ADEM Accelerates Digital Transformation in response to COVID-19 Crisis

Luxembourg's employment agency ADEM has announced its decision to accelerate its digital transformation in response to the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 crisis.

For ADEM, the dematerialisation of its procedures, systems and data has proven crucial in allowing it to continue its mission with jobseekers and employers during the health crisis. Consequently, the agency has sped up its digital transformation through the implementation of the Talend Data Fabric solution from Talend, a world leader in data integration and integrity, in collaboration with UpCRM, a consulting agency specialised in customer engagement, cloud architecture and data management.

The pre-pandemic operation of ADEM was mainly focussed on the physical presence of its employees and paper procedures, which did not correspond to the new requirements imposed by the health crisis. The acceleration of digital transformation had become essential to support new requirements such as teleworking.

Christine von Reichenbach, Deputy Director and Chief Information Officer at ADEM, explained: “Within ADEM, we felt the impact of the crisis overnight. Until then, we were very focussed on physical presence. For example, we used very little teleworking. Suddenly we had to put everything in place to keep ADEM running".

Two elements were prioritised in the digitalisation process: on the one hand, securing internal systems and their access for each ADEM employee and on the other hand, digitalising procedures.

From the start of the crisis, many Luxembourg companies submitted requests for partial unemployment via the online form available on the ADEM website, generating thousands of requests in record time. Pascal Degueldre, head of the IT department at ADEM, added: “This form was not automated and did not take into account developments related to the crisis. Previously, companies submitted a request and after acceptance, sent a bill that ADEM paid. During the pandemic, we had to pay an advance, based on the elements of the demand. Many companies have completed this type of form for the first time. Reading the paper documents and collecting the missing data for the proper processing of the files would have been tedious. It was necessary to adapt the system".

ADEM thus turned to the use of the Talend Data Integration solution delivered by UpCRM, with the aim of quickly exchanging with companies and administrations, but also internally. Pascal Degueldre explained: “The encoded data is now taken over by Talend and integrated into our system. The same is true for the validation of files and the calculation of advances to be paid to businesses. The data is communicated via Talend and the payments are made by the SAP department of the State. The Talend solution also allows us to adjust all the flows between the various ADEM applications, such as the Data Warehouse".

Many rules have been implemented in Talend, allowing data to be centralised and injected into the ADEM back office. 

Christine von Reichenbach noted that despite everything, "this crisis has been a catalyst for innovation, with a team mobilised and motivated to question the functioning of ADEM, seeking to make the agency ever more efficient".

The processes are now completely digital, thanks to an end-to-end IT solution involving the state portal MyGuichet and the back office systems of ADEM. Without the digital transformation of processes, these requests simply could not have been addressed.

Ms von Reichenbach concluded: “This period of crisis has allowed us to evolve and modernise. Our ambition is to continue to build the future of ADEM, between digitalisation and automation".