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Cognovation Corporation was either entirely responsible
or played a key role with all aspects of the following
Oracle application systems. These systems are accessible
from a common menu and are web enabled. In particular,
the eFIR and Municipal Performance Measurement applications
were recently delivered specifically for Web access:
- The Electronic
Financial Information Return "eFIR" is
the key data acquisition method for input to the Municipal
Analysis and Retrieval System "MARS". The eFIR application
is a complex financial package containing thirty one
accounting schedules where each municipality reports their
financial activities to the Province of Ontario on an annual basis.
- The Municipal Analysis and Retrieval System "MARS" application
constantly experiences growth and technological advancement
requiring the approval of project plans. Objectives of past
projects ultimately provided greater access to larger volumes
of data for a variety of analytical formats. Aggregations and
budgetary forecasts of municipal financial information resulted
in the policy support for the amalgamation and restructuring of
municipalities across Ontario i.e. the new City of Toronto. The
MARS application is hosted on an Oracle RDBMS and consumes about
five giga-bytes for data. There are approximately five hundred
runtime objects including forms, reports, extracts, maintenance
scripts, security mechanisms, etc. The entire application is
accessible though the Web.
- The Municipal Performance Measurement Program requires municipalities to
collect data that measure their performance in nine core service
areas. Information is gathered in service areas such as water,
sewer, waste, fire, police, etc. and standardized into a central
repository to produce reliable results for municipalities to
compare and learn from.
- The On-Line Grants Administration "OLGA" system
performed the transfer of unconditional grants from the
province to municipalities. There were three interim
payments and a balance payment per annual cycle. Payments
were based on formula calculations specific to each
municipality and an electronic funds transfer managed
payments. Although the OLGA program was discontinued
in 1996, this system was the first application to use
the Client/Server platform for its one billion dollar
program delivery.
- The Boundary Analysis Simulation System enabled
the policy branch to do an impact study when a municipal
boundary change is proposed. Large amounts of assessment
data was used from Ministry of Finance assessment roles to
calculate shifts in property tax for lower tier, upper tier,
and school board purposes.
- The Capital Funding Unit keeps track of one
hundred and fifty billion dollars in outstanding mortgages
held by the Province of Ontario for housing needs. The
application understands amortization periods, mortgage
terms, term rates, lending institutions, property held,
and escrow. The application serves auditors to ensure
correct payments are made and to whom. Data material
gathered here is used by policy for Mortgage Forecasting.
- The Non-Profit Mortgage Forecasting system
projects "what-if" scenarios of multiple mortgage terms
over various amortization periods. Assumption sets use
the amortization period, a range of mortgage term dates,
a boundary of interest rates per term, and apply formulas
to forecast the remortgaging for non profit housing. The
policy branch uses these forecasts to support the decision
process needed to optimize the purchase of mortgages to
save money on capital funding.
- The Municipal Billing System is what it says
in that municipalities are billed for services provided
by the province. The billing system generates an
electronic financial transaction used by Finance branch
to generate invoices.
- The Data Warehouse was project managed by Oracle
Consulting and Cognovation built the data transformation
PL/SQL packages using CTAS methodology, built the API's
to the Designer repository for data model re-generation,
built Oracle*Forms modules for the user interface, provided
data mapping specifications, documented the process flow
into technical manuals, provided specifications to the
Discoverer developers, and performed quality assurance
post-production activities.
- The Surplus Employee Administration System assisted
the Human Resource department to map the movement of provincial
employees during the downsizing exercise in 1996. This
application identified employees and their target employment
positions, pension options, and exit package compensations
across multiple collective agreements.
- The Skills Transfer Program was conceptualized and
implemented entirely for the knowledge transfer of Oracle
tools to mainframe personnel with fifteen years or more of
computing experience. This highly successful program was
cross integrated into the DBL625 computing program at
Seneca college.
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