This Canadian province has made a commitment to ensure that all its citizens, regardless of location, can easily access their branches of government.

With more than 50 percent of its population living in rural areas, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia recognized the importance of developing electronic service delivery to ensure that all its citizens can easily access their branches of government, regardless of their location. E-government could also streamline the government IT infrastructure as well as operations, helping manage the tax burden.

Numerous public entities are responsible for running Nova Scotia's cities and towns, schools, and hospitals as well as providing other essential services for the 940,000 residents. And, the more residents interacting with government branches electronically, the shorter the wait time for those who still must rely on governmental call centers.

Acting as an application service provider (ASP) to the province's ministries and public sector entities, the Corporate Information Systems division in the Nova Scotia Department of Finance has been relying on SAP ERP software—using virtually all modules—for several years.

To improve citizen services as well as increase effectiveness and efficiency in financial management, materials management (procurement, inventory, and plant maintenance), human resources management, and Internet service delivery (portals), the province of Nova Scotia has standardized on one enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, running on a Sun platform.

"Sun best met our criteria regarding price/performance, technological robustness, and ability to provide a complete solution. By selecting a long-term vendor, we're saving the province at least 25 percent on ongoing hardware costs," says Susan Sparks, director of corporate information systems, Department of Finance, Province of Nova Scotia.

"Because Sun's technology is easily transferable from server to server, we have a strong disaster recovery advantage. We also don't fear that we've bought equipment that might become outdated in a few years. The competition doesn't necessarily offer such benefits."

The province represents the first production SAP deployment on a Sun Fire 15K server in Canada. The provincial government currently has about 2,000 SAP users. The SAP user base is expected to grow to 10,000 during the next two to three years, as the solution is rolled out to municipalities, school boards, and regional housing and health authorities, as well as to other entities reporting to the province.

All told, the overall employee self-service (ESS) user base potential is even greater—86,000 employees. Employees from various agencies require access to various SAP applications, ranging from typical back-office functions such as financials and human resources to newer SAP modules such as customer relationship management (CRM), electronic procurement, business intelligence, and enterprise portal.

For example, the provincial government itself has an interest in expanding to CRM and Electronic Business Professional (EBPro), the school boards have implemented Business Warehouse (BW), and the health authorities will require basic back-office functions. Accessing the solution from desktops through various wide-area networks across Nova Scotia, employees can prepare monthly budget reports, manage their vendor relationships, and handle other accounting requirements.

In the near future, the province anticipates, its agencies will begin deploying Web-based front ends to SAP, making access to critical data even more convenient. Considering the enterprise-wide importance of the SAP systems within the province, a secure server infrastructure that employees can depend upon 24x7 is critical.