Data & Business Intelligence

​The Data & Business Intelligence Branch is a part of the Division of Enterprise Solutions within COT. The branch consists of the COT ETL team (ETL; Extract, Transform, Load), COT Business Intelligence (BI) team and the Data Tools Administrator team (DTA team). Our focus is on agency data needs; data analysis, data transformation, data quality, reporting needs on specific data, and visualization of this data that can make it easily consumable, i.e., dashboard. Coordinating with other managing partners in the Finance Cabinet, the COT BI team assist in the management and oversight of the Enterprise Business Intelligence Program. Utilizing SAP Business Objects and Microsoft Power BI, the COT BI team can address both reporting and dashboard needs of any agency. The COT ETL team assists agencies with their data migration projects, data quality or transformation and other issues or problems surrounding their data. The COT ETL team will often coordinate with the COT Data Tools Administrator team on large data projects. The Data Tools Administrator Team oversees the enterprise IBM Infoserver Tools Suite. This tool suite is quite powerful and can transform and perform analysis on data at various levels and in complex ways. Together, these teams can coordinate to transform your agency’s data and offer up new methods of empowerment that can be leveraged to propel your agency into the future.

For more information, or if you would like a demonstration of any, or all, services listed, please contact:

Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI) Program

• COT’s Data Services and Business Intelligence Branch provides technical oversight of the Commonwealth’s Enterprise Business Intelligence (EBI) Program.
• License rate is $485, rate includes the Business Objects license, infrastructure and support staff.
• Each license holder has full access to the following software:
  • Business Objects Enterprise Platform
  • Crystal Reports
  • Web Intelligence (WEBI)
  • Dashboard Designer
  • Explorer
  • Mobile
  • Analysis for Office
  • Voyager
  • Design Studio
• Agencies control access to their data, and provide a first level of contact for reporting technical issues.
• For more information, please contact EBISupport@ky.gov.

Business Intelligence Team

• Responsible for the development and support of Business Intelligence Reports and dashboards using SAP BI Tool Suite and Microsoft Power BI.
• The Business Intelligence team works with agency business analyst and end users to understand the requirements and assist in the design & development of the universes, reports, and or dashboards that will be employed.
• The team focuses on the end users experience, & ease of use when developing reports. This is to make the user a Self-Service capable Business Intelligence user who is able to build their own reports which they can filter, sort, analyze and visualize.
• The Business Intelligence team is also able to provide these services and tools in a manner that is FTI compliant.

Microsoft PowerBI (Business Intelligence) Tool

• Versatile reporting tool which allows for various analytical views of agency data with the option to create custom dashboards.
• We have setup a Power BI Enterprise Gateway which will help agencies setup and connect to their own On-Prem database.
• The Business Intelligence team has been using this technology to work with COT Office of Project Management to build a custom PowerBI dashboard for the OPM team, the Chief Information Officer, and other agencies using Project Online data. This has also been used by KYTC, EDU, and EEC (energy & environmental cabinet) to setup their connections to their own respective On-Prem database using the Enterprise Gateway.

SAP Business Intelligence Reporting & Dashboard Tool:

• Another option we offer to agencies that gives them the power and opportunity to look at their data in new and various ways that perhaps they had never been able to do before.
• On Demand reporting- once constructed, these reports prompt users for specific entries or data points to generate the report they need, i.e., a date range, taxpayer ssn, etc…
• Scheduled reports- reports that are set to run automatically on a set schedule or time period and can either reside in the Business Intelligence tool itself (good for federal info) or can be transferred to a network folder using MoveIT. These reports can be in either excel or PDF formats.
• Ad-Hoc Reports- These reports are self-service business intelligence reports where a power or advanced user. In ad-hoc reporting the user can choose the data fields he/she wishes and build the report that they want on the fly for either a one-time use, or for ongoing use.& This reporting does not involve the assistance of the Business Intelligence team.

Enterprise Web Services

Address Services

Address Services standardizes and validates address data to U.S. Postal Service (USPS) standards upon entry into agency applications and systems, or in batch processing mode. ($5,000 per year per cabinet cost-no limits or metering on processing)

Corrects mailing address according to USPS standards:

• Standardizes street types, handles some typos and removes special characters
• Determines 5 digit zip code & performs zip+4 lookup
• Data is provided in upper and mixed case at agency’s choice, USPS discounts for all upper case.

