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PUBLIC SECTOR: NEWS ■
Courts Service manages workforce via the web
“The solution incorporates dynam-
By John Kennedy
ically all client and industry-specific
work policies and business rules,
while addressing country and EU-
HUMAN resources for courts the specific legislative compliance obliga-
length and breadth of Ireland are to tions and associated best practice,”
be managed via a web-based work- explained Softworks sales director,
force management system. Noel Dooley.
Irish company Softworks has Wicklow-headquartered Softworks
deployed a range of time, attendance, has offices in the UK and North
flexi-time, leave approval and America and has been delivering
absence management applications to workforce management technologies
help the nationwide network of to enterprise and government clients
courts meet the goals which were set Olive Caulfield, Courts Service and Noel for over 20 years.
out in the Courts Service Strategic Dooley, Softworks Softworks has provided services to
Management Plan, published in a number of government clients in
2006. operational requirements. Ireland, including the Department of
The plan identified a requirement It also required a system to help Agriculture, the Department of Arts,
for the continued development of keep the Courts Service compliant Sport and Tourism, the Revenue
modern management and executive with all relevant legislative require- Commissioners, the Department of
information systems to help the ments, such as the Working Time Finance and the Department of
service respond to ever-changing Directive. Foreign Affairs.
Local councils boost
network performance
available due to a lack of capacity in two to three days per week. Since
By Gordon Smith
the local exchange and broadband the installation of the Juniper WAN
was not available at several of acceleration solution, this employee
the offices. can now log on to our system from
WAN acceleration devices speed our Belvedere House office and so
SEVERAL local authorities have the transfer of data across a wide this often means less time travel-
installed WAN acceleration systems area network, thereby improving ling unnecessarily.”
as a way of improving network application response times. The According to Brian Lynch, sales
performance and making the best devices also maximise network director with the Juniper supplier
use of their available bandwidth. performance and allow administra- Eurokom, many more public sector
Monaghan County Council has tors to control and prioritise key bodies have similar performance
implemented the Juniper WAN applications. issues in providing distributed IT
acceleration appliance as it has a Niall McCormack, IT network services to their remote offices. “We
large number of sub-offices country- administrator with Westmeath are working with a number of other
wide and these are typically linked County Council, commented: “Since organisations faced with similar
to headquarters in Monaghan town the installation of the Juniper WAN problems and we expect that the
via 128k and 256k leased lines. DSL acceleration appliance, many of Juniper WAN acceleration solution
connections were not available and the ways in which we carry out will become increasingly attractive.
upgrading the existing lines was too our business have been positively “With many enterprises now
expensive. affected. In one such instance, an implementing mission-critical busi-
Westmeath County Council also employee who needed to log onto ness applications, as well as voice,
selected the Juniper solution from our Agresso Financial System could video and terminal services over
EuroKom to enable staff to use the not get access from our Belvedere wide area networks, maximising
council’s centrally managed Agresso office. He had to travel to our head- WAN investments and improving
financial system. Additional band- quarters in Mullingar – where a application response times is essen-
width on the existing lines was not 128k dedicated leased line is used – tial,” Lynch said.
September 2008 Knowledge Ireland 41
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