The Mohegan Tribe Is a Federally Recognized, Sovereign Indian Nation Located in Connecticut

Microsoft Government Customer Solution Case Study

Tribal Government Improves Member Services with Data Management Solution

Overview “TIMS built on SQL Server … has ushered in a new era of Country or Region: United States easy access to accurate data that’s driving employee Industry: Government—State and local efficiency so we can provide better member services at The Customer Profile The Mohegan Tribe is a sovereign Indian Mohegan Tribe.” nation in the upper Thames River Valley Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information Officer, The Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut with 1,800 members. The Mohegan Tribal government has jurisdiction over the Tribe’s Business Situation lands and members. The government’s departments stored The Mohegan Tribe needed an information management solution to membership data separately, leading to inconsistent data and help departments coordinate efforts and reporting. It needed to replace these data silos with a Tribal provide more efficient member services. member database to use for accurate member communications Solution and services. The Tribe accomplished this with a solution from The Tribe customized a solution from Handel Technologies that’s built using Handel Technologies, a Microsoft Partner with Gold Microsoft software. It was flexible enough competencies, built on flexible, extensible Microsoft to adapt to internal processes and IT. technologies that interoperate with the Tribal government’s IT Benefits environment. After 10 years of looking for a solution, in five Improves data accuracy Increases staff productivity months, the IT staff brought consistency to the data employed Results in better member services by staff. Now, employees are providing better services— Encourages process improvement Improves standing for IT department enrolling Tribal members is 30 percent faster—and management has improved data access for insight into operations.

Situation spreadsheets, and Microsoft Access The Mohegan Tribe is a federally databases on employees’ hard disk drives recognized, sovereign Indian nation located to Lotus Notes data stores and small in Connecticut. The Tribe operates one of instances of Microsoft SQL Server. Working the largest resort casinos in the United with these “homegrown” data silos, each States, the Mohegan Sun Casino in department had different ways of Uncasville, Connecticut. generating reports, with a varying degree of consistency. The Mohegan Tribe is governed by its Constitution, which was affirmed in April Without a central data store, however, it 1996. A nine-member Tribal Council was impossible for the IT department to handles overall executive and legislative implement an enterprise-level reporting responsibilities for the Tribe, and a seven- solution. Also, it was impossible for member Council of Elders is responsible for employees to know where to find the most its judicial oversight and cultural integrity. up-to-date version of demographic data to Approximately 400 employees work in the use when communicating with the Tribal government, providing finance, members at large. The end result was that health, legal, police, fire, security, and some members didn’t receive information education services for Tribal members. from the Tribal government, while others received duplicate communications. The IT department for the Tribal government is responsible for building and “Consolidating membership data in a single managing a flexible, cost-effective IT place is a challenge for many government infrastructure and for deploying the right organizations with a distributed system,” technology tools to help employees says George Wood, Project Manager at The provide fast, efficient services to Tribal Mohegan Tribe. “Each of our departments members. Enrollment in The Mohegan —social services, health, finance, family Tribe is required to be eligible for these services, education—used its own iteration services and benefits. To determine of membership data to provide services eligibility for services, Tribal government and communicate with Tribal members. employees depend on accurate That added up to a lot of duplicate data demographic data for all Tribal members. entry and opened up the possibility of manual error. I have a saying, ’If you have Data Silos two places where you have to input the Until recently, Tribal membership and data, you have two opportunities to make demographic data—including names, mistakes.’” family relationships, and household addresses—resided in multiple computers Productivity and Service Issues throughout the government’s 12 For staff members, duplicate data entry departments, with each department’s took time away from serving Tribal employees tracking and managing the members. Inefficient paper-based information in their own way. These data workflows designed to double-check silos ranged in format from Microsoft Excel information also diverted employees from

