Actuate Customer, City of Chicago Named a Finalist for the Business Intelligence Perspectives "Best Practices in Business Intelligence” Awards

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTU), the people behind BIRT, today announced that the City of Chicago has been selected by Computerworld’s Business Intelligence Perspectives, the premier conference for leaders in the business intelligence and IT management, as a finalist for its "Best Practices in Business Intelligence” award for "Driving Process Management with BI”. The City of Chicago uses Actuate’s BIRT Performance Scorecard, to create cross-communication between departments, facilitate comments on the data delivered across departments and speed corrective action on specific performance metrics.

"Today’s competitive economy demands that IT enterprises effectively and efficiently implement successful business intelligence strategies,” said Ellen Dally, senior vice president events, IDG Enterprise. "The organizations we’ve selected have demonstrated the ability to devise and implement solutions that ensure the most efficient IT infrastructure and advancing the larger goals of the organization.”

Prior to deploying BIRT Performance Scorecard, product formally known as Actuate Performancesoft Views, the City of Chicago had no centralized automated tool for managing or reporting data. Actuate’s BIRT Performance Scorecard has provided real time, centralized access to performance metrics for the Budget Office and the Mayor’s Office, which allows for performance management to be a more continual management process rather than merely a static reporting activity. By measuring performance with proven tools, the city’s ability to make data-driven decisions and report their efforts to the public increases. The city has already consolidated financial payment processes, improved operations with the 311 City of Chicago Service Request Search program and is better managing their 39,000+ employees. The city estimates that it has saved $10 million by improving their management of overtime with Actuate’s BIRT Performance Scorecard. The city's performance management initiative holds managers strictly accountable for the performance of their departments.

"Within the Mayor's Office of the City of Chicago, the Office of Budget and Management leads the City's performance management efforts, helping City Departments analyze what is working and what may require improvement, and determining how to best develop and implement those improvements,” said Jeffrey Lewelling, director of performance management, City of Chicago. "The driving goal behind our implementation of BIRT Performance Scorecard was to improve the city’s analytical capacity and ability to make data-driven decisions at the service level. It’s an honor that our success is being recognized with such a prestigious award.”

"We extend our congratulations to Jeffrey Lewelling and the City of Chicago on their achievement,” said Nobby Akhia, vice president of marketing, Actuate Corporation. "Actuate is privileged to have contributed to the success of their team as they look to provide increased transparency and accountability of government to the people of Chicago.”

The award identifies and acknowledges excellence among users of business intelligence solutions and approaches. A wide range of IT end-user companies and organizations responded to an initial call for nominations, which was originally announced to multiple industry audiences, including Computerworld subscribers responsible for business intelligence management. Finalists were evaluated by a panel of judges based on case study submissions that profiled the company, its IT department and infrastructure project management challenges, as well as application deployment details, summaries of the key technology used and measurable solution outcomes.

About Computerworld

For 40 years, Computerworld has been the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide. Computerworld's award-winning Web site (Computerworld.com), weekly publication, focused conference series and custom research form the hub of the world's largest global IT media network.

Computerworld's Web site and print publication have won more than 100 awards in the past five years alone. Computerworld leads the industry with an online audience of over 2 million unique monthly visitors and a print audience of more than 1.2 million readers each week.

Computerworld's conferences, with their focus on technologies and solutions, provide a rare opportunity for attendees to gain insight into the way user companies execute their strategies in the enterprise. Whether it's the prestigious Computerworld Honors Program, Computerworld's exclusive Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference or vertical industry events such as SNW, Business Intelligence Perspectives, or SaaScon, Computerworld's conferences provide the best environment for idea exchange among IT executives and IT solutions providers.

Actuate – the people behind BIRT

Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project. BIRT is the premier development environment for Rich Information Applications that present data in compelling and interactive ways via the web on any device. Actuate and its people are dedicated to making BIRT the best environment for our customers to develop Web 2.0 applications that drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction/loyalty and improve operational performance. The people of Actuate continually participate in and provide resources for the vibrant open source community that has emerged around BIRT. Anybody can participate in the BIRT movement by visiting www.birt-exchange.com.

Actuate offers value-add BIRT products and services that speed the development process and bring additional functionality, interactivity and enterprise scalability to BIRT-based Rich Information Applications. Actuate has over 4,400 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ACTU. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com.

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