Modernizing IS and mapping data within a French central administration

First challenge: identify business concepts via a collaborative tool

As part of the modernization and transformation of Government information systems, the State Administration Department launched an IS transformation process in 2015. In this context, the department responsible for the administration, change, and data governance of information systems, started a data mapping exercise.

The challenges of this project were, firstly, to identify and define business concepts by functional domains and, secondly, to set up a data governance framework to ultimately enable operational staff to manage their data in a centralized and collaborative tool.

The primary objective was to support the businesses in the process of validating business concepts, i.e. data specific to each functional area of ​​administration: training, HR, finance, business areas specific to the administration.

This approach resulted in:

1. The identification and definition of major concepts to establish a common language: for example, what is a "user", an "establishment"?
2. Modeling the concepts of the different domains of business information.
3. Linking these different business concepts to physical tables to improve data consistency and interoperability.

"We chose to back-document the data from existing databases and HOPEX allowed us to centralize the information on a single platform, and distribute it. “

A better understanding of business concepts and their interdependencies

To achieve its objectives, the administration chose the HOPEX data governance solution to model all the concepts of the different areas of business information.

The choice of the HOPEX solution was mainly based on two criteria:

• Relevance of the solution given the need.
• Methodological support for MEGA International teams for the implementation of the project.

The project began in 2018 with the dedicated methodological support of a MEGA expert with the enterprise architects of the data administration unit for the definition of concepts with the business lines.

This initial 3-month support phase was fundamental in facilitating the adoption of the solution by the various stakeholders. It has made it possible to build a collective,  common vocabulary and a solid methodology within the administration. Consequently, the architects were able to complete the project by modeling the various business concepts. The new concepts have thus been modeled at all levels: semantic, logical and physical. On the other hand, for the sake of efficiency, the pre-existing concepts have not been modeled at the logical level.

The second part of the project began in 2019 with data governance. This phase consisted of defining the various functional scopes, responsibilities, rules of governance and associated processes. The objective was to be able to assess the impact of changes in business concepts on the systems.

From modeling to data governance

The various stakeholders have gradually adhered to the approach and have widely adopted the HOPEX platform. Today, nearly 70% of this administration's data is modeled.

All of these elements can be consulted in the concept dictionaries by the various stakeholders.

The benefits of this approach were immediate:

• The modeling made it possible to have an almost exhaustive visibility of the concepts of the different fields of business information and to benefit from a better understanding of the links between the data and their use by the organization. This gives the possibility of carrying out impact studies.
• The implementation of a single platform for all stakeholders has made it possible to decentralize the entry of information on the repository and to share knowledge with the people concerned thanks to common documentation.
• Data governance has made it possible to guarantee compliance with the various regulations and to establish an internal framework to optimize the use of data.