The New Zealand Customs Service (Customs) is the government agency with the responsibility of protecting the New Zealand community from potential risks arising from international trade and travel, while facilitating the legitimate movement of people, craft and goods across the border.
Customs has over 1,000 staff in New Zealand, covering the main air and sea ports.
Customs has been using i2 Analyst's Notebook since 1988 for standalone charting purposes and approximately 80 Analysts are now using version 6 of the software. However, Customs have a specific requirement to gain access to and chart information of goods and passenger entry and exit. This information is available from its corporate data warehouse. All information about goods and passenger movements in and out of New Zealand is stored in this data warehouse. Access to view information linked to entities represented in the Customs intelligence database was required to enhance the overall intelligence picture.
"The flexibility of i2 iBridge will allow us to work with our own data sets easily and very likely those of external agencies, if required. The extra functionality aside, the ability to continue providing our analysts with an online query against our main database and the ability to chart relevant intelligence automatically, was exactly what the department was looking for with i2 iBridge".
- John Priest, Senior Developer and Data, Architect for New Zealand Customs
Situation
New Zealand Customs needed to align reporting aims with the strategic and tactical aims of the department. They were unable to connect directly to the transaction data warehouse and were reluctant to take this route due to performance issues.
Customs approached Superstructure, a dedicated i2 partner, to discuss the best solution for their problem. Superstructure recommended the i2 iBridge Developer to connect with their data warehouse. Customs looked at various competitive products a number of times over the years but i2's Analyst's Notebook was always comfortably ahead. Taking into account Customs' long history and investment in i2 Analyst's notebook, along with a number of other considerations, the decision was made to go ahead with the implementation of i2 iBridge.
The existing data warehouse was built on SQL Server 2000 and contains 500 GB of data, growing at approximately 25 GB per month. There are currently over 250 tables, ranging from small dimension tables (average 200 rows) to fact tables (largest 80 million plus rows). Eight weeks were spent analysing data structures and relationships, then i2 iBridge structure maps were created on sample data and applied to the main data. Once this exercise was completed, it was obvious that an i2 iBridge configuration would be the most beneficial option for New Zealand Customs.
Solution
i2 iBridge was used to create an i2 Analyst Notebook based "front end" into the data warehouse so the analysts could quickly determine key relationships through charting without needing an understanding of the complexities of data structure.
i2 iBridge enabled the analysts to look across all of the data in the warehouse and fulfil many of the required functions. This included the ability to bring a variety of disparate data (e.g., passenger and goods movements) into one place and facilitated the easy expansion of any related data attributes. From this, they were able to recognise and analyse relationships within this data. The simplicity of the software enabled Customs' in-house IT department to continue with customisation requirements on an on-going basis.
John Priest, Senior Developer and Data Architect for New Zealand Customs said "The flexibility of i2 iBridge will allow us to work with our own data sets easily and very likely those of external agencies, if required." He went on to say "The extra functionality aside, the ability to continue providing our analysts with an online query against our main database and the ability to chart relevant intelligence automatically, was exactly what the department was looking for with i2 iBridge".
i2 iBridge has enabled the analysts to quickly retrieve information from the data warehouse and seamlessly feed this information through to i2 Analyst's Notebook, ensuring that strategic and tactical intelligence was made available to analysts in an environment in which they were already familiar. This is important as minimal training and easy adaptation to the collecting of information was essential for the smooth continuation of current investigations and there was no impact on crucial timeframes for completing analysis.
Outcome
i2 iBridge was implemented successfully despite very complex and large data sets. This was done within a critically short timeframe. The solution also enabled New Zealand Customs to leverage the long institutional history and investment with i2's Analyst's Notebook. They now plan to roll out the solution to all 80 analysts over the coming weeks. The Customs Performance Development Unit (PDU) are currently updating training manuals to reflect new intelligence requirements and expansion capabilities.
"Not surprisingly, we expect to take on more analysts in the future. The use of i2 iBridge will assist our analysts to chart more often, with more consistency and with increasing sophistication. We have purchased the i2 iBridge Developer for ongoing customisation requirements and we believe that this will save considerable time as future needs grow".
