The Paris Technical Housing Department (STH) monitors the 100,000 buildings and 75,000 allotments in the city of Paris. It keeps watch over the fight against health hazards by conducting inspection and monitoring the renovation of the facades of the buildings.
In accordance with the Paris Directorate of Systems and Information Technology (DSTI), it chose to fill out and modernize its information system via a new application called "SARAH": Sanitary Remodeling Hygiene.  Based on the latest technologies in geographic information systems, mobility and Open Source, SARAH's vocation is to work towards offering a better living environment for Parisians.

As part of this project, Sopra Group has built and developed the new information system of the Paris Technical Housing Department. Patterned after an Open Source mapping interface, the tool can process geolocation data and quickly provide information.

This new deployment, drawing on Sopra Group's wealth of experience in geographic and mobile systems and its mastery of Open Source technologies, optimizes the rounds of the STH agents and maintains information in real time. Furthermore, it also incorporates:

• Coverage of all procedures for processing and tracking cases (ordinary health procedures, disputes, etc.),
• Tracking current business matters by informing agents in real time about the status of cases and their completion deadlines, 
• Centralization of data (current data, historical data, etc.) on buildings and the files on them, in a single database,
• Overall management of the lifecycle of the rounds by the renovation inspectors, by providing them with mobile workstations,
• Provision of a mapping tool to facilitate the management of the city's building inspections for STH agents.

Sopra Group has its own engineering method for information systems christened eMedia^TM.  Based on a nimble, iterative, and incremental approach, eMedia^TM incorporates the latest technological advances and standards. In this project it made it possible to redesign the information system dedicated to housing while meeting the deadlines and objectives set by Paris City Hall. The redesigning was carried out within a project group structure in which each player was greatly involved using the dynamics of workshops and availability of the intermediate versions of the solution. These dynamics allowed the system to be built progressively and for the developments to be assessed without any tunnel-vision effect.

The installation of this new information system and the mobile terminals connected to the extranet provided to the agents now make it possible to improve the gathering of information in the field and to optimize case management, and thus offer a better quality of life for citizens. This initiative, based on principles of mobility, GIS (Geographic Information System), and Open Source, establishes the City of Paris in its position as Digital Capital.

About Sopra Group

A leader in the European consulting and IT services market, Sopra Group generated revenue of 1.094 billion euros in 2009 and has a human and intellectual resource potential of over 12,000 people. Thanks to a longstanding culture of excellence and strong sector-specific, functional and technological know-how, the Group offers its clients an end to end approach based on a well-honed business model. Sopra Group’s ambition is to allow its clients to focus on transformation projects that will give them a competitive edge and help them drive growth. Sopra Group’s savoir-faire encompasses prior strategic reflection through to the supervision and implementation of major systems integration and application outsourcing projects. The Group also pursues the worldwide deployment of its activities in both application integration and business process management through its subsidiary Axway, a leading provider of Business Interaction Networks, with a complete range of solutions and services. For more information, please visit our website www.sopragroup.com.