Transforming Ontario’s Safe Drinking Water Program to protect Ontario citizens

Client:	Ontario Ministry of the Environment
Projects:	The development of a Drinking Water Business Architecture that set out the roadmap to transforming MOE’s drinking water program and its underlying business processes and information systems.
Result:	Enabling the MOE to move forward on the integration of drinking water information and information systems that support the drinking water program.

In response to Walkerton
In response to the Walkerton Commission, the Ontario government has enacted the Safe Drinking Water Act, 2002 and its requisite regulations. To meet the requirements of the SDWA, MOE re-engineered its business processes for managing and monitoring provincial drinking water.

MOE has 20+ information systems that manage information about drinking water quantity and quality including:

• Lab samples
  
• Water facilities
  
• Licensed water well technicians
  
• Licensed laboratories
  
• Water approvals
  
• Occurrences (spills, complaints, etc)
  
• Groundwater quantity and quality
  
• Provincial water resources.
  

Integrating business processes and information systems into one solution
MOE needed to integrate the business processes and information systems into a comprehensive solution that supported the delivery of safe drinking water in Ontario. Chartwell was contracted to develop the Drinking Water Business Architecture, Implementation Plan and Business Case that prepared MOE for further investments towards an integrated information management system supporting the drinking water program.

Using proven processes and tools to deliver on time, on scope, and on budget
Chartwell took a six-step approach to this project with each project step resulting in a major client deliverable, all delivered on time, on scope, and on budget.

• Step 1 – Work Plan: Chartwell developed a detailed work plan that included a list of project contacts, finalized project statement of work, detailed schedule and resource allocation, and a finalized table of contents for project deliverables.
  
  
• Step 2 – Systems Assessment: Chartwell’s system assessment included reviews of application systems, data stores and technology infrastructure components from two perspectives:
  
  • A business perspective, focused on functionality, alignment with business process requirements and ease of use,
    
  • A technical perspective which reviewed the stability, ease of maintenance and ability to adapt to change.
    
    
• Step 3 – Developing the Architectures: The project team developed the target Drinking Water Business Architecture based on the high-level business process requirements, including the creation of 3 detailed architectural options that illustrated the logical applications. The robustness of these architectural options was confirmed through client review to ensure the appropriate scope and functionality were supported by the architectures.
  
  
• Step 4 – Gap Analysis: Chartwell assessed the fit of the current systems defined in Step 2 in relation to the target architecture developed in step 3. From this assessment, the key limitations and issues the Ministry faced as it moved towards its desired information systems environment were identified. This was a necessary input to finalizing the target architecture, developing the implementation plan, and defining benefits of the new system.
  
  
• Step 5 – Standards and Measurements: Chartwell used industry standard methods and tools to develop reliable implementation estimates (e.g., function points and the COCOMO methodology).
  
  
• Step 6 – Business Case: Chartwell used the design, development and implementation costs developed in the Implementation Plan, and built upon them to establish funding required to adequately operate, use, support and maintain the target architecture.
  
  

Overcoming a key challenge
A key challenge encountered in the project was that the re-engineered business processes did not adequately describe the business model of the Drinking Water Program. Chartwell worked with MOE to complete the additional business modeling work and produce a Results-Based Management Framework (RBMF) for program governance and controllership.

The RBMF defined:

• The program logic model
  
• The program-service alignment model
  
• The service integrated accountability models to enable appropriate service management
  
• The program governance processes that were designed into the business model.
  
  

Testimonial

Linda Jarvis
Manager, Information Management and Business Solutions
Drinking Water Program Management Branch
Ministry of the Environment

“The strength of Chartwell is their expertise in business architecture and credibility in developing program/services/outcomes, business cases and implementation plans. Chartwell also keeps the client’s objectives front and center bringing issues/clarifications to the forefront early on for resolution.”