Presents status codes to describe the address and its deliverability:

• Can describe an address as good, bad, or questionable
• Can identify address inconsistencies such as missing or invalid house numbers, apartment numbers, or rural route information

Operates as real-time web service:

• Validates an address as it is entered to help prevent bad data from entering the system or application; response time is typically measured in milliseconds

Operates in batch mode:

• Can process millions of records on weekly, monthly, or quarterly schedules
• Can connect directly to various database systems and file formats

Death Verification Service

Death Verification Service is a tool that agencies can use as a real-time web service or in batch processing mode to verify a person's death based on the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) Social Security Administration data.

• This service provides data from the Social Security Administration's Death Master File, which lists such information as a person's name, date of birth, month and year of death, and whether a death has been verified and documented.
• Primary uses for the Death Verification Service are to identify fraud and identity theft.
• NOTE: The Social Security Administration did not begin collecting information for the Death Master File until 1936; therefore, information about deaths prior to that time is not available.

Geocoding Service

Geocoding Service is a subscription-based, real-time web service that allows a Commonwealth of Kentucky agency to transform an address into geocoded latitude and longitude coordinates.

Agencies can integrate this address information with their key business data to build applications and enhance business intelligence to further their business goals and responsibilities. Agencies can tailor the combined data for:

• Enabling spatial-based searches to identify key consultant needs, such as "nearest Department of Revenue office"
• Optimizing routing for such tasks as delivery of services or coordinating business audits or inspection routes
• Enabling the location and identification of key geographic activities such as Parks and nearby facilities and businesses
• Delivering emergency response and catastrophe management information (identify shelters, flooding info, etc.)
• Tracking health issues such as infection outbreaks
• Tracking compliance with government regulations

The web service provides information for the agency application such as the latitude and longitude coordinates, the county where the address is located, and codes that can indicate the accuracy and status of the address. Agencies can also use an optional record identifier to apply their own agency-specific name to an address.

Accurate geographic coordinates will be useful for any application that:

• Stores address data
• Plots location data on a map
• Needs real-time coordinates
• Needs to provide spatial-based searches

Data Services

COT has skilled staff and tools that enable Commonwealth agencies to realize the true potential of their asset by:

• Assisting customers in understanding and evaluating reliability of their data.
• Analyzing the customer's data needs and creating a conceptual, logical and physical Data Model.
• Cleansing, standardizing, or validating the customer's data using our experience with data analysis plus data correction software.
• Performing data conversion by moving data from current system to the new system.
• Advanced and probabilistic data matching, merging duplicate data.
• Data integration and extract, transform, and load (ETL) development.
• Data quality analysis and monitoring.

Information Governance & Business Glossary Services

The COT Data & Business Intelligence Branch offers two services designed to help agencies better identify, manage, and use their information. The first service, the IBM Information Governance Catalog, enables agencies to build and manage their enterprise vocabulary and classification system in a customized glossary. The second service, IBM Glossary Anywhere, allows users to look up information about key business terms easily in the glossary while performing their duties.

IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog (IGC)

• Information Governance Catalog is an interactive, web-based tool that enables agencies to create, manage, and share an enterprise vocabulary and classification system in a central catalog of Glossary Terms for their data assets.
• Increases understanding of an agency’s unique terms by providing the business meanings of the Agency’s data assets.
• Increases efficiency by providing search, browse, and query capabilities which enables users to look up terms quickly and easily.

IBM Glossary Anywhere (IGA)

With IBM’s Glossary Anywhere, users can look up information about terms and catalog data assets while working in other applications from the Windows desktop. IGA displays information (e.g., terms or data asset information) without opening IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog in a web browser.

Glossary Anywhere:

• Enables a user to quickly search the glossary for single words or phrases that the user captured from text-based documents on your computer.
• Opens a window with a list of terms, categories, or other business data assets with the word in its name or description, without interrupting other work or applications such as Word or Excel.