Posted on 28th May 2012
Integrated Business Software and Solutions secures contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Ireland
Capita IB Solutions has announced a contract to develop and implement a new software solution for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Ireland. The new solution, branded as Náisiún (the Gaelic word for nation), will be used by the department, and its embassies and consulates around the world, to accept and process applications for a range of services, including foreign birth registration, marriages abroad and document authentication.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) advises the government on Ireland’s external relations, and acts as the channel for official communications with foreign governments and international organisations. The department is also responsible for the administration of Ireland’s overseas development cooperation programme. The department employs around 1,500 people in Dublin, Limerick and Cork, as well as in its 76 resident diplomatic and consular missions based abroad.
Peadar Carpenter, Head of Consular Services at DFAT, says, ’Our key focus and objective is to provide a better service to citizens, and we needed a new IT system in order to allow us to work more efficiently and to have better anti-fraud capabilities. We also wanted to significantly simplify the processes of the services we provide, making them faster, more cost-effective and more easily integrated into other operational areas.’
He continues, ’After a formal tender process, we decided to select Capita IB Solutions because we could see that they had a clear understanding of what we required. They understood and shared our vision of the substantive benefits we could achieve by making changes to our existing manual processes and replacing this with a web-based, customised database solution that can capture all requests and applications throughout the world. This will allow us to ensure that a universal application process is defined and used across all our national and overseas operations.’
The solution, as proposed by Capita IB Solutions, is fully compatible with DFAT’s current ICT infrastructure, and uses the award-winning eSeries Solution Framework as its foundation. The approach offers DFAT a very attractive alternative to the two most obvious options - an expensive, 'bespoke' solution or an inflexible 'off-the-shelf' product - and allows Capita IB Solutions to configure a solution designed to meet DFAT’s precise requirements at a competitive cost.
’We believe that the approach proposed by Capita IB Solutions will reduce costs, provide substantially better facilities to authenticate the validity of requests, provide visibility of application status and provide better controls in relation to processes, together with financial and certificate management. The solution will improve customer responsiveness and provide the foundation that will allow citizens to initiate applications over the web from anywhere in the world,’ he concludes.
For further information please contact Steven Budge, Marketing Manager at steven.budge@capita.co.uk
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