Microsoft GovernmentCustomer Solution Case Study

Tribal Government Improves Member Services with Data Management Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Government—State and local

Customer ProfileThe Mohegan Tribe is a sovereign Indian nation in the upper Thames River Valley of Connecticut with 1,800 members.

Business SituationThe Mohegan Tribe needed an information management solution to help departments coordinate efforts and provide more efficient member services.

SolutionThe Tribe customized a solution from Handel Technologies that’s built using Microsoft software. It was flexible enough to adapt to internal processes and IT.

Benefits Improves data accuracy Increases staff productivity Results in better member services Encourages process improvement Improves standing for IT department

“TIMS built on SQL Server … has ushered in a new era of easy access to accurate data that’s driving employee efficiency so we can provide better member services at The Mohegan Tribe.”

Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information Officer, The Mohegan Tribe

The Mohegan Tribal government has jurisdiction over the Tribe’s lands and members. The government’s departments stored membership data separately, leading to inconsistent data and reporting. It needed to replace these data silos with a Tribal member database to use for accurate member communications and services. The Tribe accomplished this with a solution from Handel Technologies, a Microsoft Partner with Gold competencies, built on flexible, extensible Microsoft technologies that interoperate with the Tribal government’s IT environment. After 10 years of looking for a solution, in five months, the IT staff brought consistency to the data employed by staff. Now, employees are providing better services—enrolling Tribal members is 30 percent faster—and management has improved data access for insight into operations.

SituationThe Mohegan Tribe is a federally recognized, sovereign Indian nation located in Connecticut. The Tribe operates one of the largest resort casinos in the United States, the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut.

The Mohegan Tribe is governed by its Constitution, which was affirmed in April 1996. A nine-member Tribal Council handles overall executive and legislative responsibilities for the Tribe, and a seven-member Council of Elders is responsible for its judicial oversight and cultural integrity. Approximately 400 employees work in the Tribal government, providing finance, health, legal, police, fire, security, and education services for Tribal members.

The IT department for the Tribal government is responsible for building and managing a flexible, cost-effective IT infrastructure and for deploying the right technology tools to help employees provide fast, efficient services to Tribal members. Enrollment in The Mohegan Tribe is required to be eligible for these services and benefits. To determine eligibility for services, Tribal government employees depend on accurate demographic data for all Tribal members.

Data SilosUntil recently, Tribal membership and demographic data—including names, family relationships, and household addresses—resided in multiple computers throughout the government’s 12 departments, with each department’s employees tracking and managing the information in their own way. These data silos ranged in format from Microsoft Excel

spreadsheets, and Microsoft Access databases on employees’ hard disk drives to Lotus Notes data stores and small instances of Microsoft SQL Server. Working with these “homegrown” data silos, each department had different ways of generating reports, with a varying degree of consistency.

Without a central data store, however, it was impossible for the IT department to implement an enterprise-level reporting solution. Also, it was impossible for employees to know where to find the most up-to-date version of demographic data to use when communicating with the members at large. The end result was that some members didn’t receive information from the Tribal government, while others received duplicate communications.

“Consolidating membership data in a single place is a challenge for many government organizations with a distributed system,” says George Wood, Project Manager at The Mohegan Tribe. “Each of our departments—social services, health, finance, family services, education—used its own iteration of membership data to provide services and communicate with Tribal members. That added up to a lot of duplicate data entry and opened up the possibility of manual error. I have a saying, ’If you have two places where you have to input the data, you have two opportunities to make mistakes.’”

Productivity and Service IssuesFor staff members, duplicate data entry took time away from serving Tribal members. Inefficient paper-based workflows designed to double-check information also diverted employees from

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“Consolidating membership data in a single place is a challenge for many government organizations with a distributed system.”

George Wood, Project Manager, The Mohegan Tribe

more important work. For instance, Tribal government employees had to route paper among different departments to verify information as they complied with service requests. If an employee needed to verify a birth or marriage certificate, that person would have to go to the Council of Elders’ office and review physical copies there. Making payments to Tribal members was a multistep, paper-based process, as well, requiring that each check request be mailed first to the finance department and then the payment would be forwarded to the Tribal member or vendor.

Departmental data silos also opened up the possibility of wrongly allocating benefits and services, and it was this issue that ultimately drove the IT department to find a tribal information management solution that could ensure all members knew about and received the services to which they were entitled.

“We started down this road 10 years ago,” says Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information Officer with The Mohegan Tribe. “We bought an off-the-shelf product and tried to build some code around it to meet our needs. It proved too inflexible to provide the departments with easy access to tribal demographic data, so we gave up. Then we tried building the solution ourselves, but ran into internal roadblocks. Finally, in 2008, we engaged a consultant to do a market scan and find a solution for us.”