27 more important work. For instance, Tribal had a significant issue to solve and an government employees had to route paper important goal—to deploy a tribal among different departments to verify information management system—that had information as they complied with service ramifications for every department and for requests. If an employee needed to verify a every Tribal member,” says Scharnagle. birth or marriage certificate, that person “There was some lingering negativity in the would have to go to the Council of Elders’ Council and the associated departments office and review physical copies there. about the past initiatives, so we had to get Making payments to Tribal members was a it right.” multistep, paper-based process, as well, requiring that each check request be Solution mailed first to the finance department and Fortunately, the consultant hired by The then the payment would be forwarded to Mohegan Tribe knew about Handel the Tribal member or vendor. Information Technologies, a Microsoft Partner with Gold competencies, and its Departmental data silos also opened up the product, RiteTrack for Native American possibility of wrongly allocating benefits Tribes, which is built on Microsoft and services, and it was this issue that technologies. When he suggested that the ultimately drove the IT department to find Mohegan Tribal government work with a tribal information management solution Handel Technologies to deploy RiteTrack, that could ensure all members knew about the IT staff was immediately interested. and received the services to which they were entitled. “We had several non-negotiable criteria for our tribal information management “We started down this road 10 years ago,” solution, all of which were answered by says Charles Scharnagle, Chief Information RiteTrack and Microsoft technologies,” says Officer with The Mohegan Tribe. “We Scharnagle. “It had to be extensible, bought an off-the-shelf product and tried flexible, and interoperable with our existing to build some code around it to meet our Microsoft infrastructure. Just as needs. It proved too inflexible to provide importantly, the solution had to be user- the departments with easy access to tribal friendly and offer engaging interfaces, so demographic data, so we gave up. Then we people would want to use it as part of their tried building the solution ourselves, but daily work.” ran into internal roadblocks. Finally, in 2008, we engaged a consultant to do a RiteTrack runs on the Windows Server 2008 market scan and find a solution for us.” operating system and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database management software. By this time, a lot was riding on the IT Mohegan IT staff can take advantage of department. Like many governments, The SQL Server Reporting Services, a server- Mohegan Tribe faced shrinking budgets based report-generation software system and rising costs, and everyone was under to develop custom reports that tie in with pressure to increase productivity and the RiteTrack software. RiteTrack is a web- improve service, while saving money. “We based solution that’s built with Microsoft

37 Silverlight 4, a cross-browser model allows for the integrity of the implementation of the Microsoft .NET demographic data to be maintained in one Framework for building and delivering rich, location, but available throughout the other interactive web applications. The solution departments as needed. ” also interoperates with Microsoft Excel and Word software. The Mohegan Tribe’s IT staff and Handel consultants began the project by working “The fact that the Handel solution was built with staff members in the Tribal with Microsoft technologies was very Information Department because they important to us,” says Scharnagle. “SQL oversee the enrollment process and have Server is our database standard, and we the most demographic data at their wanted to use SQL Server backups to be disposal. The department employees able to offer business continuity to our helped define TIMS requirements and users. We are also familiar with the .NET design the solution. Even after the staff Framework. Compared to the inflexible members signed off on the requirements, commercial product we tried initially, the they remained part of the team, playing an Handel Technologies solution was a active role in testing the application. “One flexible, open-ended case management of the nice things about the Handel team solution that we saw right away would was they were able to put a working model adapt to meet our needs.” of the solution in front of the staff very quickly, so they could see how the Hub-and-Spoke Model application worked before all of the code In May 2009, Handel Technologies and The was completed,” says Wood. “We brought Mohegan Tribe began customizing in the Council of Elders to oversee the RiteTrack to meet the Tribal government’s design. It was a true team effort.” needs. The customized version, called the Tribal Information Management System As of January 2011, the IT department has (TIMS), follows a hub-and-spoke model, implemented three spokes in addition to with the core demographics data and the demographics hub: education, social member enrollment process forming the services, and burial committee. hub and the different departments forming the spokes. (See Figure 1.) Benefits By choosing a solution based on Microsoft “The consultants from Handel were very technologies, the Mohegan Tribal good about determining our pain points government solved a business issue that and understanding our business needs,” had been simmering for 10 years, in just says Scharnagle. “We agreed that the initial five months. “Having tried a product that focus should be consolidating the Tribal didn’t map to our needs, we had to find a membership data into one location, in the flexible solution, and we got that with TIMS core demographics hub, and automating built on SQL Server,” says Scharnagle. the enrollment process for new members. “TIMS has ushered in a new era of easy From there, we planned on adding spokes access to accurate data that’s driving to the hub based on their priority. The employee efficiency so we can provide

47 better member services at The Mohegan among employees to verify information Tribe.” before going ahead with a task.

