With Playtime Solutions, The Department of Finance has transformed the Australian Government Property Register application with a Modern Data Warehouse Solution
The Objective
The AGPR application had limited internal reporting capabilities to effectively process large datasets. This was constraining the organisation’s ability to drive better decision-making and gain deeper insights into business information without moving data into other applications for analysis and reporting.
The primary objectives were:
- Implement a Secure Cloud Scale Analytics Platform: Deploy a robust, enterprise-grade data warehouse solution equipped with user-friendly reporting features to address internal reporting limitations.
- Integrate to External Data: Merge AGPR data with external sources to create a comprehensive dataset, enhancing evidence-based decision-making across the government entities.
- Real-Time Insights: Provide with access to (near) real-time property data, enabling more informed decision-making.
- Secure External Access: Facilitate secure external access to the data, ensuring non-corporate Commonwealth entities can fulfill their legislative and regulatory obligations while maintaining data integrity and security.
- Single Source of truth: Provide a ‘single source of truth’ to support evidence-based decisions confidently.
The Solution
To overcome these challenges and meet their objectives, the Department of Finance partnered with Playtime Solutions, as a one stop shop for Platform and Data Engineering. Leveraging our Production Ready Azure Data Analytics Platform (PRADAP) framework, we designed and implemented an Azure-based data landing zone consisting of Azure Synapse, Data Lake, Power BI following Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework.
Our state-of-the-art enterprise-level data platform, built on Azure Cloud, ensured rapid deployment and seamless integration of data sources. Event-driven batch pipelines replaced traditional scheduling methods, enhancing reusability and reducing development time.
Following Azure’s industry best practices, the entire data warehouse platform was designed and deployed with a focus on networking, role-based access control, and security controls. This approach supported scalability, security governance, network isolation, and identity protection.
Efficient ingestion and data storage services were optimised, while data quality processing pipelines were implemented for data cleansing, validation, and business calculations. The solution efficiently handled large volumes of records with on-the-fly data transformation and repair, at minimal processing costs.
Integrated robust monitoring and alerting along with auditing and logging capabilities instilled confidence in the Department of Finance’s ability to securely manage sensitive information in a cloud environment.
Implementation of DevOps best practices enabled the department to independently design, implement, and deploy reports in a self-service model. In addition, our DevOps enabled workspace included automated deployment of Azure Synapse assets such as Linked Services, Pipelines, Semantic models, notebooks etc.
A user-friendly reporting mechanism was established through Azure Synapse and Power BI, facilitating easy report generation and data manipulation for enhanced decision-making capabilities.
The Outcome
The implementation of this solution brought about improved operational efficiencies and increased security of the data via the built-in governance.
The data platform provides rich reporting functionalities along with integration of other data sources to create different reports in different contexts to inform decisions by senior officials.
Now, Data Scientists have secure access to cleansed data in the data warehouse for necessary data analysis and insights. External service suppliers can access reports securely for enhanced policy compliance and easy access to information about available properties for lease.
The availability of monitoring, alerting, auditing and logging capabilities granted access to crucial information, assuring the Department of Finance security of sensitive data within a cloud environment. The enablement process entailed collaborative work with the reporting team to create reports, enhancing the skills of the Department’s AGPR administration team.
Playtime Solutions and the AGPR administrators formed a dedicated squad, orchestrating efforts to drive targeted outcomes within a defined timeframe. This collaborative approach facilitated efficient communication and synergy between teams.
Conclusion
Utilising our PRADAP framework, we can swiftly provide a Secure Cloud Scale Analytics Platform rapidly with the average implementation being weeks as opposed to months.
If you’re in need of a partner with strong data platform and data engineering skills to enhance your data journey, let’s connect and explore how we can tailor our expertise to your organisation’s requirements.