Government Partners

PeopleSoft Inc., announced that the Los Angeles Department of General Services has received the city's "Best in Class Productivity Improvement Award" for its successful re-engineering and automation of the city's supply chain processes. The award recognizes outstanding achievements within the city of LA government. The re-engineering project was chosen for slashing inventory levels by 50 percent, cutting the number of purchasing contracts by more than 50 percent and increasing early payment discounts taken to a record 98 percent. The General Services Department deployed PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management solutions two years ago. The fully integrated Supply Management System (SMS) leverages PeopleSoft Supply Chain Management for purchasing, materials management and accounts payable functions. Previously, the city suffered from fragmented, paper intensive purchasing processes, none of which were integrated with other city systems. The project dramatically cut costs by reducing warehousing inventory from $53 to $27 million, eliminating 36 warehouses, and cutting payment cycle time from 32 to seven days - delivering an additional $3.6 million of savings each year in personnel and contract costs.

The city of San Francisco has contracted with CableRunner North America, to provide the city and county with up to two miles of fiber-optic connectivity using its innovative flexible technology as a pilot project to demonstrate the success of the CableRunner technology. The pilot project will begin this month and enable the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services to connect additional city facilities to E-Net, the city-owned public-safety fiber-optic network that links city government buildings. The city used conventional methods and conduit in the rights of way to deploy the first phase of E-Net. CableRunner proposed a solution that allowed the city to connect buildings more difficult to reach. The resulting fiber infrastructure is easily scalable, upgradeable, interchangeable, integrates existing provider fiber infrastructures and works with common fiber-optic cable and/or micro cable for backbone, modular cable system for access, and any kind of fiber regardless of manufacturer.

CIBER, Inc. announced it has been awarded a contract with the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations' Division of Employment Security (DES) for custom application development of its new Internet-based filing system. The new system, funded as part of a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, will allow Missouri businesses to electronically file quarterly wage reports, calculate payments, make payments and update records. The DES is responsible for administration of the unemployment insurance program, including collecting unemployment taxes from businesses and disbursing payment of benefits to workers. With nearly 130,000 Missouri businesses filing a combined contribution and wage report each quarter, the online service will save time and, with the new CIBER-developed online unemployment insurance tax application for calculating payment, can eliminate costly calculation

Earlier this year the government of Belgium announced it would issue identity cards to each of its approximately 10 million citizens over the age of 12. Sun Microsystems Java technology was chosen to enable the smart cards. The pilot phase began in early April with tens of thousands of cards being issued to residents of eight cities. Assessment of the pilot project is scheduled for sometime this fall. The national identity card holds the residents name, photo and date of birth. The card has several security features such as an advanced Java-enabled chip. The card will also serve as a secure digital signature for official paperwork. Much of Europe is watching the Belgium project before moving forward with their own identity cards.

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