Overview of Siebel Public Sector

This chapter provides an overview of the functionality in Oracle’s Siebel Public Sector. It includes the following topics:

About Siebel Public Sector

Siebel Public Sector is an integrated suite of Web-based applications designed for use by administrators and users who are associated with municipal governments, social services, tax and revenue management, public health, immigration agencies, and investigative agencies.

Customer relationship management (CRM) technology is increasingly relevant in the public sector because citizens who are accustomed to high levels of service and convenience in the private sector demand a comparable level of service in the public sector. Government agencies share a common set of imperatives that require efficient processes to address citizen needs and to deliver the highest return on government and taxpayer investments. These imperatives include:

Improving Citizen Service. In addition to requests for improving the quality and speed of public services, citizens want to interact with government agencies using the channels that best suit their needs. These channels include the Web, the telephone, face-to-face meetings, mail, and fax.
Streamlining Case Management. Government agencies process millions of cases annually and manage the majority of these cases with legacy tools and paper-based processes. The result is a costly, time-consuming process for both citizens and agents.
Increasing Employee Productivity. Many governments face the challenge of providing, with a reduced workforce and diminished resources, additional services to an increasingly demanding public.
Closing Budget Gaps. To alleviate budget pressures, governments try to reduce costs by eliminating ineffective programs and try to generate additional revenue by developing more efficient methods to collect fees and taxes.
Improving National Security. National security is of paramount importance, and government agencies try to encourage effective interagency information sharing and public notification.

The following table describes how Siebel Public Sector provides solutions for key business issues and challenges.

Business Issue	Siebel Public Sector Solutions
Citizen Response	Siebel Public Sector equips agents at government call centers with information that they can use to respond to citizen and business inquiries and to efficiently open and route work orders to appropriate departments. Oracle Business Intelligence can also help provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of government operations.
Benefits Case Management for Social Services	Siebel Public Sector provides social service agencies with an integrated case management application that they can use throughout the life cycle of each case. By consolidating citizen information from case initiation to close, and by enabling a workflow-driven case processing, Siebel Public Sector allows agencies to provide timely service and rapid case resolution. Increased employee productivity and more consistent and accurate case outcomes reduce paperwork time, lower the case appeal rate, and reduce case fraud.
Defense Personnel and Logistics Services	Using Siebel Public Sector, military organizations can provide soldier-centric services, bolstering efforts to recruit, retain, and reward those serving in the armed forces while reducing taxpayer costs. Militaries can manage logistics and field service operations more efficiently.
Single View of Taxpayer	Siebel Public Sector helps tax agencies better integrate disparate taxpayer applications to provide a consolidated, single view of a taxpayer, the taxpayer’s past history, and outstanding balances that the taxpayer owes. Taxpayer case management and audits are improved and streamlined.
Revenue Management	Siebel Public Sector assists agencies in growing and maintaining the customer base using targeted outreach campaigns, providing streamlined licensing processes, and providing improved customer service that is supported by the same suite of applications. Government agencies can focus on revenue generation while reducing customer service expenses.
Immigration Services	Immigration and citizenship agencies face an increasing flow of people and goods across borders and an increasing number of citizenship applications. With Siebel Public Sector, agencies can not only maintain better records of visitors and their stays as well as automatically populate application forms with Siebel data, but also share visitor information securely with collaborating agencies. Citizenship agencies can better manage application, test, and hearing procedures while improving global case management capabilities.

This guide assumes that you already installed Siebel Public Sector. To install Siebel Public Sector, access the guides on the Siebel Bookshelf that are relevant to your agency’s implementation. For more information, see Developing and Deploying Siebel Business Applications.

Note: The Siebel Bookshelf is available on Oracle Technology Network (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/documentation/index.html) and Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. It might also be installed locally on your intranet or on a network location.

Key Features of Siebel Public Sector

Using Siebel Public Sector, government and municipal agencies can manage:

Case information from initial referral through case investigation and benefits delivery.
Self-service processes for eligibility assessment and single-application filing for multiple programs.
Appeals for benefits cases.
Service plans that track service goals and related activities for cases.
Automatic assignment of benefits to cases using Oracle Intelligent Advisor.
The Oracle Intelligent Advisor bookshelf is available on Oracle Technology Network.
Payment processing for benefits using Oracle Application Integration Architecture.
Effective dating to track data changes that affect benefits cases.
State models to implement controls for benefit data.
Communications between agencies and citizens, agencies and agencies, as well as agencies and service providers.
Case assignment to agents. Agent skills and availability can determine case assignment.
Data integration from multiple channels and back-office applications, giving agents a comprehensive view of the citizen.
Team collaboration and information sharing among agents, agencies, and partner agencies working on a case.
Analytical reports for cases.
Case, lead, and incident approval routing using predefined templates.
Case, lead, evidence, and attachment serialization, performed hierarchically using predefined rules.
Work time assignment to cases and incidents.
Items of evidence, which agencies can initially log as assets, then convert to evidence, and associate with multiple cases.
Leads, including clues or activities.
Incident tracking and escalation.
Immigration and visitor stays.

Reports and Analytics for Siebel Public Sector

You can run preconfigured reports from various screens in Siebel Public Sector. While you are in a view, click Reports in the toolbar to see the Run Report pane in which you can select the reports for the data in that view. For more information about running preconfigured reports, see Siebel Reports Guide.

In addition to the preconfigured reports, you can purchase an Oracle Business Intelligence module that is specific to Siebel Public Sector to provide enhanced analyses for various business processes. For more information about reports, see Oracle Business Intelligence Answers, Delivers, and Interactive Dashboards User Guide on Oracle Technology Network.

Accessibility and Siebel Public Sector

Siebel Public Sector software includes accessibility features that allow the use of assistive technology hardware and software with Siebel Business Applications. These accessibility features help disabled users to use the application. For more information about accessibility features, see Accessibility Guide for Siebel Business Applications.

Portals for Siebel Public Sector

Users logging in to a Web site for Siebel Public Sector find a portal that offers self-service functionality. For information about setting up a self-service Web site and about the functionality available on a self-service Web site, see Siebel Self Service Administration Guide if you use Siebel Public Sector Self Service.

Siebel Public Sector Self Service includes all of the functionality for Siebel Self Service and functionality to manage applications and cases on a self-service Web site.

Assignment Manager and Siebel Public Sector

By default, cases are assigned to the user who creates the case. You can manually assign cases to multiple agents. You can also use Oracle’s Siebel Assignment Manager to automatically assign cases, case activities, and submitted applications to agents. Additionally, you can automatically assign cases to organizations and case activities to case managers. To determine these assignments, you can set up assignment rules and use criteria, such as the program type, language proficiency, geographic location, agent experience, specific agent skills, and agent availability. For more information about how to implement this functionality and how to define assignment rules, see Siebel Assignment Manager Administration Guide.

Some of the predefined assignment objects and underlying criteria are modified to support Siebel Public Sector business processes. Predefined assignment objects that are specific to Siebel Public Sector include:

Cases
Suspects
Groups
Incidents
Diseases
Applications