The Dept. of Agriculture & Food, whose wide range of customers encompasses government departments and individual citizens, deployed the SPS Application which recently won the award for best project in “Government to Business” category in the prestigious Irish "Innovation Through Technology Awards".

The winning project reused the iMAP solution built by eSpatial and Accenture, the international management-consulting and technology services company, integrates application-form processing data with geospatial information enabling the department to manage and process Single Farm Payment applications and payments in an integrated and web-based environment. The spatial component of the system is built on eSpatial’s iSMART® technology, which draws upon the spatial capability within Oracle 8.1.7 Database and Oracle9i Application Server.

The department’s key aims were for a new, integrated system to meet EU regulations and new reporting requirements, introduce new business efficiencies, and offer new web-enabled services to its customers. In addition, the system had to leverage core employee skills without lengthy training sessions. Crucially, it also had to be delivered in less than a single payment cycle to allow the following year’s schemes to be supported, hence delivering a short-term return on investment.

eSpatial provided the spatial component of the application to help address these pain points and today, the successfully deployed system supports the payment of some €1.5 billion in direct payments to farmers throughout Ireland, and provides full access via the Internet for employees, some located in remote offices and will shortlyprovide access to individual farmers nationwide.

Philip O’Doherty, eSpatial’s CEO said “we’re delighted to be setting standards for European Agriculture monitoring projects with our multi-terabyte, location-enabled, enterprise asset management solution for the Irish Agriculture Ministry”

Philip O’Reilly, Assistant Secretary General, Department of Agriculture and Food, Ireland added, “Using eSpatial and Oracle technology, the iMAP tool provides a comprehensive framework for the management and delivery of area-based grant payments, enabling us to meet our EU obligations and provide our farmers with a faster and more efficient service.”

“iMAP provides a comprehensive framework for the management and delivery of area-based grant payments. Current spatial data is now distributed throughout the organisation and, because grant payments are based on this data, they can be processed quickly and accurately.”
eSpatial’s iSMART Geospatial platform is ideal for the development of integrated spatial and business systems such as iMAP and SPS. In addition to these systems, Accenture and eSpatial have also developed a system for forestry contractors to make applications for grants for forest productions directly over the web. This system (FIMS) is an example of how technology such as iSMART can be used to replace existing paper based processes with fully integrated electronic application systems accessible by the general public.

About eSpatial Solutions
eSpatial, founded in Dublin, Ireland and with offices in the USA and Europe, is a world leader in enterprise strength spatial information management technology. Its advanced spatial environment, iSMART, in conjunction with Oracle Spatial, provides a platform for highly scalable and secure spatially enabled applications in a standard enterprise IT environment with unprecedented ease of use, manageability and support for OGC Web Services. Its standard based Rapid Application Development environment and GeoPortal allows organizations to quickly and easily build new applications (or extend existing ones) to include spatial functionality. These applications provide spatial intelligence to anyone, anywhere, on any device, connected or disconnected. eSpatial's technology is used in every area of IT including Public Sector, Defense, Telecommunications and Utility organizations.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Orla Power, Marketing and PR, eSpatial Solutions Ltd., Swords Business Park, Co. Dublin, Ireland. t: +353.1.870.8800, f: +353.1.870.8899, info@espatial.com, www.espatial.com

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