Supernova Award Category
The Problem
As part of the state’s efforts to build on its foundation of strong financial and performance management, Governor Pence tasked his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT) to develop a comprehensive enterprise-wide data-driven management system
Traditionally, the state would spread funding evenly across initiatives, targeting the issues that officials “suspected” were the root causes of the problem. However, despite ongoing efforts, the state’s infant mortality rate is higher than the national average (7.7 deaths per 1,000 births), and this has been the case for several decades.
The State of Indiana has 92 agencies using a collective 1.5 petabyte of data, but many of the agencies operated in silos and could not share data easily. The use of more than 800 individual systems made collaboration and production of data-driven insight daunting. If someone needed data from another agency, he or she had to make a special request -- a slow and cumbersome process. Data was viewed as something to manage rather than as a valuable resource for making better decisions, and it was often stale and out-of-date.
The Solution
Infant mortality is a very complex problem, with many different contributing factors, most of them constantly evolving. To effectively analyze each area and identify root causes, the state needed the ability to more easily access data and do so at a more granular level. The state partnered with KSM Consulting and SAP to examine infant mortality in new ways. They identified 15 different critical data sets, including unstructured data, totaling 9 billion rows. Sophisticated algorithms now identify at-risk subpopulations using SAP HANA to store and process the data, and SAP Predictive Analysis and SAP Lumira to provide powerful visualization and analytics capabilities.
With the infant mortality rate project, the State has begun developing what will become an enterprise-wide platform for future big data projects.Also, the state is currently migrating KPIs on agency performance to SAP HANA so it can determine in real time how agencies are performing on all measures.
The results
A report was published in January of 2015 showing that while high-risk groups accounted for only 1.6 percent of all births they also accounted for nearly 50 percent of infant deaths. With this new insight, the state developed legislation and approved $13 million in funding for targeted programs to address this issue -- all in less than eight months.
At the same time, Indiana’s First Lady Karen Pence announced a public awareness campaign, Labor of Love – Helping Indiana Reduce Infant Death. The campaign encourages women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant to learn about proper prenatal care and ways to ensure a healthy first year of life for infants. The results from the study were used to develop messaging and to inform where to focus promotion activities for the campaign.
The state can now get more value out of its data and use this data to make more informed data-driven decisions. Women identified as high risk can be connected to programs targeted to their situation for better prenatal care—which can result in saved lives.
Beyond the issue of infant mortality, state leaders now want to use a data-driven approach to tackle other problems – including domestic violence and recidivism. State agencies look forward to collaborating on finding solutions to the most complex and dynamic challenges facing Indiana’s citizens.
Metrics
Query speed 1000 times faster than traditional databases: simple query in SQL at 47 seconds versus SAP HANA at 0.045 seconds and complex query in SQL at 643 seconds versus SAP HANA at 0.125 seconds.
Stores huge volumes more efficiently at 90+% compression, using 350 GB of data for infant mortality project and others.
Integrated 9 billion rows of data and the final table contains more than 4 billion rows of data for the infant mortality study alone.
Approved $13 million in funding for targeted programs to address infant mortality in less than 8 months.
Provides transparency and insight into activities and performance of government agencies. The state plans to make more of its KPI data public, allowing citizens to see how tax dollars are being spent and how government programs are performing.
The Technology
With the help of SAP & KSM Consulting, the Management and Performance Hub (MPH) project was launched using the SAP HANA platform, SAP Predictive Analytics & SAP Lumira software with the intention of creating citizen-centric IT architecture, keeping Indiana residents at the core of all interactions. To succeed in this initiative, analysts look at data enterprise-wide in real-time and track progress against key performance indicators - all with citizen involvement & transparency
Disruptive Factor
The project, dubbed the Management and Performance Hub (MPH), empowers state leaders & citizens to track the state’s progress against KPIs & initiate targeted policy solutions - effectively creating a “citizen-centric” IT architecture that places government’s constituents at the center of all interactions. The project is an opportunity to improve service, drive efficiency & use advanced data analytics to address some of the state’s most complex governing challenges. The solution provides actionable insights for policymakers who now are:- Able to target legislation and funding to the most vulnerable groups in order to address the infant mortality rate issue in less than eight months—very fast compared to most government programs.- Changing the way the State of Indiana solves complex problems with data-driven analysis for targeted solutions that increase effectiveness.- Able to easily provide Indiana citizens with information and insight on how the government is performing & how investments and programs are working.- Identifying women at risk and connect them with the resources they need.Rather than put information out there for women to find, agencies will do proactive outreach.- Building algorithms in the data set that “learn” as new data is added & as risk factors change, creating a tool for the health department and other departments to use in tackling the infant mortality rate problem long term.
Shining Moment
“SAP solutions have helped us change the culture of state government, allowing us to make wiser choices about how we spend and invest our money,” Chris Atkins, former OMB Director and CFO, State of Indiana. The project could not be possible without SAP HANA & what is really exciting is that it has opened the door to new studies. Agencies are coming to us with issues like recidivism, domestic violence, & job creation & want to be part of the MPH environment.