Verastream Helps Minnesota DVS Improve Service and Cut Costs
Solution deployed in only four weeks

The clients of Minnesota Driver and Vehicle Services include car owners, drivers, and dealers; driver-license and law-enforcement agencies; and state, county, and city government units. DVS wanted to provide self-support to these constituents and improve efficiencies for its internal staff of 800.

Time for a Tune-up

In order to accommodate business partners, DVS had provided a web interface for license-plate tab renewal. That application depended on a strict schedule of synchronization with the mainframe, in the form of weekly downloads and nightly uploads. “Kick outs” for incorrect data had to be manually handled the following day. It was an inefficient, cumbersome process.
Routine transactions were also taking too long. For example, it could take as long as 28 days to process a license, due to the need for coordination between back-end systems. And internal staff would sometimes wait as long as a month for reports, because they had to be generated by COBOL programmers.

These issues, combined with a DVS commitment to increase data accuracy and decrease paper usage, called for an up-to-date solution. “State government is often viewed as inflexible or old-fashioned,” said Judith Franklin, manager of enterprise technology support for DVS in Saint Paul. “Based on past experience with Attachmate, I knew that we could work together to change that perception.”

Mapping Out a Strategy for Success

The back-end systems at DVS represent large amounts of data and a 25-year accumulation of business logic. After evaluating the business drivers and technology considerations, Franklin said, DVS made a fundamental development decision: The new system would need to leverage the valuable business logic of the legacy system, without disrupting day-to-day operations.
At any given moment, thousands of citizens and business partners can be using the services of DVS. Therefore, the agency needed the ability to provide secure connections in a transaction-intensive environment. But the biggest challenge was making access simple. Users needed an easy way to view integrated, real-time information, without searching through multiple legacy green screens.

That’s why DVS chose Verastream Host Integrator, a solution that encapsulates mainframe data and logic via the screen interface. It works by exposing business processes as web services, XML, Java, or .NET components that can be mixed, matched, and reused to build composite applications with a new look and feel. Using this advanced technology, DVS developers quickly made the existing mainframe application code available for the creation of their new web interfaces.

A ‘High-Mileage’ Integration Tool

With Verastream Host Integrator, IT developers need no knowledge of the web, and web developers need no knowledge of the mainframe. Verastream’s table-layer feature enables the DVS IT developer to create a database abstraction of the mainframe application. This lets the DVS web programmer work in his preferred development environment, using a database interface to retrieve and update information in the legacy application.

Because Verastream lets you select discrete combinations of mainframe functionality, DVS can closely map new applications to the needs of their users. This not only enhances the user experience, but also ensures that users have access only to appropriate information and functions on DVS systems. Now, Minnesota drivers can conduct secure transactions wherever they can find Internet access.

Customer response has been consistently positive. “Your site is unbelievably easy to use,” one driver recently told Franklin. Even inexperienced users can verify their license status, change their address, get tax information, and report vehicle sales online—24x7—regardless of DVS business hours.

That old business-partner interface has been replaced by a web application that interacts directly with DVS back-end systems. For the first time, business partners can make real-time updates on the mainframe while a driver is present at their business location. For example, staff in registrar’s offices can process tab renewals on the spot, without waiting for mail-delivery or data-entry delays.

The solution has also given the DVS contact center increased capacity for handling phone inquiries, said Franklin. She explained that drivers are using the web site to get routine questions answered; they call in on the phone only for more complicated issues. DVS business staff likes the solution too. Rather than wait a month for COBOL-generated reports, they can get their information right away, right from the web. And they’ve shaved 21 days from their former license-processing time; it’s now down to seven days.

The Road Ahead

The DVS initiative is expected to have ongoing value and far-reaching results, thanks to the reusability of the Verastream-generated services. The DVS enterprise support staff has been extending their legacy mainframe assets to a broad audience by service-enabling functions originally intended for a specific set of users. The new applications employ all the same mainframe data and logic; it’s just been rearranged to accomplish something different.

Although actual cost savings are difficult to assess in an environment as dynamic as DVS’s, they estimate immediate savings of $260,000 in programming and legacy storage costs for the first module alone. Here’s the breakdown:

• Consultant and staff time for reconstructing mainframe business logic – $125,000
• Programming time for coding the logic – $50,000 to $100,000
• Redundant storage of legacy mainframe information – $35,000

Furthermore, older integration technologies would have required a six-month implementation time, Franklin speculated. Using Verastream, the first application took only a month to deploy and required no changes to their mainframe code.

Driven to Excellence

The innovations made by DVS with Verastream have received recognition from some unintended sources, too. The solution, which DVS named Esupport Web, has been honored with a Digital Government Award, based on improved service to constituents and decreased paper usage. But Franklin, who said she fully expects Esupport Web to become a model for other state agencies, concluded, “the citizens are the real winners.”

IT Environment at DVS

With Verastream Host Integrator, organizations can implement a three-tier solution for web enablement. The Minnesota DVS environment includes the following:

Data Tier

• IBM S/390, CICS
• Oracle, Cincom/SUPRA databases
• SQL Server
• Verastream Host Integrator

Logic Tier

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• VB Script

Presentation Tier

• Visual Interdev, Java Script
• Microsoft IIS running Active Server Pages

See It In Action

Go to http://www.mndriveinfo.org/ to see how Verastream Host Integrator makes it possible for self-service functions to interface with DVS back-end systems.