Norwegian Food Safety Authority Supervisory System

In January 2006 the cooperation between the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, Mattilsynet, and Computas started, which would result in the world’s best case management system.

Mattilsynet is the government regulatory body for plants, fish, animals and food. It is a large organization with more than 1,200 employees in 60 offices throughout Norway. The agency was established in 2004 when different government inspection services for agriculture, animal health, food and seafood, and local inspection services for food, were merged into one national government agency.

After the merger, Mattilsynet faced the challenge of over 40 different management systems. Therefore, a new and more efficient case management system was highly wished for.

The close and good cooperation with Computas is a main reason for the success

Odd Ingebretsen, IT Director in the Norwegian Food Safety Authority

Result

The NFSA Regulatory System (MATS) is a case management system that daily is used by 1,200 employees in NFSA. The solution covers the entire process from planning to implementation and registration of supervision. In each step, support is given in terms of explanation, relevant rules and help to move forward.

The system handles a large volume of electronic forms and has integration and login via Altinn (the Norwegian public reporting portal). Food production enterprises use MATS as a self-service solution to register search and control their own case information, which contributes to making task handling for the NFSA case handlers easier.

After MATS was put into operation, we started the work on further development and maintenance of the system. We have a team working daily on simplifying and streamlining the solutions together with the experts from NFSA.

The world’s best case management system

In 2012 the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and Computas won the internationally prestigious award «Global Awards for Excellence in Adaptive Case Management» (ACM) for the IT solution MATS.

The same year the solution was awarded Fyrlyktprisen, an award given to public IT solutions that can be reused by others.

The solution from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority and Computas distinguishes itself as one of the very best examples we have seen in ACM solutions

Keith Swenson, leader of WfMC

Technical expertise and an unsurpassable framework

One of the big challenges in establishing MATS was that the NFSA was a merger of many different systems, cultures, and established ways of working. The objective was therefore to create a solution that ensured a consistent and holistic NFSA; in other words ensure that everyone was treated according to the same rules and understanding regardless of geographical location or field of expertise. In order to achieve this, working closely with the Norwegian Food Safety Authority experts was imperative.

When we started the work, the NFSA had already conducted a comprehensive needs analysis. During the designing of the solution, focus was primarily on a thorough review of NFSA’s work processes. We worked closely with experts who were brought in from all over Norway and from different fields of expertise. With a good understanding of how they worked, the next step was to establish an optimal technical solution and to ensure that all technical issues were resolved in a satisfactory and coherent manner.

Our framework FrameSolutions is developed specifically for this type of process-oriented workflow with knowledge support. FrameSolutions is rigged to quickly and efficiently handle changes in regulations and process, so that the solution will have a long lifespan and low maintenance cost.