By this time, a lot was riding on the IT department. Like many governments, The Mohegan Tribe faced shrinking budgets and rising costs, and everyone was under pressure to increase productivity and improve service, while saving money. “We

had a significant issue to solve and an important goal—to deploy a tribal information management system—that had ramifications for every department and for every Tribal member,” says Scharnagle. “There was some lingering negativity in the Council and the associated departments about the past initiatives, so we had to get it right.”

SolutionFortunately, the consultant hired by The Mohegan Tribe knew about Handel Information Technologies, a Microsoft Partner with Gold competencies, and its product, RiteTrack for Native American Tribes, which is built on Microsoft technologies. When he suggested that the Mohegan Tribal government work with Handel Technologies to deploy RiteTrack, the IT staff was immediately interested.

“We had several non-negotiable criteria for our tribal information management solution, all of which were answered by RiteTrack and Microsoft technologies,” says Scharnagle. “It had to be extensible, flexible, and interoperable with our existing Microsoft infrastructure. Just as importantly, the solution had to be user-friendly and offer engaging interfaces, so people would want to use it as part of their daily work.”

RiteTrack runs on the Windows Server 2008 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database management software. Mohegan IT staff can take advantage of SQL Server Reporting Services, a server-based report-generation software system to develop custom reports that tie in with the RiteTrack software. RiteTrack is a web-based solution that’s built with Microsoft

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Silverlight 4, a cross-browser implementation of the Microsoft .NET Framework for building and delivering rich, interactive web applications. The solution also interoperates with Microsoft Excel and Word software.

“The fact that the Handel solution was built with Microsoft technologies was very important to us,” says Scharnagle. “SQL Server is our database standard, and we wanted to use SQL Server backups to be able to offer business continuity to our users. We are also familiar with the .NET

Framework. Compared to the inflexible commercial product we tried initially, the Handel Technologies solution was a flexible, open-ended case management solution that we saw right away would adapt to meet our needs.” Hub-and-Spoke ModelIn May 2009, Handel Technologies and The Mohegan Tribe began customizing RiteTrack to meet the Tribal government’s needs. The customized version, called the Tribal Information Management System (TIMS), follows a hub-and-spoke model, with the core demographics data and member enrollment process forming the hub and the different departments forming the spokes. (See Figure 1.)

“The consultants from Handel were very good about determining our pain points and understanding our business needs,”

says Scharnagle. “We agreed that the initial focus should be consolidating the Tribal membership data into one location, in the core demographics hub, and automating the enrollment process for new members. From there, we planned on adding spokes to the hub based on their priority. The model allows for the integrity of the demographic data to be maintained in one location, but available throughout the other departments as needed. ”

The Mohegan Tribe’s IT staff and Handel consultants began the project by working with staff members in the Tribal Information Department because they oversee the enrollment process and have the most demographic data at their disposal. The department employees helped define TIMS requirements and design the solution. Even after the staff members signed off on the requirements, they remained part of the team, playing an active role in testing the application. “One of the nice things about the Handel team was they were able to put a working model of the solution in front of the staff very quickly, so they could see how the application worked before all of the code was completed,” says Wood. “We brought in the Council of Elders to oversee the design. It was a true team effort.”

As of January 2011, the IT department has implemented three spokes in addition to the demographics hub: education, social services, and burial committee.

BenefitsBy choosing a solution based on Microsoft technologies, the Mohegan Tribal government solved a business issue that had been simmering for 10 years, in just

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“The fact that the Handel solution was built with Microsoft technologies was very important to us."

Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information Officer, The Mohegan Tribe

Figure 1 - The Tribal Information Management Solution (TIMS) consolidates accurate demographic data on Mohegan Tribe members in a central Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database. When the IT staff completes all spokes, this data will be used by everyone in the Mohegan Tribal government to provide more efficient member services.

five months. “Having tried a product that didn’t map to our needs, we had to find a flexible solution, and we got that with TIMS built on SQL Server,” says Scharnagle. “TIMS has ushered in a new era of easy access to accurate data that’s driving employee efficiency so we can provide better member services at The Mohegan Tribe.”

Improves Data AccuracyAs the IT staffers worked with Handel Technologies to build the demographic hub, they consolidated data from disparate departments and eliminated redundant pockets of information. As of January 2011, the IT staffers have retired three production databases and several other data siloes complied on individual’s computers. As more spokes are deployed, they will continue to retire more than a dozen old data sources and refresh the demographics hub with new information.

“Now that we’re consolidating and updating data in one location, we know that the information that staff are using is the most accurate and up-to-date,” says Wood. “That’s because employees are updating demographic data in TIMS, instead of entering the same information in different places in different ways. The end result is that our employees have more confidence in the demographic data they use to base their service delivery to Tribal members. And most importantly, the members themselves are more confident that we are getting it right.”

Increases Staff ProductivityAs the IT staff adds more spokes, and more and more Tribal Council employees work in TIMS, duplicate data entry will be

eliminated, which is certain to raise productivity across the organization. Having one version of the latest demographic data available to multiple departments also significantly reduces the amount of emailing and phoning required among employees to verify information before going ahead with a task.

