DUO is an implementation organisation of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science that is responsible for the funding of educational institutes and the development and management of information products. It is also responsible for providing advice on implementation and maintainability in every phase of the policy process and for providing advice in the context of Integrated Supervision.

DUO determines in detail how much money every school will receive. In primary education alone, this concerns an amount of more than 20 billion euros a year, which must be distributed among more than 9,000 institutions. The government is obliged to justify its decisions in this process, and to communicate these in a transparent manner.

 

Challenge
The conclusion of the decision process and corresponding justification used to take place in a large collection of systems. Many parts of the process were also established in hard-coded software, which meant that every change in legislation or regulations required a lot of ICT work. This fragmentation meant, for example, that decisions for one customer would arrive on the same day in multiple envelopes, yet with different layouts. Aquima was engaged to create a clear and convenient way of handling documents and document flows and succeeded in providing the flexibility and speed necessary to respond to new requirements in a landscape of changeable legislation and regulations.

 

A high-performance document processing and generation system was realised which generates documents in batches, online, and is linked to systems including the archiving system.

 

Results achieved

• Document adaptations can be performed easily using Aquima, without the need for programming.
• Consistency in house style, logic, archiving and recording information.
• Clear for the customer because she/he no longer receives a decision from a different system every day, but a monthly overview. This can also be consulted on the extranet, which is used by Aquima to exchange information and archive files in PDF format.
• Cheaper and faster document production through the central registration of knowledge and data, and the reuse of texts and structure.