibition’s (GTEC) Gold medal at the prestigious “Distinction Awards of Excellence” in the category of “Serving Canadians Better through IM/IT Innovations – Improving Service Delivery to Citizens and Business”.
.NET Expands Possibilities and Protects Privacy
With Microsoft .NET Framework and Web services, Consular Affairs can now offer more functionality than ever before.
“When we went with Microsoft.NET, we made some massive changes to our system, and what we’ve implemented would not have been possible a few years ago when the application was first developed,” says Keighley.
At the same time, Consular Affairs has been able to continue to protect sensitive data from unauthorized users.
“Security is a huge issue and we have to be extremely careful as to who can access what in the system,” says Keighley. “With Microsoft .NET, it’s getting easier for us to limit what people see, so we can build a lot more functionality into it by having those controls in place. Before it was all or nothing, but now we’re able to give limited access to groups who previously had none.”
Improved Productivity and Cost Savings
Driven by technology improvements, both AMITA and Consular Affairs quickly saw the new .NET-based solution as a productivity enabler, driving better service and improved bottom line results. Also, because the .NET-based environment is object-oriented, AMITA was able to reduce the overall size of the code base, making it easier to develop and manage the COSMOS Web application.
“We now have full access to the consular tool set through Web services. That was the primary benefit behind the decision to use Microsoft .NET, but it also turned out to be a tremendous productivity improvement for us,” says Keighley. “We’re now able to handle more cases every year without adding any new staff. Because of the flexibility of the solution, employees can do their jobs more efficiently.”
Wong agrees. “We first thought that implementing .NET and Web services would be a significant technology improvement, which it is, but we were also able to revisit how employees manage cases so users now see it as a productivity increase as well,” says Wong.
As the Microsoft .NET-based solution supports Consular Affair’s worldwide operation, the centralized model proved to be cost efficient, saving the bureau the resources that would be required to support the system in over 100 countries.
Power of .NET
With the flexibility and power of Microsoft .NET, AMITA is able to easily make any necessary changes to improve service for the Consular Affairs Bureau.
“Essentially, it gives us a robust development platform, complete integration of products with SQL Server, and runs on either an Internet VPN or private network with the same version of the same application,” says Wong.
Keighley believes it is vital to the Consular Affairs Bureau to be able to do its job effectively.
“It’s a versatile product and we can easily make changes – that is the biggest value for us,” she says. “In our work, we need to be able to help people in distress, so if there’s a better way to do it, and we can implement that quickly, then we’ll do it. That’s a big bonus.”
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
The Microsoft .NET Framework is an integral Windows(r) component for building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services. http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to rapidly design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. In addition, Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the Microsoft .NET Framework, providing support for multiple programming languages and automatically handling many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create Web applications using their language of choice. http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
Acquire Visual Studio .NET: http://shop.microsoft.com/devtools/default.asp
MSDN(r) Subscriptions:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/subscriptions/default.aspx
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about AMITA Corporation products and services, call (800) 566-8883 or visit the Web site at: www.amita.com
