APPLICATIONS

Cognos has announced that Centrelink, Australia's national welfare agency, has selected Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) in a multi-million dollar project to improve information accessibility to 29,000 staff and reduce the cost of running multiple platforms. As Australia's national welfare agency, Centrelink delivers a range of Commonwealth services to the Australian community, including $63 billion in social security payments on behalf of policy departments. Centrelink required a solution to address several key Federal Government initiatives. After an extensive tender and evaluation process, Centrelink selected Cognos 8 BI due to its usability, low total cost of ownership as well as its ability to operate as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) within the agency's standard operating environment (SOE). By standardizing its existing BI product deployments on Cognos, business users and program managers across the agency will have access to consistent, accurate, and timely information, enabling them to more effectively manage to program outcomes and, ultimately, to successfully accomplish the mission of the agency. By standardizing on a solution from a single vendor, Centrelink will also benefit from decreased ongoing costs associated with training and supporting products in a multi-vendor environment. Cognos 8 delivers the most comprehensive set of BI capabilities available on the market through a web services-based SOA. By providing a single view across multiple data sources through an easy-to-use browser-based interface, users are shielded from the underlying complexity. Product components and new data sources can be easily added as needed, enabling them to grow BI organically with the changing needs of the business. "We are proud to be working with Centrelink. The initiatives Centrelink is undertaking are similar to those of government agencies around the world - an outcome-oriented business culture, a complex information environment, and a pressing need for transparency and accountability. This win clearly underscores the ability of Cognos to address the needs large government agencies have to standardize on a single information access layer, and further validates the long-term commitment Cognos has made to support the business intelligence and performance management needs of our Australian Government customers," said Terence Atkinson, director of government and education solutions at Cognos. Cognos is a leading provider of performance management solutions for federal agencies worldwide, many of whom use Cognos to meet the demands for more citizen-centric, results-oriented information and services delivery. Customers include U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Bureau of Labor, U.S. Air Force, NAV CANADA, Canadian Blood Services, Australian Department of Finance and Administration, and the Flemish Government. For more information about Cognos solutions for federal agencies, please visit its Web site