SAP Public Services Customers Recognized By Computerworld Honors Program

Global Information Technology Awards Foundation Pays Tribute to Public Services Organizations that Use Information Technology to Benefit Society


WASHINGTON, D.C. - June 2008 - SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced that five public services organizations leveraging SAP applications, including the City of Hagen, Germany; Coordinated Medical Service of Switzerland (KSD); Gauteng province of South Africa; the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the Thoraxklinik of University Hospital of Heidelberg, Germany, were recognized as Laureates by the Computerworld Honors Program for the originality, conception, breadth of vision and benefits their respective SAP technology projects have delivered to society. The achievements of these honorees were recognized during the 20th Annual Computerworld Laureates Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards Evening, held June 2, 2008 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

The Computerworld Honors program commemorates contributions made by both individuals and organizations to the positive social, political and economic betterment of society through the exceptional use of information technology.

“Each Laureate selected for this honor understands the importance of using one’s resources and technical prowess to benefit one’s fellow man,” said Bob Carrigan, chairman of the Computerworld Honors Program 2008, Honors Program Chairmen’s Committee and president, IDG Communications.

This year, the following SAP public services projects were recognized by the committee:

City of Hagen Virtual City Hall project: Hagen’s Virtual City Hall is an example of a successful public-private partnership that significantly improves cross-agency government collaboration and constituent processes. A collaborative effort by the City of Hagen, the Institute of Cooperative Systems of the University of Hagen and SAP, Hagen’s Virtual City Hall is an online portal designed to increase the speed with which constituent services are delivered. The portal was also developed to offer a blueprint for other cities and agencies across Europe desiring to establish similar environments for their citizens.
Coordinated Medical Service of Switzerland (KSD): KSD represents all emergency organizations, such as emergency control centers, hospitals, police, fire brigade, executive staff, and the armed forces in Switzerland’s 26 administrative regions. It was originally set up to coordinate nationwide response to life-threatening events, such as epidemics, natural disasters, major accidents, and terrorist attacks. With the help of the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform, SAP partner Itelligence built for the KSD a centralized, Web-based information and operation system (IOS) that eases high-emergency situations by providing vital information and guidance to key decision makers in high-stress situations in which every second gained helps to save lives in a cost-efficient manner and on a national and international scale. Additionally, the system delivers a comprehensive, real-time picture of the number of emergency beds, medical facilities and specialist skills available at all the country’s 220 major hospitals.
Gauteng Shared Services Center: The province of Gauteng in South Africa believes government value should be defined from the citizen’s perspective – the primary stakeholder and most important beneficiary of government services. It was this rationale that drove the development of the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC), which is focused on providing back-office transactional support services to deliver responsive, high-quality, consistent government services, achieve economies of scale, improve productivity and increase public value. Leveraging the SAP for Public Sector solution portfolio, the GSSC has delivered specific improvements in the daily working lives of the more than 120,000 Gauteng province employees, as well as the more than 10 million citizens that populate the province by easing the job function or every government employee and making it easier for citizens to do business with the government.
United States Postal Service (USPS) HCE project: Representing the world’s largest conversion of personnel information, the USPS Human Capital Enterprise (HCE) project leverages SAP technology to offer self-service HR features to its more than 700,000 employees around the globe—allowing postal employees to perform HR tasks when and where it is most convenient for them. Part of a larger transformation plan aimed at removing $5 billion in costs while positioning the organization for the future business requirements, HCE also includes the creation of an HR Shared Service Center to help automate and standardize more than 200 human resources business processes in the most efficient and cost effective way possible.


Thoraxklinik of University Hospital of Heidelberg, Germany: Thoraxklinik-Heidelberg, an academic teaching hospital of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, is one of the leading thoracic diseases clinics in Europe. To help improve the quality of care to more than 5,000 yearly inpatients and roughly as many outpatients, Thoraxklinik-Heidelberg developed a service portal for physicians based on the SAP NetWeaver® Portal technology. The service portal eases information exchange between doctors, clinics, hospitals and other players along the healthcare value chain, allowing referring doctors to schedule patient hospitalizations and outpatient referrals over the Internet, as well as document treatments and display treatment results for their patients.

“Receipt of the Computerworld Honors Laureate Award is a significant endorsement of these public services organizations’ revolutionary approach and outstanding technological vision,” said Tom Shirk, president, SAP Global Public Services. “These SAP customers serve as models for all forward-thinking, public service organizations that seek to transform their service delivery and create a meaningful impact on society through the use of technology. We are very proud of our Computerworld Honors Laureates and are committed to helping them continue their tremendous success.”

More detailed case studies outlining the visions and achievements of each of the above cited organizations, as well as other Laureates from the 2008 Computerworld Honors Collection is available at http://www.cwheroes.org, the official site of the Computerworld Honors Program.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.

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