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GCN Home > 06/03/02 issue

Roundup

By Patricia Daukantas, GCN Staff

Bureau of Land Management’s data warehousing strategy uses bytes to save bucks, burros and horses

The Bureau of Land Management measures its data warehousing success not just in dollars saved but also in wild animals rescued.
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For nearly four years, BLM has connected its financial and performance data warehouses via an intranet. Delivering reports electronically to managers saved the bureau $1.6 million in the first year and helped one program find homes for an additional 2,000 wild horses and burros.

Managers can see performance results from other BLM offices soon after they are reported, “instead of having to wait till the end of each year and then go through this massive exercise,” said Stan Curtis, a financial systems analyst in BLM’s Phoenix office.

In 1997, BLM hired Advanced DataTools Corp. of Annandale, Va., to build a basic data warehouse for budget and financial information. Lester Knutsen, president of Advanced DataTools, said the warehouse uses Brio Intelligence Server software from Brio Software Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., plus Brio Explorer and Brio Designer desktop components. The budget and finance project, completed by March 1998, ran in parallel with the old paper reporting process until October of that year. BLM then ordered a second data warehouse to record measurements under the Government Performance and Results Act.

Find best practices

Advanced DataTools created a series of templates for performance metrics, Knutsen said. At bureau headquarters in Washington, top managers set the goals and deadlines, and workers in the field offices enter their results.

Then the combined data warehouses compare program costs against performance measures, quickly highlighting the best practices.

Managers can choose text, numbers, charts or graphs to create their own reports, or they can rely on preprogrammed templates.

“With three clicks, you should be able to find” the desired data, Knutsen said.

Although the financial and GPRA data warehouses are separate, they reside on the same physical server, a Sun Microsystems Enterprise 10000. The Brio software permits queries across multiple databases and warehouses.