Web Integration Business Case for RoboSuite:

Press releases from every Danish state, local and government agency are available on one, single site – through RoboSuite software.

The Danish National Telecom Agency (DNTA) has been charged with the task to deliver a single, Web-based forum for press releases from all Danish public agencies, numbering well over 500. Initially, the task of gathering the releases seemed overwhelming. But utilizing Kapow’s RoboSuite software, thousands of man-hours have been and will be saved – not only for the agency itself, but for all involved public agencies as well.

A challenging task

The challenge was real enough. Building the newsroom.gov.dk-website was an all-new exercise. Prior to this project, there was no single agency responsible for collecting the news and information from all Danish ministries or departments, agencies, city and municipal counties etc. The process had to be invented, and the initial thoughts were to hire a press agency. But as Søren Mortensen, e government coordinator at DNTA, comments, that solution was not ideal: “Hiring people to receive letters, faxes and mails would lead to a very heavy organisation, based on manual work and without the ability to scale to demand”. Mr. Mortensen estimates that it would have taken between 5 and 10 people initially to make the manual system work. “Since it’s taxpayer money we’re spending, we just couldn’t live with that kind of set up,” Mr. Mortensen concludes.

But a straight forward solution

In the 90’s it was decided that every Danish government body must have a presence on the ‘Net. Today, this strategy has paid off, as it is the cornerstone in the solution offered by Kapow. Offering a range of solutions based on non-intrusive front-end integration, Kapow realized an approach to gather the needed information from each agency’s website. Even though the sites numbers well above 500, Kapow’s proffered solution was cheaper both to implement and to maintain – and it enabled DNTA to handle the entire process internally with just 4 part time employees, saving between 60 and 80%.

Using Kapow’s software, DNTA can provide the latest and “up to date” press releases and information from all Danish public agencies on one single website with minimum ramifications for all parties involved. This is due to the fact that Kapow’s integration software requires no changes or modifications on the systems tapped into in order to work. All that the participating parties had to do in order to get their data sent off was to do what they already did on their existing websites, in short: Nothing. “Everybody that we presented this idea to were very excited because they saw this as a great opportunity to be seen and heard. And without having to do anything, besides publishing information they already published,” Søren Mortensen explains, adding that because participation in the project is voluntary, an easy and fast working solution was essential to get everybody onboard.

Achieving the goals

Using Kapow software DNTA seamlessly and non intrusively collects and integrates hundreds of pages of information every day, saving between 60 and 80% on operation and maintenance. New sites are added within hours, by DNTA themselves, and the site itself now acts as a “feed engine” to numerous important government sites like www.denmark.dk as well. But still with only 4 part time employees running it.