“Our enrollment process, which used to take seven steps requiring the handling and routing of paper documents—including an enrollment application, birth certificate, biological children form, and a copy of a member’s Social Security card—is now accomplished digitally in 30 percent of the time,” says Wood. “And with payment transactions, we have gotten to the point where we no longer mail checks: payments go out as an electronic file transfer. Now that we are scanning all documents into TIMS, we are getting rid of filing cabinets. Today, people can find what they want in a couple of clicks, instead of looking for pieces of paper.” Results in Better Member ServicesFor The Mohegan Tribe, improved employee productivity is an important benefit, but it’s the resulting improvement in Tribal member service that has the most value. Now that people are not spending time entering data over and over again, or filing paper, or looking for information, they have more time to attend to Tribal members’ needs.

“We have staff in the education department who can actually spend time working with the students, advising them on what classes they can take, instead of trying to figure out the finances of what they’re doing, because all of that is being taken care of electronically,” says Scharnagle. “And that’s

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“Now that we’re consolidating and updating data in one location, we know that the information that staff are using today is the most accurate and up-to-date.”

George Wood, Project Manager, The Mohegan Tribe

our goal: not to reduce and eliminate positions, but to allow staff to be more productive in providing services.”

Encourages Process Improvement With demographic data available to everyone through TIMS, Wood believes that The Mohegan Tribe is undergoing a paradigm shift in how it does business. That’s because different departments have the same access to the same information and, in some cases, are now seeing information they never saw before. “We’ve got the finance department sharing financial information with education, and education sharing student information with finance,” says Wood. “People used to send information around using email, or paper documents might be passed between departments, but now people see the value of digital information sharing and are beginning to streamline their processes to take advantage of it.”

When the IT department releases a new spoke, employees re-evaluate how they worked before and begin to modify their old processes to work with TIMS. In fact, a new dialogue between employees and the IT staff has sprung up, with everyone continually enhancing the solution.

“We worked with education to refine a few things we had done and improve their processes,” says Wood. “They thought of ways of utilizing TIMS that weren’t available at the initial rollout, but now that we’ve added more spokes to the solution, we can accommodate their requests. Continual process improvement is the long-term value of a flexible solution built on flexible technologies.”

Improves Business Intelligence Though TIMS includes numerous reports that users can access with a single click and export into Excel, the IT staff is adding reports to the solution for Tribal government management personnel that provide additional insight into members’ status and employees’ service delivery. Instead of individual departments trying to get information out of their local data stores, today, everyone request additional reports from the IT department.

“Now that the education model is complete, we have built another 15 or 18 reports to comply with requests from the Chief Operating Officer, Tribal Council, and the Board of Education,” says Scharnagle. “We are using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services to quickly supply them with information they never had before.”

Improves Standing for IT DepartmentIn the two years since work began on TIMS, the IT department has been gratified to see the adoption and endorsement of this long-awaited project. The solution delivered immediate results and made a difference to the everyday work of employees, who are now providing more accurate, efficient services to Tribal members.

For the IT staff, the satisfaction comes in being able to quickly satisfy business requirements. “TIMS is flexible and easy to work with. We can make changes to accommodate departments’ wish lists, and have them up and running in no time,” says Wood. “We had the burial committee spoke completed in a couple of weeks.”

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“We got to this point through a combination of hard work and a great relationship with a Microsoft partner that helped us leverage our Microsoft technologies to deliver real-world value.”

Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information Officer, The Mohegan Tribe

“The departments had obvious trepidation when we started out, for the third time, but now they are seeing the productivity gains, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, when is it my turn to be a spoke?’” says Scharnagle. “We got to this point through a combination of hard work and a great relationship with a Microsoft partner that helped us leverage our Microsoft technologies to deliver real-world value. With TIMS, we demonstrate every day how IT can make a significant contribution to the services provided by The Mohegan Tribe.”

Microsoft GovernmentMicrosoft applications, solutions, and services help to empower public servants and government employees to share critical information and serve their constituents more efficiently.

For more information about Microsoft Government please go to:

www.microsoft.com/industry/government

www.microsoft.com/industry/government/f

ederalwww.microsoft.com/industry/government/statewww.microsoft.com/industry/government/local

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Handel Information Technologies products and services, call (877) 742-5554 or visit the website at:www.handelit.com

For more information about The Mohegan Tribe, call (860) 862-6100 or visit the website at:www.mohegan.nsn.us

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office Professional 2007− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

2007 Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5− Microsoft Silverlight 4− Microsoft SQL Server Reporting

Services

Hardware Server− HP Proliant DL380, 2 gigabytes RAM, 1

Zeon 2.67 gigahertz processor Desktop:− HP Compaq Elite 8000, 1 gigabyte

RAM

Partners Handel Information Technologies