Improves Data Accuracy “Our enrollment process, which used to As the IT staffers worked with Handel take seven steps requiring the handling and Technologies to build the demographic routing of paper documents—including an hub, they consolidated data from disparate enrollment application, birth certificate, departments and eliminated redundant biological children form, and a copy of a pockets of information. As of January 2011, member’s Social Security card—is now the IT staffers have retired three production accomplished digitally in 30 percent of the databases and several other data siloes time,” says Wood. “And with payment complied on individual’s computers. As transactions, we have gotten to the point more spokes are deployed, they will where we no longer mail checks: payments continue to retire more than a dozen old go out as an electronic file transfer. Now data sources and refresh the demographics that we are scanning all documents into hub with new information. TIMS, we are getting rid of filing cabinets. Today, people can find what they want in a “Now that we’re consolidating and couple of clicks, instead of looking for updating data in one location, we know pieces of paper.” that the information that staff are using is Results in Better Member Services the most accurate and up-to-date,” says For The Mohegan Tribe, improved Wood. “That’s because employees are employee productivity is an important updating demographic data in TIMS, benefit, but it’s the resulting improvement instead of entering the same information in in Tribal member service that has the most different places in different ways. The end value. Now that people are not spending result is that our employees have more time entering data over and over again, or confidence in the demographic data they filing paper, or looking for information, use to base their service delivery to Tribal they have more time to attend to Tribal members. And most importantly, the members’ needs. members themselves are more confident that we are getting it right.” “We have staff in the education department who can actually spend time working with Increases Staff Productivity the students, advising them on what classes As the IT staff adds more spokes, and more they can take, instead of trying to figure and more Tribal Council employees work in out the finances of what they’re doing, TIMS, duplicate data entry will be because all of that is being taken care of eliminated, which is certain to raise electronically,” says Scharnagle. “And that’s productivity across the organization. our goal: not to reduce and eliminate Having one version of the latest positions, but to allow staff to be more demographic data available to multiple productive in providing services.” departments also significantly reduces the amount of emailing and phoning required Encourages Process Improvement

57 With demographic data available to government management personnel that everyone through TIMS, Wood believes provide additional insight into members’ that The Mohegan Tribe is undergoing a status and employees’ service delivery. paradigm shift in how it does business. Instead of individual departments trying to That’s because different departments have get information out of their local data the same access to the same information stores, today, everyone request additional and, in some cases, are now seeing reports from the IT department. information they never saw before. “We’ve got the finance department sharing “Now that the education model is financial information with education, and complete, we have built another 15 or 18 education sharing student information with reports to comply with requests from the finance,” says Wood. “People used to send Chief Operating Officer, Tribal Council, and information around using email, or paper the Board of Education,” says Scharnagle. documents might be passed between “We are using Microsoft SQL Server departments, but now people see the value Reporting Services to quickly supply them of digital information sharing and are with information they never had before.” beginning to streamline their processes to take advantage of it.” Improves Standing for IT Department In the two years since work began on TIMS, When the IT department releases a new the IT department has been gratified to see spoke, employees re-evaluate how they the adoption and endorsement of this worked before and begin to modify their long-awaited project. The solution old processes to work with TIMS. In fact, a delivered immediate results and made a new dialogue between employees and the difference to the everyday work of IT staff has sprung up, with everyone employees, who are now providing more continually enhancing the solution. accurate, efficient services to Tribal members. “We worked with education to refine a few things we had done and improve their For the IT staff, the satisfaction comes in processes,” says Wood. “They thought of being able to quickly satisfy business ways of utilizing TIMS that weren’t available requirements. “TIMS is flexible and easy to at the initial rollout, but now that we’ve work with. We can make changes to added more spokes to the solution, we can accommodate departments’ wish lists, and accommodate their requests. Continual have them up and running in no time,” says process improvement is the long-term Wood. “We had the burial committee value of a flexible solution built on flexible spoke completed in a couple of weeks.” technologies.” “The departments had obvious trepidation Improves Business Intelligence when we started out, for the third time, but Though TIMS includes numerous reports now they are seeing the productivity gains, that users can access with a single click and and they’re saying, ‘Hey, when is it my turn export into Excel, the IT staff is adding to be a spoke?’” says Scharnagle. “We got reports to the solution for Tribal to this point through a combination of hard

67 work and a great relationship with a Microsoft Government Microsoft partner that helped us leverage Microsoft applications, solutions, and our Microsoft technologies to deliver real- services help to empower public servants world value. With TIMS, we demonstrate and government employees to share critical every day how IT can make a significant information and serve their constituents contribution to the services provided by more efficiently. The Mohegan Tribe.” For more information about Microsoft Government please go to:

www.microsoft.com/industry/government www.microsoft.com/industry/government/f ederal www.microsoft.com/industry/government/s tate www.microsoft.com/industry/government/l ocal